Roast stuffing with all the trimmings

Sunday a week ago was a day for roast chicken with all the trimmings, which in our case includes stuffing which does not get stuffed, rather cooked on the bottom shelf in a pie dish. Can't remember when we last actually stuffed a chicken - or a turkey for that matter, turkeys having been ruled too big for comfort for some years now. Although I do remember the business of sewing up the stuffed fowl and search of  the blogs now reveals chicken sewing just eight years ago at reference 1. And judging by the tone of that notice, I dare say there was a bit more after that, maybe with pictures.

Part of the move to pie dish was a hygiene thing, one was more confident that a frozen fowl had been properly cooked when the heat from the outside could get inside, through the vent. Part was one got a lot more stuffing in a pie dish than inside the fowl. And there might have been a transitional period when we did both. But the pie dish has now become traditional in its turn. With the last outing being enlivened by speck from the Alto Adige, as reported at reference 2.

On this occasion, rather than speck, we used dry cured streaky bacon from Manor Green Road, but mosaic cut, in the new way that worked well then. BH reminded me that the official recipe included butter, omitted when I made stuffing as a child, the family having a bit of a down on fat consumption. But somehow, without referring to that recipe, I have taken to adding between one and two tablespoons of rape seed oil to the mix, in addition to the fat from the bacon on top. It seems to improve the result.

Taken with the usual boiled vegetables and one of our remaining bottles of Pierre Précieuse, first encountered at Terroirs, now unvisited since February, as noticed at reference 3. Here's hoping they survive until we feel comfortable eating in their not terribly well ventilated sub-ground dining room. From the same stable as the shell hole stuff mentioned at the end of reference 4 - and once again, started a clear pale yellow and gradually turned cloudy, though not as quickly or as much. Good stuff though. Contemplating buying some more (from the people near Guildford who supply Terroirs).

Dessert bowls out, but no dessert visible. Possibly plum crumble, made with large, pale plums from Spain. Too large I thought to be fit for eating raw, this despite their quite possibly being 'ripe and ready to eat', to use the latest catch phrase turned out by the marketing people at Sainsbury's.

Not much of the stuffing survived the first campaign.

The chicken survived to eat one day cold, one day soup (main) and the last day soup (supplemental). Rather good soup, although I say it myself, involving, inter alia, four ounces of red lentils and four more rashers of the streaky bacon. Better than the soup noticed at reference 5, which used the same bacon, but with the soup ending up a touch salty, what with all the salt supplied by Knorr.

PS: once again, the bacon used in this meal probably cost more than the chicken, certainly more than the chicken used in this meal.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-warning.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/speck_13.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/02/courtauld-first-campaign.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/dr-z-part-1.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-good-afternoon.html.