daring kitchen, february

This month's challenge made my kitchen burst into song. Literally.

Spanakopita. When D or the girls asked what I was making and this was my answer, I either got the word put into The Lion King's "Hakuna Matata" or Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vita". Which made for a loud, but fun, cooking experience.

The February Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Audax of Audax Artifex. The challenge brought us to Greece with a delicious, flaky spanakopita - a spinach pie in a phyllo pastry shell.

I've made spanakopita filling before for little appetizers, in puff pastry spirals or bite-sized phyllo packages. I wondered if a whole pie would be too much in such a large serving, but followed a slightly adapted version of Audax's recipe and tried it anyway. The recipe, for an authentic Greek spanakopita, looked wonderful and really the only reason for any changes was based on a careful scientific analysis I call "what's in my fridge?".

First, the greens. Spanakopita is basically spinach pie. While I have access to fresh or frozen spinach, I also had in my freezer a couple of pounds of beet greens from the garden. I had blanched, chopped, and frozen them last fall in my hope of using the whole plant - and this was a great opportunity. The thawed greens were tossed with chopped onion and shallot (I didn't have the leeks the recipe called for, but I love leeks and will try adding them next time), olive oil, dill, garlic, and nutmeg. And feta, of course feta.

Side note: nutmeg is such an unsung hero. I've just been realizing this in the last few years. It's the thing I'll add at the last minute to give food that "hmm, what IS that?" taste. Sauces love it. So when I saw it in the recipe as an option, I made sure to include it.

Then things got messy. This mix was kneaded and squished in the bowl to mix it all together and compress it. This was the most unpleasant part of the process, since the just-thawed greens and refrigerated feta made my hands very cold. However, I'd never make it again without this step. The resulting texture was perfect. Next time I'll let things warm up a bit first.

Then, another funny step - squeezing handfuls of the mixture to get out the excess moisture, then using bread crumbs to soak this liquid up before re-adding it to the filling. Cold hands didn't like this either but again - I won't argue with the end result. An egg added and also mixed in finished off this part.

The pan was lined with phyllo layered with melted butter. Layer and paint, layer and paint. The filling added, some more phyllo and butter on top, the dough cut into pieces, and it was ready to put in the oven. An hour later, the house smelling warm and savoury, we got to try it.

We all loved it. While agreeing that using all beet greens likely made for a stronger taste, it was a huge success. Next time (and there will be several next times) I will try either all spinach, or half spinach and half beet green. 

It's a great way to get a lot of greens into one meal, and the flavour and texture are wonderful. We enjoyed it for supper, lunch the next day, and even little bites of it cold were delicious. It would make a great picnic addition. Another great thing about this is the make-ahead factor. The filling, once made, can be refrigerated. The whole pie, once made, can be frozen. A little longer in the kitchen, and you've got the one for now and one for later. Thanks, Audax!

miscellany:macarons

recipe from my class

This isn't a food blog, at least not officially. It started as a 'hi, I'm here' blog, an outlet for my desire to write stuff about stuff. Music, making a CD, living on the farm, running and how I hate it, deep(ish) thoughts. Then the food started. It has sort of taken over, but it and farming are the things I enjoy writing about just now.

Last weekend, thanks to a gift certificate from my parents, I got to go to a cooking class at Le Cordon Bleu. Just walking through those doors feels good. I took a short course demo on macarons, and have tried them once at home. While I'd love to say I mastered the technique in one go and made amazing, lovely macarons, this would be a lie. But hey, they tasted good! It was one of my most ambitious baking projects, at least as far as technique went. There seem to be so many places where things could go wrong with this. But, here's take one.

First lesson: this. 

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

I started by preparing things: almond flour, icing sugar, egg whites, and granulated sugar. While measuring things out on my new digital kitchen scale, my first thought was "kitchen scale, where have you been all my life, and why was I so foolish not to get you earlier?" It's wonderfully foolproof for measuring. But I digress.

dear mixer, I love you.

