Grilled Quail with Budino Recipe

Chris Burrous: Succulent squash is a gourmet California creation. It’s grown in
every corner of the state supplying the country with some of the
most scrumptious squash in the nation. Food & Lifestyle expert
Laura McIntosh is “Bringing it Home,” from the crops to your
kitchen.

Laura McIntosh: Hi everyone thanks for joining me fresh out in the field. We’re
bringing in beautiful winter squash for all of our recipes to share
with you today. But I’m here with a grower, Art Perry. Hi Art.

Art Perry: Hey, how you doing?

Laura McIntosh: Hey, thanks for bringing us out to your beautiful field.

Art Perry: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Laura McIntosh: Let’s talk about what you have in the box.

Art Perry: Okay, alright.

Laura McIntosh: Okay, go through these squash with me.

Art Perry: Okay, first of all this is actually the butternut squash. Which, this is
kind of, one of my favorites. All of them are good, I enjoy them
all. My family enjoys them all, but the butternut for some reason
has actually grown to be the most popular- and I agree with that.

Laura McIntosh: Good because you love it. And it’s actually the field that we’re in
today.

Art Perry: Exactly.

Laura McIntosh: Okay and we have a bunch more. Let’s go with this one.

Art Perry: Okay. This is what we call acorn; green acorn but it also can be
called Danish squash. Some people call it a Danish.

Laura McIntosh: This one.

Art Perry: Spaghetti.

Laura McIntosh: My pasta squash.

Art Perry: Yeah. You're the expert on this one.

Laura McIntosh: Yeah. I love that one.

Art Perry: How do you like this in pasta?

Laura McIntosh: This one same thing. I cut it in half, put it in the oven let it cook for
about 40 minutes or so then scrape it out and it looks just like
pasta.

Alright, we have one more.

Art Perry: Okay.

Laura McIntosh: This one. I’m not real familiar with this one.

Art Perry: Well, this is a Kabocha squash. This has been around for a fair
number of years. But I going to say in the last 4 or 5 years it’s
become more popular, it’s a good squash. It’s a nice squash to eat.

Laura McIntosh: Alright, we’re going to cook today with them.

Art Perry: Okay, great.

Laura McIntosh: Hey, thanks for having us out here.

Art Perry: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Laura McIntosh: We have all this wonderful produce at our fingertips. We live in
California. We have the best of the best. Which is why we have
Nash here today- you’re using a lot of fun stuff. What are you
doing?

Nash Cognetti: We’re making grilled quail, broiled quail with butternut squash
budino.

Laura McIntosh: Budino.

Nash Cognetti: And we’re finishing it with a drizzle of Saba.

Laura McIntosh: Show them how to do this, budino.

Nash Cognetti: Let’s start with budino, huh? Let’s start with butter, and we’re
going to get that butter a little brown in there and we have a hot
pan. So, as that gets going we’re going to get our sage. We’re
going to toss our sage in there, and I add the sage in the beginning
because you want to kind of toast the sage a little bit. So, once the
sage gets going in there, we can get our butternut squash.

Laura McIntosh: Okay.

Nash Cognetti: You can add it all.

Laura McIntosh: awesome, look at how beautiful that is.

Nash Cognetti: And we have that nice, beautiful, little fine dice on that butternut
squash.

Laura McIntosh: I was going to say, this is like Lincoln logs, they’re perfect. I
mean, they’re perfect you did a great job.

Nash Cognetti: Let’s add the flour to it. As you stir in that flour it’s going to start
to thicken.

Laura McIntosh: Like a- oh I spilled- like a roux? Kind of like a roux.

Nash Cognetti: Exactly. So, now that we’ve got that flour going in there, we
should add our milk.

Laura McIntosh: Okay. And this is milk not cream? Could we use—

Nash Cognetti: This is just good old milk. Because this dish is going to be so rich,
you don’t really need to use cream in this dish.

Laura McIntosh: Ok good.

Nash Cognetti: Milk works just fine. So what you’re going to do next is you’re
going to bring this up and let it cook for about 2-3 minutes and
thicken. So once it thickens you want to remove it from the heat. I
turned the heat off on it, so it’s fine.

Laura McIntosh: Okay.

Nash Cognetti: Add the cheese, all of it.

