The roast quail with sticky tomato bruschetta is the perfect meal for a summer’s day. When you roast tomatoes on a rack like this, all their juices drip down onto the bread as they cook, giving you the ultimate roasted tomato bruschetta to serve your birds on. Clumps of cherry tomatoes on the vine look fantastic, but if you can’t find any, loose ones will work just as well.
TO DRINK: Leopard’s Leap The Lookout Cape Mountain Red.
Roast quail with sticky tomato bruschetta
Ingredients
- 8 quails
- 1 lemon, cut into 8 wedges
- 100g butter
- 8 sprigs of fresh sage
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 16 slices pancetta or streaky bacon
- 1 ciabatta loaf, roughly sliced
- 400g cherry tomatoes on the vine
- olive oil, to taste
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Stuff each of the little quails with a lemon wedge and a knob of butter. Fold a sprig of sage in half and pop that inside too. Season the birds well and wrap each one in a couple of slices of pancetta. Place them side by side on a roasting or cake rack.
Find a roasting tray that will fit snugly under the rack. Scatter the ciabatta slices into the tray and top with the tomatoes. Season and drizzle with olive oil. Place the rack with the quails carefully on top of the tray and roast, until the quails are golden and the pancetta is nice and crispy, about 25 minutes.
By now, the ciabatta will have soaked up all the lovely roasting juices from the quails. If it needs crisping up, put the rack of quails to one side and pop the bread back in the oven for 5 minutes.
Squash the tomatoes on the bruschetta and pop the quail on top. Serve with some wilted spinach and a nice glass of red.