Almond flour and icing sugar went in the food processor for three minutes to make the powdery stuff even MORE powdery. Then sifted to remove any bits that continued to dare to be non-powdery. This sat in a little mound on parchment paper while I whipped the egg whites with a pinch of cream of tartar. The sugar was gradually added and the mixture beaten to stiff peaks. Easy enough, I've made meringue loads of times. The flour mixture was then folded in carefully, preserving the air in the egg whites. Again, I've done this, while making angel food or chiffon cakes.

ready to pipe!

Once that was done, the mixture had to be carefully deflated. Which, in class was where I looked up quizzically from my notes to ensure the chef had said what I thought I'd heard. The big no-no in meringue is a required step here. And the technique specific enough to the cookies, he told us, that to do this is to macaroniser, a verb I have likely conjugated entirely incorrectly.  This was tricky, because whether you've done it enough is determined by carefully watching the mixture until it has a sheen and forms a ribbon, falling off the spoon and not holding peaks properly. It had me wondering if it was runny enough but not too runny, trying to remember what I'd seen in class. It was also tricky because I wanted to eat it. But I dutifully mushed the air out of the mix and tested it until it seemed about right. Under- or over-deflating would make substandard cookie texture.

drying cookies

Colour was added (macrons are delightfully pretty cookies, as any tray of then illustrates well) and the... hmm. Batter? Dough? I really am not sure of the best term here. It was more runny like a batter. Either way, it was carefully piped onto parchment paper to sit and rest. I was happy to see the rounds end up like they were supposed to, though my piping technique leaves a bit to be desired (read: I suck).

The macarons then have a nap. They sit on their cooking sheets, waiting to dry. Which, chef told us, could take anywhere from half an hour on a dry day to a couple of hours on a humid summer day - which is the reason you never make these on a hot summer day. 20-40 minutes was ideal. After they were dry enough, into the oven they went, 250F for about 14 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.

I startled R a bit and made her look at me askance when I pulled them out and gleefully said "they have feet!". Macarons should have a sort of ruffle at the bottom, called a foot, a crispy shell, and no large air pockets; the list of attributes of properly-made macarons reads like something out the of AKA breed standard book. Mine seemed to have feet and the crispy shell.  Some of them collapsed a bit, though, and most had too much air in them, a sign I hadn't beaten/deflated them correctly. Removing them from the parchment paper was a bit of an adventure, as they tended to stick a bit. Some time in the freezer (a trick from the class that I remembered) did help that, though.

The filling was an Italian meringue buttercream. Yes, there are different types of meringue. I really had no idea. French meringue is egg whites beaten plus sugar, then more beating. Italian is egg whites beaten plus a hot syrup, then beaten until it's cooled. 

ta-dah! 

Softened butter added to the egg white/syrup mixture made for a buttercream that was better than any buttercream I have ever made. Light and sweetly flavoured, it looked great until the whole thing started looking like cottage cheese. 

I broke it. Breaking, in cooking, is when something leads to an emulsion separating. It's a bit of science reduced to a simple word. It can happen in sauces as well and usually leads to me yelling "aaah!" followed by some sort of rescue attempt, some more successful than others. The yelling may not be proper cooking technique, but I use it anyway. After a few google searches, I was able to rescue it and get it to a nice piping consistency to fill my cookies.

Result and reviews: Cookies need work on the consistency and texture front, but tasted amazing. They are delicate little bites, almondy and sweet but light and airy.Wow, wow, wow. I can see why they're so popular. The main reviewer comment was a request for more. Some technique to refine, but I'm happy with this start.

30 days, day 5 & 6

a.k.a, the weekend hit so I'm amalgamating posts.

Back to the focus question-type goals, with day 5 being identifying the WHEN and today the WHERE. These are a little nebulous for me. Since the goal requires research, it's something I can do just about any time. As to where, it's sort of the same.

