Game Hens Poêlée with Spring Vegetables

One could imagine a game hen, plump and petite, scurrying through the underbrush in a woodland. But in reality, it is nothing but a diminutive chicken, transformed here, through a classic technique for cooking small game birds, into something resembling that sylvan fantasy. Poêlée is a gentle form of roasting, but because the cooking is so slow, the effect is more like poaching in oil, making the transition to a slow cooker natural.