"Whole things being catered for having Cornish game hens" "I brought everything I
need to make my signature pomegranate-honey sauce" "but he's always always,
always at your parties Frasier and yellowtail carpaccio has the world gone
mad?" "oh by the way you are welcome" "Oh.... for what?" "for turning you on to the best
thing you will ever eat: barbecue pudding chips!" "Thanks" [TV clips end] Hey what's up guys? Welcome
back to "Binging with Babish" where this week at long last we are exploring the
foods from "Frasier," actor John Mahoney passed away last weekend it seemed a
fitting tribute to take a look at some of the fancy FETs from the storied
sitcom. Unfortunately, none of these can be found in the official "Cafe Nervosa
Connoisseur's Cookbook" so we're gonna have to improvise
first up the Cornish game hens with Frasier's signature pomegranate-honey
sauce. Let's start by butterflying the hens, removing their backbones, and then
cutting them in half reserving the backbones for later. We're gonna need
them to make the sauce. Lightly season the underside of the hens with kosher
salt, flip, and combine three or four tablespoons of kosher salt with maybe a
teaspoon of baking powder this is going to lower the temperature at which the my
maillard reaction occurs giving us browner skin it's also going to desiccate the
skin as we season the other side of the hens with the salt and baking powder and
refrigerate uncovered for a bare minimum of four hours and up to over night.
While the birds are doing their thing it's time to make some Cornish game hen
stock out of the spines. A couple aromatics like a carrot, half an onion, a
stalk of celery. Some fresh herbs like a few sprigs of thyme, a few sprigs of
rosemary, a few sprigs of fresh parsley, a clove of garlic, we've talked about stock
plenty of times on the show... So just add whatever you got in the fridge it's
gonna come out good. We cut up the spines into manageable pieces and browned them
before adding all additional aromatics. Covering with cold water and bringing to
a bare simmer letting cook for a solid two or three hours until a very
flavorful stock forms. This is going to be one of the three ingredients that
goes in our pomegranate-honey sauce before we do that however our guests
have arrived and it's time to get carpaccio ready. I am thinly slicing some
scallions, radishes, jalapenos, and blood oranges just because they look pretty
can't find blood oranges you can use any kind of citrus: grapefruit, regular
oranges, whatever you want. Let's also slice a lemon in half because
we're gonna make a vinaigrette out of another blood orange, some olive oil,
probably a solid 1/2 cup of olive oil: 50/50 blood orange to olive oil. Some
chives we want to get a little oniony flavor in there- you could also use a
shallot-a little squeeze of lemon, and we're gonna beat this together with a
whisk or a fork until a thick emulsion forms. You could use this on any salad
but it's gonna be great in our carpaccio. Speaking of which is
time for the carpaccio part of our carpaccio which Niles and Daphne's
dinner guests exclaims is yellowtail. Make sure you are using sushi-grade
yellowtail because we are eating this raw we're just going to arrange and
layer everything decoratively on a plate so any given bites will give you the
opportunity to have a little bit of each element and we're going to generously
drizzle everything with our blood orange vinaigrette.
It's a lovely and delicious appetizer if you're looking to take your first foray
into raw fish and if you use a fork very strategically you can take a bite
without your guests ever knowing. After all, we always want to taste our food
before serving it. Now it's time to make our signature pomegranate-honey sauce
this is simply going to be a mixture of maybe two parts Cornish game hen stock
to one part pomegranate juice, a drizzle of honey whisked together and let simmer
until thick and syrupy. You can set this aside and warm it up when we're ready to
serve. For now we got to make our wild rice stuffing combine a cup of uncooked
wild rice with two to two and a quarter cups of Cornish game hen stock and cook
via your favorite method. Then we're going to turn that wild rice into 'hushwee'
a Lebanese wild rice and lamb stuffing that I think would probably go
best with something like a pomegranate sauce. So we are sweating one small onion
and a couple cloves of minced garlic for a few minutes or until translucent and
then browning maybe a pound of ground lamb. Make sure that it's mostly cooked
through and you got some nice crispy brown bits before combining the two and
adding the cooked wild rice and now it's time to spice this mixture that's what's
going to separate this from every other wild rice stuffing you've ever had. We're
adding a sprinkle of cinnamon, a sprinkle of ground allspice, a sprinkle of cardamom
-a healthy sprinkle of cardamom- a little kosher salt, and then a good handful of
currants, regular raisins or I'm going to use golden raisins for a little bit of a
color difference, a nice squeeze of lemon from the lemon
that we saved from our carpaccio- you didn't throw that away right? and a few
twists of freshly ground pepper. Now it's time to deal with our hens spray down
with nonstick spray and this great little trick comes from America's Test
Kitchen pre-heat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit with an aluminum
sheet pan inside it then place the birds skin side down on the sheet pan this is
gonna get them crisping up bake for 10 minutes flip and place under the broiler
for 5 to 8 minutes or until the hens register 160 degrees Fahrenheit in the
breast and they're nice and crispy like this. Now finally it's time to play top
the rice with a little bit of freshly chopped parsley and a little bit of
freshly chopped mint and some pine nuts that we've quickly toasted in olive oil.
Then it's time to Park some poultry right next to our rice and drizzle a
pool of sauce around the outside of the bird now legend has it that I attempted
this episode a year and a half ago and trashed it because my guests and I got a
little bit too drunk at dinner and I didn't change the recipe one bit since
then because it really is fabulous and as a lovely romantic dinner for this
Valentine's Day but you need something truly decadent to follow up so luxurious
a meal.... That's right; this Valentine's Day give her Martin's barbecue flavored
pudding chips. Martin in his stoned stupor proclaim these to be better than
a woman. Let's find out... interesting it's got a barbecue thing and a chocolate
thing going on and it's really, really, really horrible as you might have
guessed. I'm sorry Marty maybe next time we'll take a shot at pop brownies or
Chilean sea bass paired with an aggressive Zinfandel.