I had this realization a couple days ago while cooking beautiful Cornish Game Hens. I was standing there in my kitchen, patting dry the hens and placing them in the roasting pan. At that exact moment my brain flashed back to my childhood. I drifted back and tried to picture what my mom might do with these hens. What would she put on them? For a little back story, my parents anniversary was to be the very next day, so my thoughts might have been prompted by missing my dad and being so far away from mom when I know alone she must feel. Either way my realization was this; that I couldn't think of exactly what my mom would do with the hens. Why couldn't I put myself in my mom's apron? Well, the only answer I could come up with was that, like most kids, I wasn't as intent on watching my mom make dinner. I was more focused on the smells that filled the house and of course the end result..YUM. So now, here I am. I'm 32 year old wife and mother and I am just now getting into the hang of things in the kitchen and desperately wishing I had paid a little more attention.
Where would I be if I had watched less TV and watched my mom instead? I probably wouldn't be as good at 80s trivia, for one. If I had been at my mom's side I am pretty sure I would have a lot more confidence in the kitchen and I'd know more about food than I do now. But most importantly I would have more memories and a bond with my family that would close the distance between us every time I made something from my childhood. It will be something I'll always regret and miss. It's ironic that I spent 22 years under my parents' roof and while a lot of my memories take place in the kitchen, most of what my mom (and my dad) cooked there, in that very kitchen, is lost to the past.
All of this left me with a deep sadness until I came to another realization (hey, I'm on a roll). I may have regrets about not paying attention to my mom and dad in the kitchen, but there is something I can do for the future. For my kids' future, and perhaps to start that self-journey for myself, I've decided to do an online blog of my cooking.
With that in mind here's my first entry!
4 Game Hens
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 onion
1 apple
toothpicks
minced garlic
salt and pepper
1/4 cup butter
a few pinches of fresh basil
1 cup chicken stock
Oven was set at 350 degrees.
I rinsed and dried the game hens and placed them onto the rack in my Kitchenaid roasting pan. I cut up all the veggies and the apple into chunks and stuffed a little bit of each into the cavity of the hen (cavity seems like such a gross word). Anyway, I stuffed those hens as full as I could and closed up the cavity by crossing the legs of the hen over the opening and sticking a toothpick through the legs to make them stay. Usually you can truss them with string, but I improvised with the toothpicks. (Alexis actually gave me this idea when I ran into this problem a few months back with a turkey. She suggested I use kabob skewers since I didn't have any string. Worked like a charm! Now I like to stab things with wooden objects. Watch out, Buffy Summers!! I'm the new Chosen One!) So, my birds are stuffed and sitting nicely in my pan. Now I decide to throw some stuff on top of them. I go for the garlic first. I rub about a 3/4 teaspoon of minced garlic all over my un-feathered friends. Then I grab the salt and pepper mills and do about one turn of salt for each hen and a few turns of pepper on each. Oh, they were looking good! (I almost took a picture, but I thought it was a little morbid at the time.) Okay, then I took the butter and cut it into 4 slices and placed a slice on each hen. I almost stopped there...but then I saw that my basil needed a little pinching! I pinched off quite a few of them and tore them up and threw on top of the hens! I was almost done, but I didn't want my little birdies to dry out, so I put about a cup of chicken broth in the bottom of the pan. Voila! Those bad GIRLS were ready to go in the oven.
They ended up cooking for about an hour and fifteen minutes.
By luck the hens were so pretty that I decided to take a picture of them! So that's another reason they are the subject of my first food blog!
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