That said, I can pinpoint times and places where my work will be most efficient. My mind likes to go happily skipping away sometimes, especially when faced with reading dry and/or confusing material. So, I will make sure to focus time each morning when I'm most mentally sharp to read up on the dreary, dry, regulatory things. The parts that interest me (side note: bees are, simply, fascinating. The more I'm reading about them, the more amazed I am.) become my evening reading, in the after-supper lull. After lunch? Forget it. The physical work is fine then, not so much the mental.

Where? Come spring, it will all be outside, gloriously outside.  The coop, the field, the garden, the land. This image is, to me, especially appealing on a day following a night of freezing rain and with the temperature plummeting downward to a flash freeze. 

Where for now? The research part will be in two main places: the computer upstairs, and the kitchen table. The table's a must when I'm studying from books. I am a sprawler. Always have been. That person in the university library who took up the whole table as if there was a study group, but it was just one person? That was me (sorry).

And by way of follow-up, yesterday's class at Le Cordon Bleu was amazing. I do love going there to learn. Two hours flew by watching the chef make macarons and fillings, asking questions, and getting to try the divine concoctions. I've got a first practice batch on the go right now. It's likely going to be messed up as the technique was one I found challenging - but the batter tasted good! 

I'm learning through these classes to focus differently on what I'm making, learning to identify things by texture, sound and sight rather than just by timing. And the privilege of being able to see both ends of the food production scale is gratifying, too. I can see potatoes and chard grow out of the soil I turned, raised the chickens from chicks, then make a galette and a gratin to go with the coq au vin. It's nice.

30 days, day 4

I spent two hours last night reading about bees. Research! Biology, how the colony works, why hives are designed the way they are and the important parts of a hive, etc. I found it fascinating. They're incredible.

But on to day 4. Hello, Saturday! Today's goal was a little different: "Today, figure out a way to add some fun to whatever it is you’re working on for the next 30 days. It doesn’t have to be amazing or dramatic, even something small can make a big difference."

And, turns out I'd already scheduled something like that. Yay for happy coincidences! The farm goals lead to the production of food, first in its raw state right from the ground or the animal. But I love to take it farther and do amazing things with it. If you've looked through this blog, you'll know I've been dabbling over the last few years into different types and techniques of cuisine, especially French. 

Our ducks become prosciutto, confit, cassoulet. The chicken is ballotined. Eggs become soufflés. I've gotten the hang of curing pork belly to make my own pancetta/bacon. I find these silly kitchen adventures fun as well as delicious.

How will I do that today? My lovely parents gave me a gift certificate for Christmas to a local cooking school, which happens to be one of Le Cordon Bleu's international campuses. Today I'd already booked a demo on macarons, delightful French cookies that have a reputation for being fussy to make. So today, I get to attend a gourmet class and think about the end result of my digging in the dirt and caring for chickens.

Who knows, maybe I'll find a way to sell fancy cookies from the farm, too :) 

miscellany: duck breast prosciutto

In a word: yum.

I love prosciutto. So when I happened across a recipe for duck breast prosciutto in a magazine, and - hey! - we had ducks aplenty, I decided it had to be tried. And I am so, so glad I did.

Prosciutto, bought in the store, is pork - the word in Italian, according to google translate, means "ham". Further research (you don't think I make these blogs up, do you? No, they are meticulously researched, often by asking my dog. Titus is a wealth of information. Though in this case he just looked at me and whined for some of what I was making. But I digress) suggests the word refers to the dry curing process of making prosciutto. It's typically ham that is dry-cured, then served raw.

It's ridiculously simple, only requiring two things I often lack: patience, and space in the fridge.

This takes so much salt it's just silly. And it's all thrown out.

Duck breast - I used four halves from this year's eleven ducks - entombed in kosher salt for 24 hours. That's it. Salt and duck. See? I said ridiculously simple.

          Burying the duck in salt.

Aaaand... it's gone.

After its salt bath, the duck was rinsed well, patted dry, then covered in freshly-ground black pepper. 

SO MUCH PEPPER.

After salting, rinsed off to dry.

How much? Basically, you cover it with pepper until you think you have enough, and then add some more. Because it's good.

