Codornices Escabechadas

A friend of mine was travelling in Europe this summer and brought me home this can as a souvenir. The ingredients, in the original Spanish and the translation:

Ingredientes: Dos codornices (45%), agua, vino, vinagre, aceite de oliva virgen, cebolla, puerro, ajo, sal y especias.

Ingredients: Two quails (45%), water, wine, vinegar, virgin olive oil, onion, leek, garlic, salt and spices.

Canned quail. Okay. What does one do with canned quail, I thought to myself? Shaking the can revealed something that was too liquidy to be like canned chicken from this country. Maybe the cooking directions would provide some insight.

Original: Abrir y comer, para tomarla fria; o calentar a fuego lento en sarten o cacerola durante 5 minutos, para tomarla templada; o 10 minutos para tomarla caliente.

Babelfish Translation: To open and to eat, to take it fria; or to warm up to untimed fire in frying pan or casserole during 5 minutes, to take warmed up it; or 10 minutes to take it warms up it.

Okay, not much insight there.

Nothing to do but open it up. This weekend I had the company of some relatively adventurous eaters, and we made much ceremony of opening up the can.

Yep, that's quail alright. Bones and all. The breast pieces were relatively intact, as you can see in the picture above. But the rest of the birds had mostly fallen apart, so there were lots of little bones floating around in the broth. Certainly not the appetizing looking thing I'd ever seen. It didn't smell great, but not bad either.

It's definitely miles apart from most canned goods from this country. First off, well - it's quail. But even beyond that, there were whole bay leaves and peppercorns and garlic cloves with the skin still on - awfully food-like compared to most processed foods here.

We chose the caliente option from the directions, and heated it for about 10 minutes. Although it looks much like chicken soup, the broth had quite a bit of olive oil and vinegar in it, so it was very strongly flavored for drinking like a soup broth. The meat was pretty tasty, all things considered, although a little dry in that way that canned meat can be. I guess all the broth was to moisten it.

All in all, I think it was more fun talking about the can and anticipating what might be in the can than actually eating what was in the can. But it was a fun culinary adventure!