apple Cinnamon

tea smoked cornish game hens

(or chicken)

Have you ever had a recipe that you loved, disappear from the earth? I used to make a tea-smoked roasted chicken recipe that I’d modified from one I found in the Sunday Times. It was a westernized riff on Chinese tea-smoked chicken and it was fabulous. This was before people had laptops (long, long ago…) on which to store things electronically, and so I had the recipe scribbled on a torn piece of lined paper. I’m not sure of when it went missing. All I know is that, after multiple moves, I went looking for it one day and it was nowhere. And I couldn’t quite remember how to make the dish. It was ages ago that I lost it, and I’d long given up on finding it…

Recently, I was looking for another old recipe, which I happily found.

But… while I was digging through piles of little pieces of paper with recipes on them…I found it!

My long lost, beloved tea-smoked roasted chicken! This, my friends, is the meaning of pure joy. I couldn’t wait to make it again. It became the feature of my Sukkot Shabbat Menu and it melded perfectly with the other dishes I was serving. I’m very excited to share it with you. It’s special enough for a special meal, and simple enough to make any time. The only caveat is that you need to start a day in advance, to allow the hens to marinate.

Ingredients:

for the marinade

• 2 cornish game hens (or a roasting chicken, 3 ½ - 4 lbs)

• ½ cup tamari or soy sauce

• ¼ cup dry sherry or vermouth

• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger

• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh garlic

• ⅓ cup cinnamon apple herb tea (about 16 tea bags, torn open)

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

Method:

• Place the hens into a food safe plastic bag (a two gallon zip bag works well, or use 2 one gallon bags).

• Add the tamari, the sherry or vermouth, the ginger, and the garlic.

• Squeeze the air out of the bag and close it tightly. Squish it all around with your hands to make sure the marinade gets inside and all around the hens. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

• The next day, preheat your oven to 325°. Line a baking sheet with low sides, with aluminum foil. Don’t use your best pan.

• Open your tea sachets into a 1/3 cup measure, (or measure loose tea) and dump it into a small mixing bowl. Add the brown sugar and mix the two ingredients together until well combined. Spread the tea/sugar mixture evenly over the surface of your pan.

• Place a wire rack on the pan. This will keep your hens from sitting directly in the tea and give the smoke the opportunity to get both over and under them.

• Pull off a long sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil, set the pan on top of it, and place the birds on the rack with a little room between them. Then, bring the foil up and over from both sides, meeting at the top. You want to wrap the pan completely in foil and—this is critical—tent it over the hens, so that you can make a tight seal leaving room for the smoke to pass over and around them. Don’t let the foil touch the birds. Depending upon the size of your pan and the width of your foil, you may need a second sheet of foil to go up around in the other direction.

• Slide the pan into the oven and roast the hens for 1 hour.

• Open the tent and fold it back, exposing the birds to the open air, and increase the temperature to 400°. Roast for an additional ½ hour, or until done—a skewer pushed into the meaty part of the leg should reveal clear juices and a meat thermometer should register 165°. When the birds are done, remove them from the baking pan. If the hens are small, serve one per person. If they’re large, cut them in half lenthwise and serve each person one half. If you’re using a whole chicken, carve it as you would any roasted chicken.

• Note: When halving Cornish game hens I like to cut out the backbone and the fiddly little rib bones. It makes a better presentation and one doesn’t have to negotiating with them to eat.