Herbed Cornish Hens with Roasted Butternut Squash and Kale

In the caveman world, not every guy can be the alpha male. Just like today, there’s a dude named Milford or Hirsch or Winston who sucks at sports and keeps a TI-89 in his pocket at all times and enjoys jokes like,

“What do you get when you cut a jack o’lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin pi.”

(If Winston happens to be your name, no offense, four eyes.)
(Give me your lunch money or I’ll tell everyone about your Spiderman sheets.)
(By the way, how do you like running the world, Steve Jobs?)

It’s a fact of life that Winston didn’t get the lion’s share of the caveman kill. Was he off to the side inventing the wheel or robots or whatever? Probably. It is scientifically proven that the Winstons of the world subsisted on Cornish hens, which are basically tiny chickens with tiny chicken brains. Easy prey. Easy to cook. Leaves enough time to do a little trigonometry and not score with chicks.

These little babies just need some butter and herbs under and over their skin, and a bouquet of herbs shoved up inside the cavity. Please, be a gentleman and buy the girl some dinner first.

We used fresh oregano, thyme, and rosemary. Bake for an hour at 375, basting occasionally with the butter that melts off. Easy squeezy.

We also roasted some butternut squash, which is of course native to North America. Cut side down on a greased pan, 45 minutes.

Leftover kale too – a caveman wastes not, especially when he’s as smart as Winston. We topped with some toasted almonds and squash seeds.

Verdict: I loved it. Geoff liked it too, but thought it was too much work/took too long for not enough of an end product. We both really liked the butternut squash. Kale was a winner the second time around too, and quite good with the roasted almonds/squash seeds.

Spicy Baked Pollack with Garlic-Sautéed Kale

The garlic sautéed kale is modified from the Mustards Grill cookbook that we borrowed from the Kleins. It was great!

The idea with the greens is to wash them and cut off any bitter stems. This recipe would work for mustard greens, chard, or kale as we did here. Anything dark and leafy with a little bit of structure to it. Probably not spinach, as that would get too mush-tastic and fall apart.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large, broad pan and add 2 cloves of minced fresh garlic. Once the oil starts to bubble slightly, place the greens in the pan, toss, sprinkle with some freshly ground black pepper, and allow to wilt. The greens are going to release some liquid as they cook, but that is AOK because you're going to use that.

When the greens are fully wilted but not mushy, remove from the pan, reserving the cooking liquid. Add a couple of tablespoons of fresh lemon juice and lemon zest. Cook the liquid down until it's thickened and drizzle over the greens.

Pollack is a fish that is pretty important to the New England region (it's an Atlantic fish), so we chose it for North America week. Pretty much any white fish can be prepared this way: we threw some cayenne pepper, black pepper, paprika, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder to taste on the pollack and tossed it in the oven for 15 (@400). Pollack is a white, firm "fishy fish," but making it spicy tones down the fishiness of it a little. Squeezing a few lemons on it won't hurt either.

Ask your fish dude to cut off any skin for you if you don't like it.

We made it quite spicy, so I immediately got a little sweaty and sucked down multiple glasses of water and gargled my beer. (Kidding! Well, about the gargling. Not about the rest.) Geoff, of course, was fine. You should adjust the spice to what you're comfortable with.

Verdict: We both liked it, but be forewarned that pollack is definitely a "fishy" fish. I thought it was too spicy. The garlic-sautéed kale was the breakout star.