Marmalade poussin with spätzle and white cabbage

This caraway seed and bitter orange marmalade poussin served with spätzle and braised white cabbage is an old German family recipe though, exactly where it originates, I have no idea. Actually very simple to cook, you can knock it up for a dinner party ofr simply enjoy it on your own.

Poultry puns

There's no great story to this one. Or at least not one they're prepared to tell. It's simply an old family favourite from my German family in Wuppertal that I have loved for ages, from long before I actually became an echt member of the family... I love both them and the recipe, just to eradicate any ambiguity.

I'd quiz members of the household as subtly as I could at the dinner table: "So, is this a really old traditional recipe or a more recent invention?"

"Vielleicht..." ("Maybe").

After about 15 years, Dora, who had reigned over the house and kitchen for even longer, decided that I had a very clear reason to not be a ship passing in the night. One afternoon in the mid-noughties when she was preparing it for our supper, she agreed to teach me how to cook it. She took on an oddly conspiratorial tone, producing a leather-bound portfolio. She opened it and showed me the recipe, written in ink by her great-aunt, dated June, 1926.

She was shocked that I almost tripped up on the kitchen stone floor, clumsy with laughter. I had to explain that seeing it called Englisches Toast-Hühnchen ("English toast"chicken) was a beautiful and amusing thing. It made utter sense in this house of diehard Anglophiles, where the lads were all packed off to Eton or Winchester. And it was also wonderfully poetic. You'll understand why once you get to the recipe.

A game of chicken

While the default setting for this dish has become to use poussin, it was previously often also cooked with pheasant or larger chickens. But, pheasants are famously tricky to keep moist and, so, poussin became the preferred poultry of choice.

While the dish was originally served it with bratkartoffeln (potatoes roasted in a slightly different manner to UK styles) and the NRW region isn't known for spätzle, the arrival of the feisty young Gräfin in the 1960s, with her Southern roots, saw a new tradition emerge. And, "the German pasta" was here to stay... That said, there doesn't seem to be any one way of serving it with this dish. I'm opting for this version with mushrooms, curly-leaf parsley and mild goat's cheese, because I think it works well with the season. But I have had it with plenty of other options that are equally delicious: onions, sekt und bergkäse in winter; spinach, butter, black pepper and grated green apple in summer... You decide.

Similarly, the braised white cabbage is more traditionally cooked in chicken stock. But, I tend to use vegetable stock in the warmer months to keep the flavours a little fresher.

When you make the sauce in the final stages of cooking, the original recipe calls for straining it through a sieve before taking to table. But, this is optional. I personally prefer the sauce with flecks of shallots and bitter orange zest still in it.

This recipe is for two diners, but it can be scaled up. Here I'm doing the poussin for just one person (lucky me). And, even then, half of the poussin is going to be sandwiches the next day.... However, the images reflect this while the recipe is actually for two diners.

If opting for poussins, use one poussin for each diner. If scaling up to a whole chicken (which should serve 4 to 6 diners depending on the size of the bird) simply increase the other ingredients using basic arithmetic: there's no deep trick with this one.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• The way of cooking poussin in this particular recipe is specific and takes a little longer than one might ordinarily deploy. This is partly to ensure the pork meat used in the stuffing is thoroughly cooked through. If you choose to cook it unstuffed, the cooking time will be shorter

• When you get to the part of the recipe where you baste the glaze onto the poussin, be careful to not entirely melt the butter. The clue is in the sobriquet of "English toast poussin". You want the butter to be only half-melted when you combine it with the bitter orange marmalade to produce something that looks a bit like Eton mess in consistency (or like the way certain English liberally apply butter and marmalade to warm toast) before slapping it onto your poussin

• For this version with poussins, you want to ensure you use extremely finely ground pork sausage meat (mixed half-and-half with Brussels pâté if feeling very indulgent). If cooking a whole chicken, a coarser ground pork works well. But, if cooking individual poussins, only very finely ground pork meat in the stuffing ensures it doesn't become "fatty"... not least of all because you will also be using butter as an ingredient.

