Surprisingly enough my 5 year old nephew did not eat all his Cornish game hen. To be fair, the size ratio of him and a game hen is like me eating a 6 pound chicken. I still don't see what the problem is. Quitter. It may have also been the constant barrage of cookies, fudge, egg nog, cheese, and at one point Styrofoam packing peanuts (their parents have told them many times not to, yet they continue to trust their uncle) that left my nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Zangief the Dancing Bear, unable to pick their birds clean. All the adults had no problem, toxic packing peanuts not withstanding.
This still left me with a good deal more leftover hen than I planned to have. What to do, what to do? Hey, it's a bird, why not just substitute it for chicken in other recipes? Why not indeed. I could make a pot pie...wait I don't have the veggies. How about stir fry...no rice. Game hen a la kin-wait I don't have any mushrooms or 1/2 the other stuff I need to make that. Well, what do I have? Butter, heavy cream, and frozen peas. Great, I can make a Paula Dean style vegetable. Oh, wait, we have some pasta. Perfect.
GAME HEN ALFREDO:
1 box pasta (I used the Fit & Active whole grain thin spaghetti $0.99 per 13.5 oz. but you can use whatever you like)
16 oz. Heavy Cream ($1.89)
1/2 cup unsalted butter softened ($1.99 per 16.oz-4sticks)
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic ($1.99 per 8 oz.)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese ($2.29 per 8 oz.)
8 oz. frozen sweet peas ( I don't know how much these are, but will update the price when I do)
7 oz. cooked Cornish game hen meat (about 1/2 a hen $2.69 per hen)
fresh cracked pepper to taste
salt to taste
First, prep the hen meat, as in pull it off the hen. At first I tried using a knife, but just pull it off with your hands.
Now wash your hands, or get hen grease everywhere. It's your kitchen. Use your greasy fingers to open the cream and pour it into a medium sized sauce pan that also has your greasy fingerprints all over it. Place over medium low heat. While the cream warms up fill a pot with water and put on high heat to boil. Add the butter to the cream and whisk to combine. Let the cream and melted butter simmer for about 5 minutes, then add the cheese and whisk to combine. Clean the hen grease off your whisk. I should mention that I didn't use the Aldi Parmesan cheese. I used fresh grated parmigiano reggiano. It's not my fault. I blame the media. We do have the Aldi cheese, and we use it. I just couldn't resist the fresh grated cheese while I had it. Stop judging me and add fresh cracked pepper to taste. Stir occasionally.
Once your water is boiling add your pasta. The pasta in the recipe will only take 5-7 minutes to cook. When it comes time to remove the pasta, find a way to retain the water you cooked the pasta in and use it to cook the frozen peas. I put a colander over another pot in the sink and poured the water and pasta into it. I then put the other pot back on to the burner and brought it to a boil again. Boil your peas for 3 minutes and the drain them. Add the peas and the hen meat to the sauce.
After a few minutes the meat will be reheated. Stir everything together in a big pot, or combine however you want. It's not like you listened to me when I told you to wash your hands.
We had this last night for dinner. We had it again for lunch. Megan is having it again right now for dinner. I think it is safe to say, we both like this way to use up our extra meat. We used hen, but you could use chicken, or whatever other poultry you have laying around. You could even cook up meat especially for this, but then the terrorists would win. I really didn't know how to wrap up this post, so there you go.
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