Then each duck breast was wrapped up in cheesecloth, bundled and wrapped again, then trussed with string to hang in the fridge for two weeks. Yes, two weeks of needing space in my fridge for some meat to hang.

Wrapping up into duck breast mummies.

waiting... waiting... waiting...

Thank goodness for the second fridge. True prosciutto often ages for 18 months or more. I'd never make it, waiting so long.

But worth it? Oh yes.

Final product.

Today the meat was cut down, unwrapped, and sliced as thinly as I could. The drying concentrates the flavour of an already tasty meat. The rich red of the meat and creamy white of the skin are a lovely contrast. It is decadent. I repeat: yum.

How to use this loveliness? There are so many ways. My favourite is to just eat the stuff. 

But it's a wonderful appetizer with baguette slices and some cheese. It's delicious cut up, sauteed, and added to pastas or Caesar salad. If it can be very thinly sliced, it is lovely wrapped around blanched asparagus. Or, you could just eat it. Which I did.

a ham story

Once upon a time, I bought a whole ham, bone-in. It cost about $16. So I decided to make a week of it. Because it's the sort of thing I like to do, often for no apparent reason. This is the story of the ham. 

The eponymous ham.

Day 1 
The whole ham would be roasted in all its glory. I cut off the plastic to find cheesecloth around the whole thing. I've never seen that before, but cheesecloth has a sort of small-scale artisan-created sense about it when it's around food (though I could be biased, having just wrapped some duck proscuitto in cheesecloth to cure). So in a completely arbitrary way, finding cheesecloth around the ham was encouraging. But I figured it shouldn't be roasted so I removed the cloth, scored the thick skin, and popped it in the oven. Uh... 375F for a couple of hours? I forget. This isn't a recipe. 

Day 1 meal

 Some maple syrup and brown sugar were added later for two reasons: 

1. to glaze the ham, and 
2. maple syrup needs no reason. It's sort of like liquid bacon that way.

This made a dinner for five, a slice of the ham along with small red potatoes (boiled and then sauteed in a bit of duck fat for flavour) and Swiss chard (sauteed with bacon and mushrooms) from the garden. 

And then the once-majestic ham looked like this: 

Not so pretty any more, are you.

Day 2 

Ham on rye, a.k.a. cliché sandwich.

After a chilly night in the fridge, the ham came out to be sliced. Cold slices on dark rye bread with grainy Dijon mustard and some baby greens gleaned from the garden - spinach, chard, and beet greens - served with boiled corn on the cob I picked from the field. 

Corn! When it's picked mere minutes before it's boiled, the sugars in the plant haven't yet converted to starches and OH the sweetness. Yum. Simple but so good.

The ham is disappearing fast. 

Day 3
Due to popular request at supper last night, I sent ham on rye for three work/school lunches.

Pasta took the lead tonight, penne with an alfredo-style sauce (basic white sauce with garlic and Parmesan) and chopped ham warmed up in the sauce. This served four, with leftovers for D to take to work tomorrow. So altogether, five meals this time.

I forgot to take a pic of the meal. DON'T JUDGE ME. Here's the ham after, though.

Day 4 
Two more sandwiches, this time on homemade whole wheat bread, for school lunches. I'm having to get creative now while I slice it, to avoid the bone that runs through it. 

going, going...

This evening - omelets. Bright yellow thanks to eggs from free-range hens who are loving the grass on their pasture these days. With, for a change, ham. We're at the end of this puppy. If the ham was a puppy. Which it's not, to be clear. 

Speaking of the puppy, he has watched the ham decimation with marked interest.

I SEE YOU'RE HAVING HAM. I LIKE HAM.

Day 5 
Waste not, want not, and all those proverbs. The ham bone went into a pot of water with onions, a few cloves, peppercorns, and a bay leaf. And there it simmered, leaching the last bits of its flavour to make stock. Onions were cooked in bacon and the stock added, along with potatoes and dried split peas. Cozy soup was a great finish to the week.

Split-pea soup with homemade sourdough bread.

