Levantine · Main
Summan Mashwi
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, a sweet edge rounding the corners, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 8 quail, about 180 g each
- 1500 ml cold water
- 75 g fine salt, for the brine
- 60 ml olive oil
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste with 4 g salt
- 5 g baharat
- 40 ml lemon juice
- 2 g black pepper
- 60 ml pomegranate molasses
- 10 g sumac
- 20 g flat leaf parsley, chopped
- 1 lemon, in wedges
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Brining & curingGrilling over live coals
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cut out each backbone with shears and press the breastbone flat, so the bird cooks in one plane.
- Brine the quail 30 minutes in the water and salt, then dry the skin hard with cloth. 30 min
- Rub them with the olive oil, garlic paste, baharat, lemon juice and pepper and leave them 30 minutes. 30 min
- Grill over hot charcoal, skin side down first, 3 minutes to 4 minutes a side, brushing on the pomegranate molasses only in the last minute, until the thigh reads 74C (165F). 3 min
- Rest 5 minutes, then dust with the sumac and parsley and serve with the lemon wedges. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Champagne: when lost, bubbles
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais, lightly chilled
- From the Taps
- Pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
The universal donors: acid, bubbles, and low tannin rescue nearly any plate: the sommelier’s honest safety net.
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