Chef’s Dinner gets Cornish

VIA SBINSIDER FOOD GOURMET GLORIA WOLF| October 10, 2023

The chefs at HOA1 provided another delectable meal at last Wednesday’s Chef’s Dinner. The meal started with an arugula salad topped with roasted butternut squash, dried cranberries and walnuts. The butternut squash provided a nice balance to the acid in the apple cider vinaigrette. It was a perfect autumn salad. The chardonnay served with this course was light and refreshing, not heavily oaked.

The second course was a Cornish game hen stuffed with cranberry and wehani wild rice pilaf. This was topped with a cranberry thyme sauce and accompanied by over roasted root vegetables. The rice combination was very tasty. Most of us know what wild rice is and it blended nicely with the brown nutty-flavored wehani rice. Wehani rice is also known as California red jasmine rice. It has more of a consistency of barley so it went nicely with the slight crunch of wild rice.

If you are unfamiliar with Cornish game hen, it is a cross-breed between a standard Cornish chicken and a White Plymouth Rock hen. The hen must weigh between 1 and 2 pounds and is eaten young. As a result the Cornish game hen has a mild flavor, not similar to the adult chickens we are used to eating. While milder in flavor it is also very tender. One game hen is usually a the amount for one person.

The meal was topped off with caramel apple crisp and vanilla ice cream. You can’t go wrong with this all-American dessert.