Our meat purchase for the week (30 servings, between suppers and lunches): $16. Not bad.

And puppy was finally happy.

~ fin ~

daring cooks, september

Summer on the farm is wonderful but also tends to take me waaaaay off track of other things I do. I don't want to heat up our little kitchen any more than is necessary, and cooking is often a quick grab of things from the garden. While this is a blessing that we are so grateful for, it unfortunately meant I missed a couple of challenges, but I was able to get back on track this month and make something I've wanted to make for a while: gnocchi.

Todd, who is The Daring Kitchen’s AWESOME webmaster and an amazing cook, is our September Daring Cooks’ host! Todd challenged us to make light and fluffy potato Gnocchi and encouraged us to flavor the lil pillows of goodness and go wild with a sauce to top them with!

We planted potatoes for the first time this year, and had harvested over a hundred pounds of Russet baking potatoes that were sitting in the cellar. I brought up a few, scrubbed and baked them, and then left them to cool. Perhaps for too long, because when I tried to put them through the ricer I'd bought for the purpose (though, granted, it'd been on my want list for the kitchen for a while), the handle bent while feeding a very few potatoes through the little holes. Time to improvise.

I didn't want to use a masher, preferring to try to keep them a nice light texture, but with my poor ricer looking all askew and sad, the only other option was:  a pastry blender. I hoped that the thinner blades would mean the potatoes didn't clump up as much. And, as it turned out, it wasn't ideal but the dough came together very nicely - just the potatoes, egg, flour, and salt and pepper.

Rolling out the dough reminded me of the kids making snakes with clay when they were younger. The snakes were rolled out, then cut in sections and squished a bit with a fork to make dents to grab the sauce. Into boiling water they went, and they sat on the bottom for a bit before floating to the top, where I scooped them out after a minute. 

And - we liked it! Served with a simple tomato sauce using some fresh basil from the garden, they had a nice texture and flavour. Pesto next time, maybe? Frost is coming and I need to harvest the basil. With a recipe this easy, I'll be making gnocchi again. 

After I get a new ricer.

serendipity is sour but tasty

Serendipity 

(ˌsɛrənˈdɪpɪtɪ)

- noun. - The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

The farm has been busy, birds (136 in all, right now) growing and laying eggs and all that sort of thing. The summer has been such a contrast to last year's drought, and the garden with almost no help from me is lush and productive. Which includes the weeds, but that's part of the job.

Yesterday on going out with the girls for a couple of errands, I glanced at a shrub-tree thing that grows at the front edge of one of our fields. We pass it almost every time we head out. I've never paid it much attention, really, but yesterday a flash of red on it caught my eye. I hit the brakes, backed up, and stared at it. 

Crabapples. It was absolutely covered. How did I miss this, all this time? All these years? Beautiful little red apples all over the until-now-ignored tree. I decided to come out later and harvest them. 

So this morning, puppy and I headed out to the road and I started picking. And picking. And picking. And straddling the electric fence line that keeps the cows in. That I managed to not get zapped was no small feat, but I am covered in scratches from the branches as I weasled my way in to reach all I could.

I picked them by the handful. By the double-handful. They were perfectly ripe, and have a perfect flavour - tart but tasty. 

As I picked I thought about how lovely it is that so much can happen without any of my intervention (interference?). Sometimes, I think I just get in the way. And this little tree did its work, likely helped by the local bees, and gave us a bounty that we had no part in making. Some of life's simple blessings are these unlooked-for surprises. 

I bet the cows knew all about it all along and didn't tell me, wanting to keep the secret to themselves.

A half hour sufficed to fill the washtub with all the apples I could reach. 

I had plans for today. But serendipity sometimes means tossing all that, being thankful for the discovery, picking the apples you find, and making some jelly.

miscellany: beef tongue

Yes, really. 

Soooo... yeah. Here goes.

I love classic literature and it seems that without fail, when the genteel folk had a picnic or cold lunch (oops, luncheon), one of the items on the list is cold tongue, or jellied tongue, or tongue sandwiches. Which sounded weird. I've never eaten, let alone cooked, one.

