Engastrated Fowl

turkey	boned, skin on
duck	boned
chicken	boned
pheasant	boned
grouse	boned
carrot	3 quartered lengthwise
onion	1 in eight sections
celery	6 stalks
butter	3 T
rosemary	2 T
salt	to taste
pepper	to taste
chicken broth	1 c

All the other recipes in this cookbook have been prepared several times, usually with variations and experiments to find improvements. This one is not a recipe so much as a report on my first attempt with this dish. Stuffing meat is an old technique that is useful for adding flavor and keeping the meat from becoming dry. Turkey with bread stuffing is common. Steak with oyster stuffing is well known. Several years ago I began reading about the growing popularity of stuffing a turkey with a duck stuffed with a chicken. In England, it is now popular to have a Christmas goose stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck. These birds, stuffed like Russian dolls, should be boneless, and include a duck or a goose to provide integral basting. The technique is called engastration.

I wanted to give this a try. A butcher in Saffron Walden, Burton and Son on King Street, prepares stuffed birds to order, and for the past few years has provided me with grouse and good local pheasants. I asked them to prepare five birds, a 20 pound turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a grouse. The result was an impressive hunk of meat. I was a little disappointed that in boning the turkey they had removed the legs, so it did not look like a turkey. Also as I learned when I cut into it, all the inner birds had been skinned so that it was difficult to see where one bird stopped and another began. The flavor of the dark meat grouse inside remained distinctive however.

I coated the skin lightly with butter, and sprinkled with salt, pepper and rosemary. I placed the birds breast side down on a bed of vegetables in a deep pan, added the chicken stock, covered the pan tightly, and roasted the birds at 350°F (180°C). I basted once an hour and after two hours had to begin removing excess broth and grease, which were kept to make gravy. There was not as much grease as I expected, which was a clue that the duck had been skinned. After three hours, the meat thermometer was above 170°F, so I uncovered the birds and basted every 15 minutes for an hour until the meat thermometer reached 180°F and the skin was a nicely browned. The result was delicious.

Recipe from An Eclectic Cookbook (Copyright © 1987, John S. Garavelli), page 6–14.