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Cotelettes of Squabs, Colbert
Cut heads and feet off six fat, fresh squabs, neatly draw, thoroughly wipe and split in two through back, then trim each half to cutlet shape. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, dip in beaten eggs, then roll in fresh bread crumbs. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a sautoire, lay in squabs, slowly cook for five minutes on each side, pour a Colbert sauce on a hot dish, place squabs over and serve.
A Delmonico's-style plate: young pigeon boned out flat, crumbed, pan-fried and set over a butter-mounted meat glaze. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes a kitchen with stock and sauces already made.
- Colbert sauceThe recipe assumes you can make it. In the classical repertoire it is a meat glaze (glace de viande, which is not the same thing as demi-glace) finished off the heat with butter, lemon juice and chopped tarragon, sometimes with a little Madeira. Whisk the butter in with the pan off the burner or the sauce is liable to break.
- SquabsSquab is a young domestic pigeon, roughly four weeks old, generally around 12-16 oz dressed. Order from a game butcher or online; most supermarkets will not have it. "Neatly draw" means gut them, which a supplier will usually do for you.
- Cutlet shapeSplit down the backbone, flatten each half, then trim so that a bone forms the "handle" and the breast the paddle. The trimming is what makes it a côtelette rather than simply half a bird.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, not a sloped skillet. The straight walls keep the crumb coating from sliding off the edge as you turn the pieces.
- Butter quantityA tablespoon and a half will not carry twelve crumbed halves. Use enough clarified butter to film the pan generously, roughly a quarter cup, and add more between batches. Whole butter alone will brown too fast under the crumbs; clarified or butter cut with a neutral oil holds up better.
- Cooking timeFive minutes a side over moderate heat suits birds pounded to even thickness. Squab is dark meat and is best at 135-140F in the breast, still rosy; taken to well done it turns dry and livery. Cook in two batches so the pan stays hot.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for six birds is light by modern taste. Season the cut surfaces directly before the egg wash, and salt the crumbs as well.
- YieldTwelve halves, serving six as a main course or twelve as a first course. Sauce under the meat, not over, so the crust stays crisp.
Anything called "Colbert" in a French professional kitchen points to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, though the attachment of his name to a butter-enriched meat glaze with tarragon and lemon is traditional rather than documented, and dates from long after his death. The dish itself is a standard item of the classical French repertoire, from a time when squab was a luxury of the domestic pigeon loft rather than a game bird: tender, uniform in size, and available year-round in a way that wild birds were not. Cutting the halves to cutlet shape is a piece of restaurant theatre, in which a bird might be trimmed to imitate a chop and sent out with a French sauce name attached.