Recipe: Coffee and Cardamom Spiced Squab

Every Thursday on the Good Food Blog we share a recipe from our archives.

Cookbook author Melissa Clark penned Chef, Interrupted. It takes the serious, demanding recipes from celebrity chefs and breaks them down into recipes which are more accessible for the home chef. She first shared this recipe for a simplified version of Laurent Gras’ Coffee and Cardamom Spiced Squab on December 3, 2005.

Keep reading for the full recipe…

Coffee and Cardamom Spiced Squab

Preparation Time: 1 hour, plus 20 minutes marinating and 25 minutes roasting

Serves 4 to 6

• 1/2 cup grapeseed oil

• Seeds from 10 cardamom pods

• 4 squabs, 1 pound each

• 4 cups coffee, brewed with 15 cardamom pods

• Coarse sea salt or kosher salt

• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1. In a blender, whirl the grapeseed oil with the cardamom seeds, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a small bowl. Set aside.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the squab in a heavy-duty Ziploc bag or two, depending upon the size of the bags you have, then add the coffee, dividing it between the two bags if necessary. Squeeze out all the air and seal the bags. Let sit for 10 minutes, then turn the bags and let rest for another 10 minutes. Pat the squab dry with a towel and place them in a roasting pan.

3. Season the squab with salt, drizzle each with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, and roast for 25 minutes, flipping the squab after 10 minutes. The meat should still be a little rare, that’s okay for squab.

4. When you remove the squab from the oven, brush them all over with the cardamom oil, and preheat the broiler.

5. To finish the dish, broil the squab until the skin turns crisp, about 2 minutes per side. You can serve each guest a whole squab or carve and portion them out.