Shopping list

for the marmalade poussin with spätzle and white cabbage

• 1 poussin per diner; skin on

• 2 shallots, peeled and cut in half, vertically

• 3tbspns unsalted butter

• 2tbspns bitter orange marmalade

• ½ tspn freshly ground white pepper (or black pepper)

• ½ tspn coarsely ground sea salt

• ½ tspn finely ground dried sage

• ½ tspn finely ground dried parsley

• ½ tspn finely ground dried thyme

• ½ tspn cornflour (if needed)

• 150ml dry white wine

for the poussin stuffing

• Approx. 100g finely ground pork sausage meat

• 2 echalion shallots, peeled and cut in half

• 2 sticks of fresh celery; washed and cut into large pieces

• 2 generous handfuls of walnut halves

• A little salt

for the side dishes

• Spätzle

  • 1 handful of spätzle (dried or fresh) per diner

  • A generous clutch of fresh curly-leaf parsley, finely chopped

  • Approx. 150g chestnut mushrooms; roughly chopped

  • Approx. 75g mild goat's cheese

  • salt and pepper to taste

• Braised white cabbage with peas

  • ½ a fresh white cabbage, cut into thick slices

  • 1 cup garden peas (fresh or frozen)

  • 400ml vegetable stock (or chicken stock)

  • 50ml apple cider vinegar

  • A small clutch of fresh thyme

  • salt and pepper to taste

Cooking method

the braised white cabbage with peas

1. This dish is best cooked slowly for a long time. So time it to go into the oven first, approx. 30mins before you first put in the poussins. Add the sliced cabbage to an ovenproof dish with a lid and add the fresh thyme. Pour over the stock, add the vinegar, and season. Cover and place in the middle of the oven pre-heated to 180°C

2. Remove after approx. 30mins and stir the ingredients. Add salt and a little pepper. Re-cover, and return to the oven. Cook in parallel with the poussins, removing roughly at the same times and stirring

3. When the cabbage is notably softened and nearly cooked, add the peas and stir in. Re-cover and return to the oven until both are optimally cooked. NB: the amount of liquid will not substantially reduce (and you don't want it to do so). Apart from the minimal amount you will use for the sauce, this "galvanised" stock is excellent for use in subsequent dishes. Thus, don't drain off the liquid when plating or placing in a serving dish. Rather, use a sieve spoon and save the stock for soups, stews or sauces

the poussin stuffing

1. Prepare your stuffing first. Add the celery, walnuts and shallots to a mini-chopper or food processor and finely chop. Then add the pork sausage meat and chop so that all ingredients combine into a thick paste, adding a little salt in the final stages

2. Cover and place in the fridge until ready to stuff the poussin

   
   

the marmalade poussin

1. Mix the white pepper, salt, sage, parsley, dried thyme together to make a dry seasoning. Then, stuff the cavities of the poussins with your stuffing mix. Pinch the skin of the birds between finger tips to loosen it a little. Then. rub in your seasoning mix, ensuring the skin of the birds in seasoned on all sides

2. Place the birds in a suitable roasting dish. (An aside, I find ceramic dishes work better than metal with this dish). Rather than using any oil, grease the dish with a little butter as if you were preparing a cake tin. Add the bird, breast side down into the dish and add the shallot halves. NB: try to use a dish with a snug fit rather than an oversized roasting dish. This is because you want to use the absolute minimum of butter in the dish since this helps with the correct ratio of fats in the sauce in the final stages

3. Loosely cover the poussin with foil and place into an oven pre-heated to 180°C and cook for 20mins. Remove from the oven, turn the poussins over, re-cover with the foil and cook for a further 20mins. Remove from the oven, remove the foil and cook for a further 10min, breast side up

4. While the poussins roast, prepare the glaze. Partially melt 2tbspns of the butter by placing it in small heatproof dish and microwave for 10secs (NB: don't fully melt the butter). Add the marmalade and roughly mix together so that the butter and marmalade are only partly combined

5. Remove the poussins from the oven. Using a pastry brush, baste the full upward-facing parts of the birds with a generous coating of the glaze. Sprinkle over the caraway seeds. Return to the oven, raising the heat to 220°C, and roast for another 10mins. Remove, re-baste and return for another 5 to 10mins, until the glaze begins to caramelise

6. When the poussins appear optimally done, remove from the oven and check that the juices run clear. However, because the stuffing is pork, I advise using a meat thermometer to check that both stuffing and birds have reached the advised minimum temperature. Turn off the oven, returning the birds to keep warm while you prepare the sauce

