Food: Pigeon feat

THERE are some things that are meant to go together – apple sauce and roast pork, for example. Well, here we've got a similar marrying of tart apple and the sweet richness of roast meat – only this time it's squab. Add a lip-smackingly piquant Madeira sauce, with an undercurrent of musky sage, and the harmony of flavours is pretty unbeatable.

It's one of those recipes at the Cook School that surprises people. They may not have thought of cooking pigeon before, but they are inevitably won over by the tenderness and subtle flavour of the meat.

You may have to order squab from your butcher, who should be able to get it easily enough. Squab are young, farmed pigeons, roughly a month old, which have reached a good size but have not yet flown. Because they are farmed, they have a little more fat than a wild wood pigeon. This is no bad thing, as it means the meat is less prone to drying out during cooking. The fat also makes for very tasty fried bread for the cooked bird to perch on.

Often, cooking a new kind of meat seems like a huge task, but this is incredibly straightforward. Just make sure you don't overcook anything; allow the meat to rest and all will be well. It looks impressive, too – a perfect wintry dinner party main course. So, out with the pork and in with the pigeon…

ROAST SQUAB PIGEON WITH MADEIRA, SAGE AND APPLES

Serves four

For the squab:

4 Golden Delicious apples
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 whole squab, 450g each
8 sage leaves
50g salted butter
sunflower oil
4 chunky slices white bread
80g unsalted butter
1 tsp caster sugar
250g large spinach leaves
Maldon salt
freshly ground black pepper

For the Madeira sauce:

80ml Madeira (sweet, not dry)
30ml port
1 shallot, chopped
2 mushrooms, sliced
120ml beef stock
splash of sherry vinegar
pinch arrowroot (optional, for thicker sauce)

Preheat the oven to 190°C/gas 5. Place all the ingredients for the Madeira sauce in a small saucepan over a medium-high heat, and reduce by two-thirds or until a rich, deep flavour is achieved. If you want a slightly thicker sauce, take the pan off the heat and stir a very small amount of arrowroot, diluted in water, into it. Return to the heat and simmer for half a minute. Strain and set aside. (The sauce can be frozen or made a day ahead and kept in the fridge.)

Peel the apples and cut into quarters, remove the core and cut each quarter in half, lengthways, then sprinkle with the lemon juice and set aside.

Take a squab and push half a sage leaf, with quarter of a teaspoon of butter, inside. Lightly season the inside and outside of the bird, then repeat with the other squab.

Heat a splash of sunflower oil in a large ovenproof pan. Sear the squabs in the hot oil for a minute, lightly browning all over.

Set the squabs on their sides in the pan and cook in the preheated oven for four minutes. Turn the birds on to the other side and cook for four minutes more. Finally, place the birds on their backs and cook for two minutes.

Remove the birds from the pan (remember the handle will be hot) and place on a warm plate to rest for ten minutes. Return the pan to the heat and fry the bread in the meat fat until it becomes crisp and golden. Add a little butter if necessary.

In a second sauté pan, heat 40g of butter and, as it foams, add the apples. Sprinkle them with the sugar and a twist of pepper, and cook until tender and lightly coloured. Shred the remaining sage and toss into the apples. Keep warm.

Heat a dry pan for the washed and spun spinach. Add the leaves with a little salt and pepper, and a dash of olive oil; wilt for no more than a minute. Place on an absorbent cloth.

Remove the legs and breasts from the birds with a sharp knife and keep warm.

To serve, place a portion of spinach on to heated plates, then a round of bread in the centre. Position a couple of sections of apple on the bread. Arrange a squab breast and leg per person on the apple. Place the remaining sections of apple around each pile of squab and pour a little warmed sauce around the plates.

Critical points

You will have time to fry the bread and apple while your meat is resting – which is itself a critical point: the meat should cook for no more than ten minutes and rest for the same amount of time to achieve maximum tenderness.

The bread will gain everything in flavour from frying in the meat fat. Add a little butter if you need more fat to get the bread a nice golden colour and crispy.

Cooking the apples in the foaming butter provides a lovely richness of flavour. Tip the pan and baste the cooking apples with the foaming butter nice and quickly. Make sure it's a 'happy pan' – you want golden, foaming butter, not brown, burnt butter.

Sprinkling the apples with sugar and black pepper further enhances the flavour and the sweet/tart balance of the whole dish. The apples should cook until just tender and lightly coloured – don't let them go mushy.