Truffled ballotine of quail Truffle and quail is a decadent combination, and this recipe shows its MasterChef finalists' credentials! Ingredients For the ravioli dough: 100g/3½oz large leaf spinach
 150g/5½oz 00 pasta flour 
150g/5½oz fine semolina flour
 2 free range eggs
 For the confit quail legs:
 8 quail legs 
 1 small pot of duck fat For the red onion and beetroot puree:
 2 large red onions, roughly chopped 
2 tbsp olive oil pinch salt and freshly ground pepper
 1 small sweet fire pickled beetroot 
100g/3½oz unsalted butter 
1 tbsp double cream For the garlic cream:
 1 bulb of garlic, halved 
1 tbsp olive oil pinch salt 
250ml/9fl oz double cream
 1 shallot, finely chopped 
2 thyme sprigs, leaves picked For the ravioli filling:
 50g/1¾oz girolles
 50g/1¾oz morels knob unsalted butter
 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
 2 sprigs thyme, leaves picked
 80g/2⅔oz ricotta 
2 tsp white truffle oil
 1 egg, beaten, to use as egg-wash For the quail ballotines:
 4 quail 18x18cm
7x7inch piece of chicken skin – as intact as possible 
300g/10½oz chicken livers salt and pepper For the sauce: 
1 tbsp olive oil
½ shallot, finely diced
 1 clove garlic, finely diced carrot
1 inch finely diced celery, 
1 inch finely diced 1 tbsp chopped girolles 
1 tbsp chopped morels
 4 tbsp red wine
 4 tbsp chicken stock
 6 tbsp Madeira knob butter To serve:
 1 small tub pea shoots 
1 black truffle, shaved
Preparation method For the ravioli, wilt the spinach in a dry frying pan for a few minutes. Pulse 50g/1¾oz ‘00’ flour, 50g/1¾oz semolina flour and one egg into a food processor until it starts to come together. Remove and knead on a clean work surface for five minutes. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the fridge for 25 minutes. Repeat the process, but this time adding the wilted spinach along with more flour to compensate for the extra moisture ‒ it should be the same consistency as the first batch. Once rested, roll out each batch of dough into 12mm/½in thick rectangles. Cut two 12mm/½in wide strips from each batch. Layer the four strips like a Batternburg cake, using water to stick them together. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Once rested, cut the pasta dough across the pattern in 4mm/⅛in thick slices. Roll out each slice individually using a pasta machine. Put each piece through each setting once, turn by 90 degrees and put it through the same setting a second time, gradually reducing the thickness until you reach the lowest setting. Repeat until you have 24 squares for 12 ravioli. Technique: Rolling pasta using a pasta machine Watch technique 3:22 mins For the confit quail legs, remove the wings and legs from the quails. Completely bone out four of the quail legs. Bone out the remaining four legs leaving the bottom half of the drumsticks, but ensuring you remove the knuckles at the knee. Pull the meat right to the end of each of the bones and stuff one of the other boneless legs inside the void, then wrap in aluminium foil to hold the shape. Repeat to produce four stuffed legs. Place the duck fat into a pan and allow to melt. Place the legs into the pan and cook in the fat (confit) for 90 minutes at 140C/284F (use a cooking thermometer to measure this). For the red onion and beetroot purée, preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3. Toss the chopped onion in the olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper and roast in the oven for 30 minutes, until soft. Blend the onion in a food processor with the pickled beetroot, butter and cream until smooth. Pass through a fine sieve into a clean pan, season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper and set aside until needed. For the garlic cream, turn up the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Place the garlic in a roasting tray with the olive oil and salt and roast for 30 minutes. Heat the cream, shallot and thyme in a pan over a medium heat and to boiling point. Remove the pan from the heat, add the roasted garlic and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes before straining into a clean pan. Set aside until needed. For the ravioli filling, gently fry the girolles, morels, garlic and thyme in butter. Reserve some of the mushrooms for garnish, and roughly chop the rest before mixing them with the ricotta and truffle oil. Set aside to cool. For the ravioli, lay the squares of pasta on a well-floured work surface. Place ½-1 tsp of filling in the centre of half the squares and top with a second square. Seal the edges with egg wash before cutting into 2.5cm/1in circles. Cover and set aside until ready to cook and serve. For the quail ballotines, increase the oven temperature to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Open up the quail by cutting down each side the backbone. Carefully remove all of the remaining bones, keeping as much flesh as possible attached to the skin. Onto a sheet of aluminium foil, layer the chicken skin topped with the quail breasts, and finally the chicken livers. Season the open ballotine with salt and freshly ground pepper, then trim any excess skin to make the crispy chicken skin tuiles. Using the aluminium foil as an aid, roll up the ballotine. Once rolled in the chicken skin, wrap the ballotine in the aluminium foil. Heat a dry, ovenproof, frying pan until hot, add the ballotine and cook for about six minutes, turning every minute. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook for five minutes. Remove the ballotine from the oven and set aside to rest. Reduce the oven temperature to 180C/350F/Gas 4. For the sauce, heat the oil in a medium pan, over a medium to high heat, then add the quail bones, shallot, garlic, carrot, celery and mushrooms. Fry until they start to turn golden-brown. Turn up the heat, add the red wine and continue to cook until the volume has reduced by two thirds. Add the stock and reduce by two thirds again. Finally, add the Madeira and reduce by two thirds once more. Strain through a fine sieve, season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper and finish with a knob of butter. For the chicken skin tuiles, place the remaining chicken skin in the oven between two silicone mats, or sandwiched between sheets of baking parchment, weighed down with a baking tray. Bake for 15 minutes until crisp. Remove the chicken skin from the oven and leave to cool slightly before breaking up into pieces for the garnish. To serve, reheat the garlic cream and carve the ballotine by trimming the ends and slicing into 8. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, and cook the ravioli for 90 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain. Place a spoonful of beetroot puree on each serving plate and top with three ravioli, two slices of ballotine and a confit quail leg. Spoon sauce over the top and add a small amount of the garlic cream. Garnish with the chicken skin tuiles, reserved mushrooms, pea shoots and shaved black truffle.

