Fancy Chicken! Pintade à l'ail au Citron or Pintada a la Catalana

Fancy chicken? what's that then? - A guinea fowl of course.
Otherwise known as a pintade in French, but for this recipe we should really call it a pintada - as the people of el països Catalans (the Catalan lands) would.

For this guinea fowl meal I've chosen a traditional French Catalan recipe, partly based on the ingredients we had to hand and also because recipes for "Catalan guinea fowl" aka "garlic and lemon guinea fowl" appeared in seven of my books that I consulted for inspiration!

In the seven books there were seven different variations of the recipe - such is peasant cookery.
I went for the simplest and quickest recipe because we were late home from a bike ride and I didn't want to be eating at midnight!

I based my recipe on the one in "Catalan Cuisine", an excellent book by Colman Andrews.

The recipe...

Pintada a la Catalana.

Take a guinea fowl and joint it completely but don't bone. Cut the breasts into 3 pieces each.
In a cassola (or any other large flameproof dish) get a good thick layer of olive oil hot. Add any minced fat from the bird (guinea fowl are quite lean however).
Add the guinea fowl joints. Brown on all sides, remove and store on a plate.

Make a 'sofregit':
In the hot oil add one large, roughly chopped onion.
Saute until wilted and the onions become golden brown. (don't burn).
Add the whole, peeled cloves from 2 heads of garlic (30 odd cloves).
Add a handful of julienned cured dry cured ham or cured belly pork.

De-glaze the cassola with a cup of Banyuls (we had none and so used Grenache, you could use dry sherry or port).

Return the guinea fowl to the pot. Add the zest and juice of one lemon, a pint of good chicken stock, the juice of one orange and salt and pepper.

Simmer whilst partially covered. The pintard will become very tender and the sauce should reduce in volume by a half.

This should take 1.5 to 2 hours. Many of the recipes I looked at cooked this for a lot longer.

Anyway, we ate ours after an hour and 15 mins because we were ravenous :o)
A dish of olive oil roasted red capsicum, courgette and aubergine, all sliced reasonable thinly, was the accompaniment.

It was tender, the sauce was a little wetter than it should have been but that didn't seem to deter us as we polished of our plates and mopped the juice with good dry bread.

One lemon doesn't sound much but it's just enough to fragrantly flavour the dish and as the garlic cloves have cooked for so long they mellow meaning that the delicately gamey flavour of the guinea fowl isn't smothered.

Guinea fowl could be described as half way between chicken and pheasant in flavour and a chicken could be used instead. It's definitely worth obtaining a guinea fowl in my opinion.