This is pretty much my face throughout.

This will go down as the first time I've spent a cooking exercise at least mildly repulsed by what I was working with. My general reaction throughout is summed up as, "ew". So eloquent.






So it starts with, yup. A tongue. A big, greyish-pink, flabby tongue that the farmer we buy our beef from tells me is worth more per pound in Europe than the rest of the cuts of beef. Interesting. Oddly enough, she included the tongue for no extra charge with the rest of the large order of beef I was picking up. Hmm, wonder why?

Ew.

While I taste it, can it taste me?

IT HAS TASTE BUDS. I can't get past the tongue-ish-ness of this thing. I had read to scrub it and then soak it for a few hours, changing the cold water frequently. The whole time I scrubbed, feeling the rough taste buds, I thought... you guessed it. Ew. 






It did not help matters that while it soaked, the cows who spend the summer here got out. While they stood looking at me before they got shooed back into the pasture, one put out her tongue and then STUCK IT UP HER NOSE. Yup, cleaned her nose with it. Did I mention ew?

The onions look good. 

After soaking, it went into the pot with fresh water, peppercorns, bay leaves, and onion, to simmer gently for several hours. It can't be cooked fast as it would basically end up like a tire. So it simmered away, smelling pretty good actually, but still looking like several kinds of nasty.

Titus: "NOM NOM NOM!"

Once it finished, I was supposed to peel off the outer layer. Oh, good, I thought, that will take off the taste buds and it will be less like what it is. But just removing the outer layer of the whitish tongue left me with... a greyish-brown tongue. Ugh. 

At least Titus was enjoying the process, and loved every little bit he got.

I'm still not convinced.

But, I'm happy to report, once I cut down through the next layer, it looked more like a pork tenderloin (wishful thinking? Perhaps). Hooray! A piece of meat I've dealt with. Into the fridge it went to chill.

Today for lunch: cold tongue sandwiches. Thinly sliced tongue on dark rye bread with yellow and grainy dijon mustard. And...

But... yeah, it tasted pretty good!

It was pretty good, actually. It tastes like, well, beef. The texture is the oddest thing about it (once you're past the IT'S A TONGUE thing. Which I am not past yet, for the record) as it tastes like roast beef but is much, much more tender than any cold roast beef I've ever had.

It's still kind of weird.

daring cooks, may

Time to wrap stuff up and bake it! Okay, it was a little more involved than that. And yummy, too.

Our lovely Monkey Queen of Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys, was our May Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to dive into the world of en Croute! We were encouraged to make Beef Wellington, Stuffed Mushroom en Croute and to bring our kids into the challenge by encouraging them to create their own en Croute recipes!

This month got away from me so I didn't try variations as I had hoped to do (the portobello mushrooms with brie looked especially amazing); however I did get a beef Wellington done to try out the technique.

Wellington starts with a cut of meat that, while very tender, isn't the most flavour-packed. So, you add flavour to it before encasing it in a nice little package of puff pastry. Mine didn't go quite as planned, but still tasted good. Let's just say I wasn't getting points for presentation this time.

Duxelles, take two.

Extra taste came in the form of duxelles. This word just looks good. And it's mushrooms, chopped very fine, then cooked and cooked and cooked in oil and butter until it's concentrated deliciousness. For my first attempt at this the stove was too hot, and they got more crispy than intended. Back to the chopping block, and the second batch turned out just fine. The challenge then was not simply eating them as they were.

Crepes in progress

I didn't have the pate that is supposed to be mixed with the duxelles, which was a shame as I think it'd  be a great addition. But, I did make crepes! The beef for the Wellington is seared on each side, and the meat is left rare. The duxelles are spread on, but all the moisture would make the puff pastry soggy and so a crepe is wrapped around it to act as a sort of moisture barrier. 