7. Carefully pour all all the juices from the roasting dish to a mini-chopper (or you can use a handheld blender in the saucepan in which you will cook the sauce), add the roasted shallots from the roasting dish and any remaining glaze. Blend into a rough paste

8. Add another tablespoon of butter, and about 2tpsns of the stock in which the cabbage has braised and cook together on a medium heat. As soon as all the butter is melted, pour in all of the wine. Stir constantly as the sauce reduces and begins to thicken. If the flavour has fully blended, but it still remains a little thin, thicken using the cornflour, but ideally this will not be necessary. Sieve (if desired) and decant to a suitable sauce dish

9. Remove the poussins from the oven. Allow them to rest (I usually slap on the "blanket" of the aluminum foil to keep them warm) while you plate your side dishes (or decant to serving dishes)

10. Take the poussins to table and enjoy with the side dishes and sauce

the spätzle with mushroom, parsley and goat's cheese

1. Spätzle is one of those things best served almost as soon as it is ready. So, in this case, timing and coordination is important and you should check on the cooking time for your spätzle (which generally takes a little longer compared with pasta, no matter whether you use fresh or dry versions). While you are boiling your spätzle, sauté the mushrooms in a little butter until soft and brown, seasoning with a little salt

2. When the mushrooms are optimally cooked, add all of the parsley and stir in, almost immediately removing from the heat, allowing it to wilt rather than cook

3. As soon as the spätzle is optimally cooked, drain and return to the hot pot, stirring in no more than a teaspoon of butter, which is primarily to prevent it sticking together. Immediately add the mushrooms and parsley and stir in

4. Add the goats cheese in pieces and stir in. Cover and keep warm until plating or transferring to a serving dish to go to table with the rest of the meal

Alternatives

This dish is all about the poussin, and therefore not obvious to adapt for vegans and vegetarians. However, I have done fantastic lactovegetarian versions using using the marmalade and butter glaze on various nut roasts. The one I like the most is a nut roast of lentils and other veggies, but with a high walnut count that echoes the flavour combinations of the original dish.

If I were to make a vegan version (I have not done so to date, so this is not tested), I would use vegetable shortening in lieu of the butter for the marmalade glaze. An I would do the spätzle with spinach black pepper and grated green apple, using a little walnut oil in place of the butter.

I have never tried a pescatarian version, but if it were a requirement, I would do it with thick fillets salmon because it's one fish where I can imagine the marmalade glaze and caraway flavours would actually work.

For carnivores, my biggest success to date is roasted pork belly, though obviously without the stuffing. I don't cook with uncured pork that often, but for those who like it, the marmalade glaze and caraway seeds on the crispy crackling was a revelation. On that occasion, my nod to the stuffing was to make essentially the same stuffing with a combination of finely ground (cooked) pheasant and pheasant pâté baked in vol-au-vents for about 12mins before serving.

Pairings

I associate this dish heavily with Mosel white wines, and its famous Rieslings. Unless it's a special occasion, my top tip for value-for-quality is Weingut Nik Weis - St. Urbans-Hof

Nik Weis Selection Urban Riesling. I live in hope of tracking down the cult, award-winning 2013 vintage; how it first came to my attention. That's not easy in the UK. But, while other vintages may not reach those dizzy heights, on the whole this a solid choice on which I feel I can depend. It's acidic flavours of both citrus and deciduous fruits work so well with the flavours in this dish.

However, if I'm not in a place where I can get my hands on it, I look for Rieslings that have a similar profile of fruits and a fairly high acidity, whether South African, Australian or Kiwi.

But, for a special occasion (and please don't try this magnum on your own, kids), my default happy list heads to Bischofliche Weingüter Trier Trittenheimer Apotheke Riesling trocken; 2018.

Interestingly, when recently cooking this dish this time as a bit of a spur-of-the-moment thing, and no decent Riesling anywhere in sight, I opted to give something else a whirl. I'm glad I did. Sainsbury's Baron de Guers Picpoul de Pinet, it turns out, is a fine example of how the buying power of a large supermarket chain can land some very drinkable stuff at reasonable prices. And, this this Picpoul works very well with this dish.