Saturday, October 18. 2008
Chicken Ballotine: Life sometimes works out well.
How quickly can you bone out a chicken? Jacques Pepin can rip the flesh from a chicken in less than 90 seconds. Me? 9 minutes plus a running start of prayer and bribes.
Boning out a chicken is the first step to Chicken Ballotine – a bird that is stuffed, rolled and trussed up tighter that a hussy on Halloween.
Then comes the stuffing of roasted sweet potato in one half of the bird and lentils and mustard greens in the other. Each leg has it’s own flavor which is kind of exciting for those of us with limited attention spans.
The trussing has always gotten me in trouble, causing the bird to look like a Picasso Ballotine –a disfigured but essentially good thing that makes for an interesting presentation. This past Ballotine, knot gods behind me, the thing looked (mmostly) right.
Ballotine Stuffing:
Roasted sweet potato with caramelized red onion
Black lentils and mustard greens sautéed with garlic and salt
We roasted the thing at 350° for nearly 90 minutes.
If I had to do all over again, I’d lower the temperature a bit on the back side of the cooking time.
The lemons added to the skillet roast beautifully and go well is duck cracklins, should you have them about.
Boning out a chicken is the first step to Chicken Ballotine – a bird that is stuffed, rolled and trussed up tighter that a hussy on Halloween.
Then comes the stuffing of roasted sweet potato in one half of the bird and lentils and mustard greens in the other. Each leg has it’s own flavor which is kind of exciting for those of us with limited attention spans.
The trussing has always gotten me in trouble, causing the bird to look like a Picasso Ballotine –a disfigured but essentially good thing that makes for an interesting presentation. This past Ballotine, knot gods behind me, the thing looked (mmostly) right.
Ballotine Stuffing:
Roasted sweet potato with caramelized red onion
Black lentils and mustard greens sautéed with garlic and salt
We roasted the thing at 350° for nearly 90 minutes.
If I had to do all over again, I’d lower the temperature a bit on the back side of the cooking time.
The lemons added to the skillet roast beautifully and go well is duck cracklins, should you have them about.
As I have now found out.