Wellington, Assemble! (I really have been watching Avengers too much with my kids)Once all the individual parts were done, it was time to lay it all on the thawed puff pastry. Except... I hadn't thawed enough to make individual Wellingtons. So we did a sort of group Wellington. All the meat and duxelles wrapped in overlapping crepes, and then one big sheet of puff pastry around the lot.

 

      

When it baked, though, the golden-brown flaky crust looked nice and they tasted great! I'd like to try it again with salmon fillet, or the mushrooms. So many possibilities.

daring cooks, april

This month I got to (sort of) re-enact the bit from Julie & Julia where the exasperated Julie says, "I have to bone a duck. Can you even conceive of boning a duck?" Our Daring Kitchen challenge: bone a chicken and make a chicken ballotine. But I used a duck too for good measure. Not all at once, though this is likely the process by which we get that strange culinary extravaganza, 'turducken'.

For the April Daring Cooks Challenge, Lisa from Parsley, Sageand Sweet has challenged us to debone a whole chicken, using this video by Jacques Pepin as our guide; then stuff it, tie it and roast it, to create a Chicken Ballotine.

For this challenge technique took center stage. I have Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking  and looked through the chapter recipe for pâté de canard en croute, trying to figure out how it's done. Thank goodness for video, is all I can say. While her written instructions are thorough and accurate, it's not likely one I would attempt without seeing it done.

I watched the video a couple of times and then, with helpful assistants to start and stop and rewind and start and rewind and stop and start and rewind and... (you get the picture) and take pics thanks to my chicken-covered hands, I was ready to go. 

Over the course of the month I made this three times, twice with chicken and once with duck. The first chicken took me over half an hour (with the video), but by the third time I had it down to 15 minutes and was feeling very happy with this new technique. 

Take One: Chicken Ballotine with Spinach/Mushroom Stuffing




Ready to start! A 6-pound chicken raised here on the farm and a sharp knife. All good.










Wing tips cut off, and a cut down the backbone starts the process. 







Looks vaguely like Alien erupting from a victim, but much less homicidal. Having cut the shoulder joints, the meat was pulled off the central carcass. This was repeated all around, then the hip joints severed to remove all of the meat from the bones.





Ta-dah! It looks just like his. In about three times the time it took him, but hey, I'm new at this. The bones were then removed from the legs and the whole thing was like a chicken puppet. The only bones left in the puppet were the little nubs of bone at the very bottom of the drumsticks.

Chicken laid out flat with stuffing. Chopped spinach and sauteed mushrooms and shallots with panko bread crumbs. A layer of swiss cheese over the top, and it was ready to roll up.

Rolling it all into a nice neat package.








Trussed (note: I am not good at tying half-hitch knots. It was an exercise in trial and error. So if we go camping, don't ask me to tie one unless you plan to wait. And wait.) Ready to roast. rubbed butter into the top of it and roasted it at 400F for about an hour and twenty minutes. 







Looks good, and smelled amazing.

And, sliced. I was so happy with how this turned out. Delicious, juicy, and easy to carve at the table. And it looked good! Roast chicken is one of my favourite meals, but to have it with company is always a little daunting as I am an entirely inept chicken carver and so the lovely roasted poultry coming out of the oven doesn't look nearly as nice when it comes to table. 

A ballotine, however, is a tidy package, a cylinder ready to slice and give everyone meat and stuffing. I have a feeling this will become my go-to for company - so easy to serve!


This was a huge hit with the entire family, and even tasted good cold the next day! I can see why ballontine is often a picnic food.

Take Two: Duck Ballotine with Rice Stuffing

The beauty of learning to do this was, it works for any poultry. The duck seemed to have more sinews and such, but otherwise the anatomy is pretty simliar and all went well. White rice with some sweet chili sauce made for a simple stuffing.

Reasy to roast, the skin pricked all over to let the yummy duck fat escape. No butter needed here, the duck has plenty of its own. Pricking the skin keeps the roast from being greasy.

Carved. Again, meat and stuffing easily served. My kitchen will be seeing more of this. Hmm, turkey? Thanksgiving dinner may never be the same.