An evening with polenta e osei

We were at a dinner with friends. The main dish was roasted birds ("osei" in the dialect of Veneto region).

Although this exquisiteness is very popular in northern Italy, it became difficult today to taste it because in Italy the sale of wild little birds for eating is prohibited by law. The only way is to become or to have as a friend a hunter who has got a license to hunt, cook and eat them privately.

The first time I ate the roast birds, their taste reminded me of roast fish I ate often when I was living in Japan. In my opinion, the common factors are the giblets' bitterness and the crispness of the bones.

Unlike roasted fish, birds take much longer to prepare and cook.

In the morning, or even the night before, place pork belly cut into pieces, birds and sage leaves alternately on the spits.

Oh, I was forgetting.

Even before the meat and the birds, you need to prepare the slices of polenta that will be fried in fat you can get during the roasting of the meat.

Place the spits on the rotisserie.

Light a fire in the fireplace and roast the meat for 4-5 hours.

The photo is blurry because the roast kept turning.

Here they are running. I never get tired of watching it.

As you see, in the tray under the roast collect the fat with which you fry slices of polenta.

Let's start the dinner with porcini soup. (Actually before this we ate a little of nibbles with some aperitif.)

Also these mushrooms were collected by our friends in the woods.

The main dish:

roast birds (rosto de osei), then clockwise, roast potatoes, fried polenta (polenta onta), sauteed peas, mushrooms (I do not remember their name. Maybe they are armillaria)

You can not miss the wine.

Cabernet DOC by Beato Bartolomeo of Breganze (http://www.cantinabreganze.it/)

It goes very well with game dishes.

Then there were also some fruits and deserts but eating and chatting with friends I forgot to take a picture.

By the way, you too love watching the roast turning?

Italiano