Chickens, Chickens, Everywhere!

 ...Aaaaaand we're back after two long (not exaggerating at all) weeks without a post. I swear, life just gets away from you sometimes! I can't believe it's already May 5th! Where did the year go?? I'm really excited to dive back into this project head-on and produce some amazing dishes! Starting with Chef Ramsay's recipe for Stuffed Chicken with Garlic and Chestnut Stuffing! But first, a little background story!!

Yesterday, Yeti and I had the pleasure of cooking for a few of my in-laws. My mother-in-law, Denise (who is super awesome and probably cooler than your mother-in-law), let us usurp her kitchen for a little while to experiment with another of Gordon's delicious recipes. The little fellows in the picture to the left are just a few of the Silky Chickens that she keeps at her home! The other fully grown chickens are kept outside in the coop of course but these guys are almost brand new! These little ones were born ON Easter and they have already grown so much just in the short span of time since then! It was so much fun watching them run around. It really did remind me of how toddlers run and play with each other.  I also find it highly ironic that here we are about to begin cooking a chicken recipe and there are baby chicks running around at our feet not knowing what's about to happen. That's the circle of life I guess, huh? But don't worry no one kills and eats the silky chickens. They're pets and they produce some of the best eggs i've ever eaten :). And now,  onto the recipe!

So the title of this recipe is called "Stuffed Chicken with Garlic and Chestnut Stuffing". The unfortunate part of that is we didn't have the chestnuts, but it turned out in the end, you don't really need them! The other elements of the stuffing (onion, garlic, celery, parsley, pine nuts and rice) all come together beautifully. But first and foremost (before we even got the stuffing we had to acquire a de-boned chicken. I had no idea where to even start with that but luckily Yeti knew of a wonderful market called Savenor's in Cambridge that could take care of it for us!  They even wrapped it back up for us and let us keep some of the bones to make a stock in the future!

Wrapped with additional bones

De-boned!  

  Pretty neat, huh? It was really neat watching the butcher cut out the ribs and the joint bones! It looked so intensive yet he did it so quickly! We left the drumsticks on because the recipe didn't say whether we should leave them off or not. but the end result after the chicken was wrapped was nothing short of hilarious. But that's a step or two away,  now onto the stuffing! As I said earlier, it was a fairly simple mix of onion, garlic, celery, parsley, pine nuts and rice. All of which being added at various stages of doneness. Is doneness even a word?  Anyway, I only got a few shots of the stuffing prep as it had to be stirred constantly to prevent over cooking. We also added rice with turkey stock (homemade) for flavoring. The rice was a little underdone when it was added but it worked out really well in the end since the rice cooked while inside the chicken absorbing more moisture. It was beautifully cooked. The pine nuts especially added a nice crunch to the stuffing. I have to say I'm rather impressed with myself. A few years ago, you couldn't PAY me to eat the amount of onions like the one in the first picture. I always thought they were repulsive. But I hardly taste them now! Becoming a quasi-foodie has really been wonderful :).

The stuffing process itself turned out to be less labor intensive then I thought. Although I credit that to having a few extra hands in the kitchen (myself, Yeti, and my sister-in-law Nicole). If I had to stuff AND roll a chicken AND tie the strings all on my own, there would have been a huge mess. Like I said earlier, the end result was...hilarious looking. So much so that my sister-in-law thought it would be funny to give the chicken/parcel/alien a face. The uncooked chicken looked very similar to something I saw in Rob Zombie's "Lords Of Salem" last week.  Needless to say, the face didn't stay on for long. The cook time for the chicken was one hour at 350 degrees, plus an additional 15 minutes at 400 with the purpose of crisping the skin. What we found, however, was that our chicken was pretty well crisp halfway through the additional time. Here are some before and after shots: 

I'm sorry but I find the little legs sticking out at the bottom highly amusing, yet somewhat disturbing. It looks like the poor thing was just horribly tortured in the oven. We let the finished chicken rest for about 15 minutes after cooking to preserve the juices. Gordon is a big advocate for letting your meats rest to save and absorb as much of the flavor as possible. What a difference it makes! I was extremely pleased with how this entree came out. The chicken was moist, completely cooked through and had such an intense flavor from the stuffing! As I said previously. the stuffing was unbelievable and so simple to prepare!  We made some simple sides to go with it (basic mashed potatoes and corn on the cob) since the main attraction was of course the chicken and we didn't want to overshadow it. It's amazing to me how adding just a few simple steps (aside from the de-boning part) can turn a normal roasted chicken into something specatular like this! 

I can't wait to start working on the next dish. I'm thinking since we got some extremely fresh eggs from Denise's silky chickens we should probably go with the recipe for a Bacon, Peas and Goat Cheese Frittata. What do you all think? Anything you guys want to see us try next? We have a bunch of different options ready to go including all kinds of proteins, some vegetarian and even some desserts! I can't wait to see where this project goes from here! Thanks a million to Chef Gordon for creating such a mouth-watering and delicious recipe, and a huge thanks to my amazing mother-in-law and her husband Paul for letting us come in and make a mess of their kitchen ;).