Method:
With the balance of the sausage meat mixture – mix in the pine nuts, cranberries and chestnuts and use this to stuff your chicken.
Once you have stuffed the chicken – use toothpicks to close the neck opening and tie the drumsticks and parsons nose closed with some pudding string. You want to keep the stuffing inside and not have any spillage.
To Prepare the chicken for roasting:
2,5kg free range organic chicken is what i used Combine some truffle oil or garlic and rosemary with some soft butter and insert this carefully in the pocket by the breast. This will keep the breast moist and tasty during the roasting process.
Cover the outside of the breast (ie. the top of the chicken) with a criss cross of streaky bacon – again to retain the moisture and add flavour to the chicken.
Once ready – place in a roasting dish on a rack – and add three glasses of dry white wine, a chopped onion, some rosemary, a chicken stock cube, 5 cloves of garlic and salt and pepper. The chicken will drip juices into the pan and enrich this sauce to a lovely tasty gravy to pour over the chicken on the table.There was plenty of gravy to go around.
I roast this big boy uncovered at 240degrees for about an hour and a half. When you take it out of the oven – cover loosely with some tin foil and allow to stand for at least 15 minutes before serving. This allows the chicken to relax nicely and is nice and tender.
Put on a nice big platter – arrange the potatoes around and serve with the potatoes daupinoise, roasted butternut and cauliflower cheese.
To view Janice Tripepi’s blog click here.
To view the stuffing blog click here.
