Roasted Cornish Hens with Persimmon Cornbread Dressing Recipe

"You may have had persimmons as pudding, or perhaps even not at all. It is often overlooked at the market and that’s a shame since it is delicious and wonderful, especially as part of your autumn or Thanksgiving menus. In this recipe, the persimmons are roasted and prepared in a savory treatment, which works, much in the way certain other fruits work in savory recipes. The persimmon flavor actually pairs quite nicely with the hens and cornbread. The dressing/stuffing portion of this recipe may become, in fact, an ideal stuffing for your holiday turkey. The best way to multiply the recipe up for that is to take however many cups of stuffing mixture you would ordinarily use in your turkey, duck, or goose and figure that this recipe uses 4 cups."

Step by Step Method

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350F.

Step 2

Toss chopped persimmon with the olive oil, salt and pepper.

Step 3

Spread on a baking sheet and roast for 25 minutes or until the edges of the persimmon just start to brown and caramelize.

Step 4

Remove from oven.

Step 5

Saute onion and celery in butter until soft, and set aside.

Step 6

Mix roasted persimmon chunks with remaining dressing ingredients.

Step 7

Spread dressing in a greased casserole dish, cover with foil and bake 30 minutes.

Step 8

While dressing is baking, spatchcock or cut hens into split broilers by cutting out the spine of the hens on either side with kitchen shears, then either flattening the top (spatchcock) or cutting through the front into two pieces per hen.