Un pintadeau, et une farce aux foies de canard

The bird we cooked and ate this Christmas was what is commonly known as a chapon de pintade — a Guinea-fowl capon. You probably know what a capon is. It's a male bird, usually a chicken, that has been fattened to produce tasty, tender meat. The capon has also been surgically castrated, but let's not think about that. As far as I know, capons are not force-fed (gavé).

People call these capons chapons de pintade, so I guess pintade is the generic term for this species of poultry, but it is also the name for a Guinea hen, the female of the family. This kind of capon should, I think, be called a chapon de « pintadeau », which is the Guinea cock. Oh well. The fact is, the pintade and pintadeau, African in origin, are a delicious volaille (fowl) that has been appreciated in Europe since Roman times. This one weighed 2.6 kg, or 5¾ lbs.

We bought the Guinea-fowl capon from our local poultry vendor (volailler), who sells them and all sorts of prepared poultry and poultry products (including rabbits) at the Saturday market in Saint-Aignan and at the Friday market in Montrichard. The processing facility is located in Pouillé, a village just 5 miles from our house. We've been buying poultry from these people (named Clément) for 15 years now.

I noticed at Saturday's market that, according to a sign on the wall of the vendor's market stall, the poultry they sell comes from an abattoir in the village of Ouchamps, just 15 miles north of here, near Blois, and are birds raised on nearby farms. I've driven up there to buy local volailles, but I didn't know that our market vendor bought from the same place. We slow-cooked the pintadeau on the rotisserie (tourne-broche) in our oven, after "stuffing" it with bay leaves, garlic cloves, allspice berries, black peppercorns, red pepper flakes, and coarse salt.

I also made "dressing," which is what I call stuffing that you don't cook inside the bird but in a separate pan. For the dressing, I had sausage meat, duck liver plus the liver of the pintadeau, cubes of my home-made pain de mie, shallot, onion, garlic celery (céleri-branches), pecans from North Carolina, and dried cranberries "rehydrated" in Armagnac. I might have forgotten an ingredient or two... Tasha was attracted by the aroma of the cooked sausage and liver, as you can see below.

We had steamed and then lightly sauteed Brussels sprouts and a purée of potimarron (winter squash) from the 2018 vegetable garden as side dishes with our chapon de pintade, and of course the dressing. We opened a bottle of 2015 Régnié red, which we bought on our quick trip to Beaujolais last March, to wash it all down with.