I usually skip my own neighborhood’s Sunday market for neighboring Ballard’s more decidedly foodish farmer’s market but I’d heard rumors that Fremont’s is more farmer friendly these days so I thought I’d roll down the hill and check it out. I’m quite glad I did.
The pickings are still much slimmer than Ballard, with a few produce stands and one for meat, run by Dog Mountain Farms, who were selling chickens, guinea hens and eggs. Like every vendor I’ve ever met at a farmer’s market, the folks from Dog Mountain were friendly, knowledgeable and happy to answer my questions about how their fowl were raised and what to do with a guinea hen. I left with two guineas (they were on special), a chicken, half a dozen chicken eggs and half a dozen duck eggs. I hit the produce stand for veggies and dinner was pretty much done.
Guinea hens are pretty scarce here in the U.S. but they’ve been familiar to European kitchens for centuries. Despite a half dozen recipe ideas from the folks at Dog Mountain, I decided to just roast mine whole. A liberal dusting of kosher salt and pepper, half a lemon and a few sprigs of fresh thyme in the cavity were all the seasonings I bothered with. I roasted it at 375 for 55 minutes, when the skin was taunt and brown and a knife prick to the thigh showed clear running juices. Earlier, I’d roasted then chilled a golden and a dark red beet for a salad dressed with a champagne vinaigrette.
I’ve been playing with a sous vide water oven (more on that later) and decided to poach one of the duck eggs in its shell at 145° for an hour. This rested on a nest of rice fried with canola oil and some thinly sliced leeks and was truly the star of the show. The egg came out of its shell in a single piece, as if it’d been molded. The whites were solid, the yolk in some sort of plasmic state between a solid an liquid. It was quite rich, certainly meatier than a standard chicken egg, and complemented the dark guinea meat quite nicely. A regular poached, or even fried, egg would stand in just fine here.
As for the guinea, I was a little underwhelmed, though I blame my standard roasting. Unlike a chicken, it was much more difficult to discern the differences between the breast and thigh, as it all tasted very similar to the dark meat we’re accustomed to in a chicken. The skin, though, was the most surprising — tougher and without much flavor. The crisp skin of a well roasted chicken is a thing of beauty, I enjoyed the meat of my guinea hen much more after discarding the skin.
A Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery Pale Ale seemed an apropos complement.
