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Squab, Saute, with Tarragon
Cut the feet and necks off six fat, fresh squabs. Split open through the back, empty, and remove the breast bones. Envelope them in a coarse towel and gently flatten them with a cleaver. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a large frying pan, lay in the squabs, one beside another. Season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper. Fry them for six minutes, turn them over, season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper and cook for six minutes on this side as well. Take them off the pan and keep on a plate. Have six very thin slices of lean raw ham, place them in the pan in which the squabs were cooked and fry on a brisk fire for one minute on each side. Arrange the ham on a hot dish, place the squabs over. Have four tarragon leaves placed on top of each squab. Skim the fat from the surface of the gravy, add a half gill white wine to the gravy, a half gill demi-glace and a half teaspoon finely chopped tarragon. Boil for five minutes, pour over the squabs and serve.
A classic hotel-kitchen sauté: birds flattened, fried hard in a single pan, and finished with a fast pan sauce. Everything hinges on not overcooking the squab.
- Squab donenessSquab is a dark-meated pigeon and in restaurant practice is usually served pink at the breast; note that this is well below the 165F recommended for poultry generally. Twelve minutes total in a hot pan suits birds boned and pressed flat; whole or thicker birds will cook less evenly and benefit from a short rest.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so "two saltspoons" is half a teaspoon of white pepper per side. A gill is half a cup, so a half gill of wine and a half gill of demi-glace are a quarter cup each.
- Sourcing the birdsSquab is a specialty item, often sold frozen and typically somewhere around a pound each; order from a game supplier or a Chinese market, where fresh ones turn up more often. Six birds is a large order for a home pan.
- Splitting and flatteningThis is spatchcocking with the breastbone taken out as well. Split down the backbone, open the bird flat, lift out the keel and ribs with a boning knife, then press with the flat of a cleaver or a heavy pan. A towel keeps the bones from tearing the skin.
- "Lean raw ham"Not fresh pork. This means an uncooked dry-cured ham of the prosciutto or Bayonne type, sliced very thin; it is put in the pan only to warm and crisp. Prosciutto or speck works; American wet-cured deli ham will weep and go grey.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thick enough to coat. Good jarred demi-glace or a reduced homemade brown stock is fine; a bouillon cube will simply make the sauce salty, especially alongside the ham.
- Pan capacitySix flattened squabs will not fit in one home skillet without steaming. Use two large pans or work in batches, then deglaze whichever pan holds the most fond.
- TarragonUse French tarragon, not Russian, which has little scent. The four leaves on each bird are raw and meant to perfume the dish as the hot sauce goes over them, so lay them on at the last moment.
- YieldOne bird per person, six servings, as a main course with the ham underneath. A potato pur he it.
Squab held a settled place on American hotel and restaurant menus from the late nineteenth century into the 1920s, when pigeon raising was a commercial trade and the birds were comparatively cheap; the decline of that trade is part of why it is now a luxury item. The method here belongs to the professional French repertoire the big city kitchens ran on: a bird split and flattened in the manner of a crapaudine, saut hat whole dish is done in one pan, and a sauce built from the pan fond with wine and demi-glace, a brown reduction kept on hand in well-equipped kitchens of the period. Tarragon points to French rather than English cooking, and the pairing with pigeon and a wine-and-demi-glace sauce belongs to the same family as the tarragon chicken saut of the era.