Guinea Fowl - why it's so much better than chicken!

I've only recently discovered Guinea Fowl for the home cook - I've had it in restaurants a few times, but a few weeks back I saw one on offer in my local Sainsbury's and gave it a whirl.
I've bought two more since - particularly as they were on special offer at just £2.74 each!

It seems that the chicken has become ubiquitous in our taste-free, fast-food culture. Supermarket shelves are filled with plastic-wrapped parcels of uniform skin-free, fat-free, flavour-free breasts with all the texture of a kitchen sponge. We like chicken because it's bland, because it takes on the flavour or whatever it's cooked with and because the perception is that it's easy to cook.
Actually, I think supermarket chicken breasts are quite difficult to cook. Breast meat is so full of water that a moment's overcooking turns it into something dry and fibrous. Intensively reared chicken is so prone to salmonella that a moment's undercooking turns it into a vom-fest.

As an antidote to flavourless chicken, I heartily recommend guinea fowl. I'm not kidding myself that this supermarket creature was once flying free - I know it is domesticated and intensively reared. But it still manages to have flavour.

Best of all - a guinea fowl is about the perfect size for two people - even leaving over a few tasty leftovers for lunch the next day.

Tasting notes
Guinea fowl tastes very slightly gamey - not as much as a pheasant. I guess the way to describe it is as being somewhere between a chicken and a pheasant.
Like most 'game' birds (aquatic ones being the exception), guinea fowl is very lean and has a propensity to dryness if not cooked carefully.
The meat is darker than chicken, but again not as dark as pheasant - maybe this is a way of telling how gamey game is??

Cooking
While most chicken recipes can be adapted for use, I have pot-roasted all my guinea fowl so far. Interestingly, I compared a couple of cookbooks - one from Rick Stein (Food Heroes - Another Helping) and one from Antonio Carluccio (Italian Feast). Stein's recipe was inspired by Spain (butter beans and chorizo) and Carluccio's (obviously) by Italy (lentils I think, spec and salami).

So here's how I did the last one:
1 guinea fowl - the books often tell you to brown it first in hot oil - I didn't bother, I think it's cosmetic, and I was planning to portion it before bringing it to table
1 onion cut into small dice
1 carrot cut into small dice
1 stick celery cut into small dice
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 pint ham stock (I had some hanging around after some boiled ham - you could use chicken or good vegetable stock)
1/2 can butter beans (I don't have the forethought to soak beans the night before!)
3-4oz cooking chorizo cut into small dice
olive oil

Soften the vegetables in olive oil in an oven-proof casserole (that has a lid) - we're looking for the nicely golden stage here, not the totally cooked through.
Sit the guinea fowl on top of the vegetables, nestling it in nicely.
Pour over the stock - there should be enough to just about cover the vegetables - make sure you pour this over the bird too.
Drizzle a little olive oil over the bird and season with salt and pepper (plenty of pepper, easy on the salt - particularly if your stock is salty). Stick the lid on and pop it into a preheated oven (200degrees C).
After about half an hour, take the pot out and baste the bird with stock from the casserole. Now add the butter beans and chorizo to the vegetables and give a little stir.
Re-cover and put back in the oven for another 20-30 minutes.

Let the bird rest for 5-10 minutes then carve - take each breast off whole and cut on the bias into three pieces, and cut the legs off whole (if you think the breast enough, keep the legs and call me - I'll be round soon!).
Serve with the vegetables and the stock in those nice deep bistro-style plates. I guess you could thicken the stock to create a sauce or gravy, but personally, I like the soupiness of it.
The only other thing I served this with was a big bunch of watercress tucked alongside the meat. Oh - and a few glasses of crisp sauvignon blanc, of course!


Food and Drink

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