Quail Saltimbocca

I have this herb garden in my backyard that's overrun with beautiful Basil. In the middle of it are these two lonely, but healthy sage plants. I was looking from something I could do with that sage and decided on making a Saltimbocca. If you're not familiar with a Saltimbocca, it's thin meat, generally veal, that's rolled up with Prosciutto and Sage, lightly fried then cooked in a pan sauce of white wine and butter. In my last recipe post, I made a Pheasant Saltimbocca, and it was delicious, but after finishing that recipe, there were still some things I wanted to try with it, so I decided to attempt a quail version of it. A classic southern recipe is Quail wrapped in bacon, and since Prosciuttos is a cousin to Bacon, I thought the pair would be great together in this recipe. Fruits generally also pairs well with Quail, so I added some sliced peaches and cook them with my wine sauce, then topped it off with some Mozzarella cheese! It turned out great, I just wish my Quail had been a little meatier.

[%PHOTO-2%]Saltimbocca is an Italian recipe where, you would roll the meat up with Prosciutto and Sage before pan frying it. I don't know how flexible the Italians are with that rule, but these Quail have bones, making them pretty stiff and resistant to rolling. I guess deboning them would make them more flexible and might possibly allow you to roll them, but I elected to just spatchcock my birds. Spatchcocking is a method of removing the spine of the bird, allowing it to lay flat while they cook. So instead of rolling, I just cooked my birds flat, but wrapped in prosciutto with a sage leaf on top. I dusted them with flour, browned them in butter, but didn't cook them all the way through, before I removed them to a plate, so I could start my pan sauce. My pan sauce was just white wine, lemon juice, butter and brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Once the sauce had reduced by half, I add the Quail back to the pan, add sliced peaches and Mozzarella cheese, seasoned with salt and pepper, then stuck in the oven for a few minutes. Once the Quail was almost done, I switched the oven to broil to lightly brown the cheese and carnalize the peaches.