Laura McIntosh: Alright.

Nash Cognetti: Don’t worry about it; this is going to feed like a thousand people.

Laura McIntosh: Unbelievable.

Nash Cognetti: Then you want to add those egg yolks. Go ahead and add them all
in right now. You don’t want to scramble them, but if you’re
whisking like I’m whisking right now, they’re not going to
scramble.

Laura McIntosh: No chance. Okay, a little nutmeg.

Nash Cognetti: A little bit of nutmeg.

Laura McIntosh: All of it?

Nash Cognetti: Freshly grated. Go ahead and add all of it. The nutmeg gives it a
really great flavor with the butternut squash, especially around the
holiday time. What you want to do then is you want to put it into a
dish, a baking vessel of some sort. And you want to bake it in a
water bath.

Laura McIntosh: Alright.

Nash Cognetti: What we would call in the kitchen, a Bain Marie, which is
basically a pan outside of your pan with a little bit of water.

Laura McIntosh: Ok so this sits inside your pan, that’s a little deeper and you add
some water. To about where?

Nash Cognetti: out half way up.

Laura McIntosh: Right there?

Nash Cognetti: A third of the way, half way up.

Laura McIntosh: It keeps the bottom from burning.

Nash Cognetti: Keeps the bottom from burning.

Laura McIntosh: Awesome, that’s all we need to know, perfect.

Nash Cognetti: 325 degrees, for about 25 minutes.

Laura McIntosh: So should we show them what it looks like?

Nash Cognetti: We should show them.

Laura McIntosh: Let’s do it.

Nash Cognetti: We bake it uncovered too by the way.

Laura McIntosh: Oh, uncovered. Look at that.

Nash Cognetti: You’ll see that on the top of the budino, you get that nice golden
brown crust on top of that budino.

Laura McIntosh: That is perfect.

Nash Cognetti: Fantastic.

Laura McIntosh: Yeah, fantastic.

Nash Cognetti: We’re doing it today with quail. If you don’t like quail, the budino
is great by itself. So the quail Laura, I’ve just very simply
marinated it with a little bit of fresh thyme, sea salt and extra virgin
olive oil.

Laura McIntosh: That’s it. Wha-la. Goes in the oven—

Nash Cognetti: Put it in the oven. Turn the broiler on and cook it for 5 to 10
minutes.

Laura McIntosh: How fast is that?

Nash Cognetti: Yeah, your cooking time will vary based upon your oven. But, you
don’t want to overcook the bird. You know, a medium cooked
quail is good. So what I’m actually going to do here Laura, this is
risky.

Laura McIntosh: I’m watching you.

Nash Cognetti: This is risky I’m actually going to take our budino out. So this is
why they call it sformatino. Misshapen, because when it comes out
it looks a little…sformatino. And then we’re going to take our
quail, and we’re just going to plate our quail just on top of the
budino like that. And we’re going to finish it with a little drizzle of
Saba.

Laura McIntosh: Okay.

Nash Cognetti: Saba is made from most of sangiovese grapes and they age it very
much like balsamic vinegar.

Laura McIntosh: Okay, I’ve never had it and I’m going to taste a little bit of it. What
does it taste like? Delicious.

Nash Cognetti: Tastes like fantastic balsamic vinegar.

Laura McIntosh: Another fantastic recipe. Nash, I actually want to clap for you. It’s
fantastic.

Mike Carson: My name is Mike Carson, and I’m here doing some blacksmithing.
We have everything from barbeque tools, meat turners, fireplace
equipment, puzzles, key rings and things like that.

What we have here, this is our forge. By using our blower, every
time I crank the blower it blows air up a tube up through the
middle of the fire. And when it happens it blows oxygen into the
fire, we can get the fire up to a little over 3,000 degrees. Now most
of the iron and steel that we use, will actually start burning and
melting at about 2,700 degrees so if we’re not careful we can
actually make the metal melt straight off of the end of the rod. So
what we’re trying to do is get it hot enough to that it gets soft bring
it out and work across the top of our anvil.

I’ve been blacksmithing a little over 23 years. I enjoy creating
things. The creativity really flows as long as the metal is hot.

And there we have another meat turner for cooking on your
barbeque.