Galantine of chicken

[wheels]

I thought that you guys might be interested in my latest blog post:

The main oven on our cooker's decided to go on strike, leaving only the small top oven for cooking today's chicken. To give more room muggins here decided to bone and stuff the chicken to make life easier. Now I've boned chickens and turkeys before for buffets, it's a great way of feeding a lot of people from a small amount of meat. It's amazing how many more slices you get when there's no bones in the way. If I'm totally honest I've always found it a bit of a kerfuffle! However, while browsing on You Tube I came across this video by the great Jacques Pepin: it's a veritable master-class in the art of boning chicken - he makes it look so easy, and relatively speaking, it is. That is, if your hands work better than mine; I really don't have the strength in my left hand for this type of job anymore. If I can do it, anyone can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM

Mine's nowhere near as neat as Jacque's and I'm nowhere near as tidy a worker:


Following on from Jacque's stuffing of spinach and mushroom I'd already made a duxelle of mushrooms with spinach; that's finely chopped mushrooms, onions, garlic and shredded spinach, seasoned and fried in a little oil until all the liquid has cooked away, then left to cool. I started my stuffing with a layer of sausage-meat then slices of ham, followed by the mushroom and spinach and finally another layer of sausage-meat. Regrettably, I was so carried away I forgot to take a picture of it before I put it back together. In view of the amount of stuffing, I thought it best to sew it together rather than rely on just stringing it - so big needle and string in hand I set to! By the look of it I'm a better seamstress than cook!



I popped it into a pre-heated 180°C oven and it's taken about an hour and twenty minutes to reach an internal temperature of 75°C.



It's not the neatest job in the world - next time I'll form the stuffing separately and then wrap the chicken around it rather than spreading the stuffing on the chicken, This should give a neater cross section when cut. But, all-in-all I'm very pleased with it.



The original post is at:

http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/weblog ... php?id=628

[kimgary]

RESPECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great!!!!!!!
Regards Gazza.

[grisell]

Wow!

I'm impressed. Were the thighs boned too? It looks that way.

[NCPaul]

You did your dinner guests great honor.

[wheels]

It's all boned: legs, wings, everything - and that's down to Jacques Pepin's guidance not mine. Many years ago, I boned turkeys occasionally for buffets and it was a real pain, but you could feed a lot of people from very little meat! I think that the last one was for my daughter's Christening, and she's now 24 years old! It was all scraping bone! Not like the way that Jacques does it in his YouTube video; as always, he makes it so easy, and if you have the strength, his way is.

I'll certainly do it again, but next time I want to see the stuffing in circles like a dart board, not meandering all over the place. That said, it was a major success.

Phil

[tristar]

That looks great Phil, just had my breakfast but hungry already!

[johnfb]

Bloody brilliant that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[wheels]

I must say, it does taste great - it's even better cold. Mind you, it needs a bit more 'finesse' in the preparation so that the filling is in nice rings when it's cut through.

Phil

[grisell]

Just of curiousity - how long did it take you to bone that chicken?

[wheels]

10 minutes or so. It's so easy using Jacques Pepin's method. Anyone with full strength in their hands could do it quicker than that.

Phil