There was much sniggering in my open plan office when I made a phone call and said, “can I order three pigeons please?” James who sits behind me said, “can’t you just get them from outside the railway station?” Followed by, “will they each have one mangled foot?” The idea of eating pigeon is a bit of a stomach turner for most Londoners. The majority of the pigeons we see are pretty crummy, but the ones I got from Freeman’s Butchers in Crouch End were delicious. Bring back the pigeon I say!
I made Joan-stylie peas even though when I told Mr R we’d be having “peas in the French style” he said, “are those the ones that are rock hard, like little bullets?”
I used lots of lettuce and lots of spring onions and the peas were good and soft as I cooked them slowly for ages.
I couldn’t find pure wild rice so I used a mixture of basmati and wild rice that Tilda produce. Very tasty.
Here’s a picture of the whole shebang composed by Mr R.
Very nouveaux cuisine… But it shows the texture of the squab. It was a dense delicious meat which reminded me a bit of venison. There wasn’t much meat on each bird but one was enough for me. Mr R had two. Our platefuls actually looked like this…
When I asked him what he’d thought of the salad Joan suggested serving with her squab dinner (lettuce with mandarin oranges and a simple dressing) he said that he’d forgotten to try it as he was “too full of pigeon”.
For pudding we had Joan’s Crepes Suzette so I ALMOST made the whole dinner as Joan recommended in Photoplay. We’d have been really stuffed if we’d had the almond soup and fruit appetizer too… All of these recipes will be in the Cooking With Joan Crawford book, but if you can’t wait, they can also be found over at The Best of Everything website.
I’d recommend checking some online recipes for cooking times for the squab though…
And for those who want to know more about Crepes Suzette (Mr R thought they had cheese in them…) there’s a great article here…