Keeping Quail

We write the following quail keeping guidelines for the attention of hobby quail keepers or small scale quail keepers who keep quail to provide eggs and/or meat for their family or just as game birds. The quail originates from a wild environment just as any other domesticated animal and it is related to chicken. We should try to give them back at least a little bit of what we have taken from them regarding their lifestyle. They can obviously not take care of themselves locked up so the very minimum that we should provide for the quail is food, water and a healthy environment. The quail’s lifestyle is similar to chicken’s.  The quail likes warm weather conditions and they’re (the majority) migratory birds in the wild. If we have the facilities, it’s a good practice to have a winter and a summer place for the quails and move them twice a year. The quails will find this very exciting and this stimulation will even encourage nesting. For their winter accommodation we should move the quails to a light, dry, ventilated but not draughty place. Heating is not necessary unless temperatures fall under -5˚c. In the summer is best to keep the quail outside but again, the they must have access to a dry, drought free place and shade. Obviously you will have to make sure that your enclosure or aviary is safe that no predator can get to your quails. Don’t worry if you can’t provide your quails separate summer and winter place, they will feel just fine at a permanent place if you make that comfortable enough for them.

Keeping quail in cages

As to the quail cage, a quail requires a minimum of ½ sqft of floor space. There are not many specific quail cages around to buy, we make our own design for our layers and breeding stock. Due to growing interest from our customers these cages are now available to buy for the general public as well. Your other choice is to build one yourself. Some quail keepers use a rabbit hatch for keeping their quail in but you have to realise that while the rabbit likes shady dark environment the quail needs much more light to feel good, so the rabbit hutch is not the best choice to use as a quail cage. The floor area of our purpose built quail cage is 6 sqft/tier. This allows you to keep up to12 Japanese (coturnix) quails per tier. On a hobby scale, if you want to give the most possible comfort for your quails, than you put 5 quails into a cage of this size. For egg production this would be 4 hens and 1 cock quail. The “furnishing” of the quail cage should be as follows:

• Litter/Bedding – We believe the most practical bedding for quails is fine wood shavings. The quail loves to take a dust bath which they do in the wood shavings but if you really want to please them put some dry sand into a suitable tray or container, they’ll love it.
• Feeder – the quail feeder can be a small pet bowl, small chicken feeder or a through feeder. If you will use bawl for feeding you should put at least 2 in the cage and in the case of using a through feeder a small 250-300mm (10”-12”) feeder would be sufficient. It’s also practical to place the feeder outside of the cage to save more space for the quail and to prevent the feed contamination by the quails messing on it. You can get feeders that you hang onto the wire mesh of the cage. Hang it from the outside of the cage and make cut outs on the mesh to allow the quail to push their heads through to get to it (width-1 ½”, height-2”). The pet bowl is the least practical solution for hygienic reasons. If you want to place the feed inside the cage use a chicken feeder or a through feeder.
• Drinker – again, the quail drinker can be a small pet bowl, small chicken drinker or if you want to keep the water cleaner, you can do the same as with the feeder, get one that hangs onto the wire mesh from the outside. Obviously make some cut outs as described in the feeder section above.
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Make sure that your quails have always dry litter and access to feed and drink at all times.

Another important condition for good quail egg production is to provide the quails with enough light. A layer quail needs 14 hours of light per day for optimal egg production. If you keep your quails in a place where there is enough natural light you will have no problems during the summer period but if you want the quails to keep laying eggs in the winter period as well, you will need to fit a light near the cage to make up for the short daylight. The light doesn’t have to be strong, an energy saving light bulb would do. The same applies if you keep your quails in a dark place like a garage without windows, dark stable, etc. The best practice is to plug in an automatic timer switch for the light, this way you won’t forget to turn it on and off on time. Warning: DON'T use strong light! If you keep more quail cocks than one in a same cage strong light will make them aggressive and they will start to fight with each other.