CookEat Recipe
Capon Braised Ecossaise
A whole capon stuffed with milk-soaked breadcrumbs and beef marrow, braised and served with mushroom and cooked smoked tongue sauce.
Method
Steps
Step 1
Heat a conventional oven to 180°C. Have a poultry supplier prepare a small tender capon that weighed four pounds before its head, feet and viscera were removed. Use that same whole prepared bird, neatly singed and wiped. Keep the bird and raw stuffing ingredients refrigerated at 4°C or colder until needed.
Step 2
Soak the two ounces plain breadcrumbs in the one and a half gills cold milk for two minutes. Lift out the crumbs, squeeze out the milk and discard the excess milk. Mix the squeezed crumbs thoroughly with one ounce finely chopped raw beef marrow and the yolk of one raw shell egg. Add the half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, and mix until thickened. Keep this yolk separate from the one needed later for the sauce.
Step 3
Stuff the capon with all the crumb mixture and truss it neatly with food-safe kitchen string. Put it in a close-fitting braising pan and arrange the prepared raw mirepoix needed around it. Mix the four tablespoons flour and one and a half tablespoons melted butter with the mirepoix. Add enough hot water to cover the vegetables, then the tablespoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Begin cooking immediately.
Step 4
Cover the pan and boil on the hob for ten minutes.
Step 5
Transfer the covered pan to the oven and braise for about one hour as a guide. Keep the liquid simmering gently and continue until the capon is tender, its thick breast and thigh flesh reach at least 82°C away from bone, and the centre of the stuffing reaches at least 74°C. Ensure the pork in the mirepoix is thoroughly cooked in the hot braise as well.
Step 6
Lift the capon onto a large hot dish and keep it hot while finishing the sauce. Reduce the pan gravy on the hob to three quarters of a pint, then pass it through a fine conical strainer into a clean saucepan, removing the spent mirepoix solids.
Step 7
Cut six drained canned mushroom heads into halves. Use peeled ready-to-eat cooked smoked beef tongue without its packing gel; weigh two ounces of the meat and cut it into quarter-inch squares. Add the mushrooms and tongue to the strained gravy. Separate the second raw shell-egg yolk, keeping its white out; stir a little hot gravy into the yolk, then stir it back into the saucepan. Cook gently while stirring for about two minutes as a guide, until the sauce reaches at least 74°C, without boiling it. Pour the sauce over the whole capon and serve promptly. Remove all the trussing string before carving.
Cooked it? Rate it.
Cooked 0 times