A Christmas Stuffing!

Christmas day was lovely. Not too much drink at breakfast, so I avoided the usual early afternoon headache. Instead we had a lovely walk out with the dogs while the turkey was cooking. And Sue got presents, unexpected presents as I had spent the last couple of months priming her to think I was not doing Christmas at all this year. I got some lovely presents from Sue too.

Highlight of the day was the stuffed turkey. It went way beyond what I had expected. In fact I would go as far as to say the stuffing was one of the nicest things I have ever tasted.

So here's the recipe, as far as I can remember. It makes about 5 lbs of stuffing and we only needed about half of it to stuff a boned and rolled small/medium turkey. So you may well want to scale it right down.

If you make too much, the rest can be rolled into balls and frozen for later.



Here are the ingredients. We pretty much made it up and you can vary the amounts according to what you like.

• 2 medium onions, chopped in food processor
• 3 sticks celery, finely sliced
• 3 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• c60g butter for sweating down

Sweat these ingredients down until softened but not brown

• 300g sausage meat (buy your favourite sausage and take off the skin)
• about 500g bread (we used a mix of granary and bloomer) Slice thickly and toast lightly before whizzing into coarse breadcrumbs
• 200g packet of chestnuts, roughly chopped
• 100g dried cranberries
• 100g citrus candied peel
• 20g dried porcini mushrooms. Soak in a small bowl of boiling water for a few minutes and snip into smaller pieces (reserve the mushroom water)
• 100g brazil nuts, roughly chopped in food processor
• Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, all finely chopped. Use lots if you like herbs. We used fresh from the garden.

Add all these ingredients and mix thoroughly

• 2 eggs, beaten
• Chicken stock cube. Vegetable stock cube.

Mix in the beaten eggs.
To your small bowl of mushroom water, add 1 chicken stock cube and 1 vegetable stock cube.
Mix enough of this liquid into the stuffing to bind everything together and achieve the consistency you want.

Finally season well with salt and pepper.
Take a small piece of stuffing and fry in oil to check for taste and seasoning.

And that's it! You won't believe how good it tastes.