Chef Francisco Jimenez Boudin Stuffed Quail

Chef Francisco Jimenez Boudin Stuffed Quail

by LeeAnna Tatum

Photos by Tara Ruby

Chef Francisco Jimenez, executive chef at Halyards on St. Simon’s Island, has always known he wanted to work with food.

“I’ve always liked to eat,” Jimenez said with a laugh. “I’ve always worked around food. When I was 15, I was a dishwasher. When I was in high school, I always had jobs in the kitchen. There was just never anything else I was going to do.”

After attending culinary school, Jimenez moved to New Orleans and got a job at Commander’s Palace, one of the city’s most prominent purveyors of Creole cuisine. His time working and eating in New Orleans made a lasting influence on his own cooking style.

Early holiday food memories for Jimenez include making cranberry sauce with his family. He grew up in Massachusetts near commercial cranberry bogs. “After they’d flood the bogs and pick cranberries, you could go and get some of the residual fruit that they wouldn’t pick. So, we’d go pick cranberries and make cranberry sauce,” Jimenez recalled.

These days he prefers to keep his holiday cooking as simple as possible and somewhat nontraditional. Paella has become a favorite Christmas dish that brings together lots of fresh seafood as a simple one-dish meal that can be prepared that day.

Jimenez enjoys cooking for others and appreciates the way that food can bring people together. “I get a lot of joy out of it,” he said. “I love cooking for people, it’s very communal. You can meet a new person and you instantly have something in common. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or what you do, or who you know, everybody’s gotta eat. I think it’s a nice commonality.”

Introduction to the recipe

Chef Jimenez chose to create a dish that draws heavily from his New Orleans’ influences featuring quail and boudin sausage. Boudin, a staple in Cajun cooking, is a pork and rice sausage (in this case left loose, not in a casing) that is both flavorful and filling. The quail serves as a vessel for the boudin while also bringing its own great flavor to the plate.

“Boudin is like a cajun pork and rice sausage,” he explained. “I cooked in Louisiana for seven years so that’s a food that’s near and dear to my heart … It’s real simple. It’s kind of a poor man’s food - it’s a little meat and a lot of rice.”

Jimenez suggests cooking up the boudin a day or two ahead of time and the quail can be stuffed the night before to keep things as simple as possible.

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“These are great for a dinner party, you could make 20 of these the day before. Have them already stuffed, put them on a tray and then just put them in the oven. I usually plan for 2 of them per person. Eighteen to 20 minutes in the oven and then it’s done.”

Even if you don’t hunt them, quail are pretty easy to find here in the South. Jimenez purchases them semi-boneless which is when all the bones are removed except for the wings and the legs making them very simple to stuff.

Recipe Boudin Stuffed Quail

Yields 8 Quail

8 quail (semi boneless); 2 lbs pork shoulder, cut into 2” cubes; 1 yellow onion, diced; 4 stalks celery, diced; 1 red bell pepper, diced; 6 cloves garlic, minced; 1 Tbs paprika; 2 tsp cayenne; 2 bay leaves; 1 tsp dried thyme; 8 cups water (or chicken or vegetable stock); Salt and pepper; ½ bunch parsley, chopped; 4 scallions, sliced thin; 2 cups rice (Carolina or Charleston gold preferred); 3 cups reserved braising liquid

• Season pork chunks with salt and pepper

• In a medium sized pot over medium high heat, sear pork chunks until well browned on all sides. Once pork is browned, remove from pot.

• Add onions, celery, bell pepper and garlic to pot and cook until vegetables begin to brown. Add paprika, cayenne, bay leaves and thyme and toast spices for 1-2 minutes.

• Add pork back to the pot and cover with water or stock. Bring up to a boil and down to a simmer. Simmer until pork is tender, about an hour and a half.

• Once pork is tender, strain the stock away and reserve.

• Add rice to pot and cover with appropriate amount of braising liquid- 3 cups and simmer until rice is tender.

• Allow pork and vegetables to cool while rice is cooking and chop together until slightly coarse.

• Combine pork/vegetables with Rice and add parsley and scallions. Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt, pepper or cayenne as necessary. Cool Boudin

• Season quail inside and out with salt and pepper and stuff boudin into quail until full and cross legs to keep boudin inside.

• Set on baking tray and bake at 350 degrees until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Tips from Chef Francisco

Don’t overcomplicate things: “Keep it simple. Keep it packed with flavor. Use lots of fresh ingredients.”

Just say “no” to canned green beans: “Skip the canned green beans. You can still make a green bean casserole, just use fresh beans and not canned, throw some fresh shiitakes in there ... it makes it so much better … it’s fine to use the canned cream of mushroom … and whoever came up with those Durkee french onions is genius.”

Don’t get burned: “Always put things in hot oil away from you, not towards you.”

Chop, don’t grind: (For the boudin sausage) “I chop the pork, some people will put it in the meat grinder. I like to chop it by hand, so it is rough chopped - I think it adds some nice texture to the dish.”

Make it your own: If you can’t find quail for this dish, Chef Francisco suggests changing it out for chicken or pork chops. Or if you’d prefer to stuff the quail with cornbread dressing, add in shrimp and andouille, or make an oyster dressing.