Rotisserie Cornish Hens

We’ve lived in our home for over 20 years and this has been the year of maintenance. Well actually, living on an acreage means every year is a year of maintenance. Maybe it’s more correct to state that this year has been the year of replacements.

It started with our dishwasher. It killed the big Steve-O to replace it since it was technically still working. “Yes”, I explained, “but the front face keeps falling off, the racks are rusting out (it was old enough to have coated metal racks), it makes a racket (by Miele standards) and I’m worried that it is going to leak one day, turning what could be a thousand dollar investment into a 100K renovation”. Fine, reluctantly done.

Next up was the kitchen faucet. It’s been replaced and repaired a few times already. This last repair though just wasn’t cutting it. The dripping was driving me crazy, not to mention wasting precious well water. If he was going to crawl under there to replace it though, Steve figured it was also time to replace the enamelled kitchen sink. It too was beginning to rust out, had several chips and was difficult to keep clean after years of scrubbing and scratching. So, out she came and in went a shiny new (holy crap was it heavy) version. Then a new tap. Also done.

The latest upgrade has been our old Webber barbecue. We loved that thing. It has served us faithfully for nearly 20 years as well. Lately though the love affair has been waining. I can live with the rust, I could live with the wear and tear, but what I could no longer live with was the fact that I was only able to actually cook something on a space about the size of a dinner plate. The rest of the barbecue just wasn’t heating properly. So, time to go Mr Webber.

I’ve discovered this year that Steve is a really crappy shopper. More than once I’ve noticed that he gets into the store with great intentions but within about 5 minutes he gets this sort of dull, glazed over look in his eyes. Next, he begins wandering off track, looking at items that are not what we are there for. Reel him back in and he starts tapping things, knocking them with the back of his knuckles or finger tips. As though this is a test of their quality or efficacy. OMG it’s painful to watch! Anyway after a half hour of extra knuckle wrapping, we came home with a shiny new Napoleon grill.

It was the ‘sear station’ on the Napoleon that swayed me to change brands and I sincerely hope that I won’t be disappointed. I managed to burn some steaks with it the other night but it did an impressive job dry searing some scallops last night.

Tonight we decided to give the rotisserie a try and since we’d had a roast with family last week I chose to try roasting a few cornish hens to give that back burner a workout.

I didn’t really have a recipe. I just prepared my birds a few hours ahead of time by gently lifting their skins and giving them a little wet rub treatment, like I did for my stuffed turkey breast. Then I prepared a white and mixed whole grain rice mixture to stuff the cavities with. Nothing super special, just a little seasoning in the rice.

I trussed ’em up and onto the spit they went.

Steve wanted to throw a few taters into the drip pans so we did that but we forgot that we already had rice in the birds. Didn’t matter, they turned out nice. Just crispy, not overdone and pretty darned delicious. They’ll make a great leftover.

Turns out we made a mountain of food so there will be leftover chicken for dinner tomorrow too!