Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Chipoussil, cousin of turducken.

I have invented a word.

The word above does not appear on any of my rudimentary search engine attempts.  So I'm claiming it!  It took about a minute to create, and some would recommend chipoussail (which also doesn't come up).

Chicken-poussin-quail.

After the New Years madness of Turducken we needed a new food challenge.  Cheesemaking has been happily taking up time, but for good old fashioned fun we needed to do something different.  And it seemed a good excuse to buy quail, even if you have to buy them in packs of four!

The theory is the same as turducken:  the inner birds are completely deboned, the outer bird is partially deboned, with drumsticks and wings left on.  There is a layer of stuffing between each bird.  Fancy stitch work, or just fun impaling with skewers to close together at the end and you have your own mixed meat bird!

Chicken: panko breadcrumbs, egg, salt, pepper and parsley stuffing.
Poussin: moroccon lamb sausage and pinenuts stuffing
Quail: spinach and bacon

As usual, the deboning (dissection) was handled by my husband, who has gotten rather quick at processing the birds.  In no time at all there was a lovely stack of bones for making stock, and once the layers of stuffing were added it was just time to roll up, secure and then cook for three hours (to at least 70 degrees).

Yum.

Chipoussil was part of our annual Easter Sunday lunch.  Each year we put on a roast and invite people who are not doing anything else to come over.  Most years our experience has been that everyone goes away on holiday, and about five or six people come over.  This year we had full attendance.  I was rather worried that our tiny house would struggle with this many people, and that there wouldn't be enough food, but it all came together.  My mother was visiting and rather gamely assisted with the massive food production.  She made some delicious meringues with yummy raspberry sauce, and assembled the most delicious orange tiramisu/ trifle. People snugged up together on the floor or on the couches, the children ran off to play in the hidey hut in my daughter's room and a good time was had by all.  It was such a lovely afternoon.  I love having lots of people over, and will hopefully one day balance the host's need to keep things moving with my desire to sit down and have lots of lovely chats!!

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