Gobble gobble....

Good morning one and all.

Encouraging figures for blog visits yesterday considering I've been a bad boy and not updated for a while. It's always humbling to see that people have not only read the article rather than just skipped over but also seem to have encouraged others too do so as well :-)

So yesterday I told of how I managed to feed five people their expected dosage of yuletide gobbler for very little cost in comparison to a whole cooked turkey. Going on from this it's not just turkey that you can employ this method on as it'll work with any bird or in fact any lean meat will benefit from using this combination of frugality and low temperature cooking.

When you buy fresh meat you pay for it according to it's weight so unless you particularly need or want the bones to either make a stock or if you want to cook a joint of meat on the bone for extra flavour as you would perhaps a lamb shank of rib of beef then why pay for their weight?

Another thing to consider, especially when buying white meat is the flavour that you want to achieve. For me there is no point in just roasting a chicken breast in a hot oven with no extra seasoning because it'll just be flavourless. The harder working muscles of any animal are always the most flavoursome but this comes at a price because it also means that they have more muscle formation which in turn makes them tougher in texture.

Just think of your own body. Unless you are Dolly Parton on treadmill or some meathead in a vest top then your own breast meat isn't really doing much on a day to day basis, it's not working hard enough to have all those blood cells pushing through an engorging the muscles fibres. Your legs however are used much more often and those constantly expanding and contracting muscle fibres need to be supplied with lots of fuel to keep going.

The same applies to animals.

With these factors in mind in went and got myself a pre-boned thigh joint of turkey from Waitrose for just £10. This joint in particular came already stuffed and rolled ready for slinging straight in the oven which is fair enough but I only wanted the meat off this joint so the string was quickly snipped off, the stuffing binned and the skin taken off. I'm absolutely sure you could get a the same joint minus the pre-faffing from any proper butcher and I'd encourage you to do so.

(I didn't keep the stuffing because I was making my own but there is no reason why it could be used in this dish too instead of binning it)

From looking at this naked flesh you can quite clearly notice it's deeper colour, it's almost brown. Amongst the more fibrous meat however there are little nuggets of whole lean muscle that you want to separate from the rest so what you need to do is get yourself a sharp knife and just butcher away at the joint until you have got all the good chunky tender meat to one side. You should be able to get a 3 or 4 good quality mini medallions of meat out of a turkey thigh.

The rest of the meat does not get wasted in fact it forms a very important part of the final dish but first you need to go through it again and remove and of the larger pieces of sinue and bigger pieces of fat. Keeping a little bit of the fat in there doesn't do any harm though as it'll dissipate though the meat when it's cooking keeping it nice and moist.

When this process is complete take half the trimmed meat (not the mini medallions, leave these alone for the time being) and pulse it in a blender with a bit of seasoning a few times until it's minced and remove to a mixing bowl. Then take the remaining trimmed meat and this time blend right down until it's almost a paste. You can add some double cream too whilst blending. This will help loosen it up a bit and add a level of richness to the end flavour. Once done empty the turkey paste into the same bowl as the minced turkey.

Now you can cut the mini medallions into smaller pieces, maybe strips and again add these into the mixing bowl. What you now have is the complete joint in three different forms which will give three distinct textures when finished so add some seasoning and a few finely chopped fresh herbs (I used sage and thyme) and give the whole lot a good mixing with a spoon.

The next thing to do is to form a stuffed turkey sausage or "Ballatine" to give it it's proper culinary term....I think....well that's what I'm calling it anyway :-)

The three components to this are firstly the sausage skin and for this I used Parma ham, you could also use smoked bacon which has been flattened out between two sheet of cling film and rolled over with a rolling pin....a bottle of wine makes a good rolling pin substitute if you don't have one to hand.

The second component is the stuffing. Now I made my own beforehand with a good quality sausage meat, chestnut mushrooms, chestnuts, red onion, pine nuts, breadcrumbs and chopped dates but you can use whatever you like.

Component three is of course the turkey mixture itself.

Forming the ballantine is not as tricky as you might think. Lay flat a piece of Clingfilm onto a worktop from back to front. Next leaving a couple of inches on each side lay (lengthways) the parma ham or bacon down onto it so that they overlap and form a sheet. Depending on how thick you want your finished ballantine you may want to add a second layer further down in case it doesn't fully wrap. It's much better to do this if you are unsure and it won't hurt at all if you have too much whereas it'll be a disaster if you have too little.

Now take the turkey mixture and empty it onto Parma ham. Spread it out into an even layer starting at the top and working your way down, you want to leave a good inch at the sides and perhaps two at the bottom, this will be important later when forming the ballantine.

Finally on top of the turkey spread a layer of the stuffing, this doesn't need to be to thick, the main purpose of the stuffing is to keep the turkey moist as it cooks and to add further flavour.

To form the ballantine lift the top edge of the Clingfilm and move it towards you and keep doing so until the mixture starts to roll into itself. Let the parma ham peel off the Clingfilm as it slowly encases the filling to form a big sausage shape.

At this stage you could just fold in the edges and cook in the oven at about 170/180C for about an hour but I prefer to do mine a little differently. Cooking it now would mean that some of the juices would flow out of the ballantine while it's in the oven losing moisture so ideally you want to keep all of those juices locked in at to do this is quite easy.

Take another piece of Clingfilm about 8 inches longer than the length of the ballantine and lay it on the same worktop this time placed from left to right. In the centre of this place the ballantine so that it is parallel to the Clingfilm the bring the top and bottom edge of the Clingfilm over the ballantine forming as tight a fit as you can. Finally take the excess on each side then lift and spin so that the spinning action closes off the sides an compresses the sausage into a much firmer rounded shape getting as much air out as you can.

Tie up the ends so the shape holds. At this stage I would vacuum pack mine give it a completely air tight seal then I'd cook it on my water bath and 67.5 C for around 7 hours but I realise that I'm probably the only person reading this who has such apparatus. Fear not though because you can do it another way.........

One wrapping in Clingfilm will most likely not be enough using this other method so you may want to wrap it a few more times. A little bit of water getting in won't hurt but it's best to be a sealed as possible.

When you are happy that the wrapping is good then place the ballantine in a high sided oven dish and fill the dish with water until it is about 3/4 of the way up the ballantine. Place this (Bain Marie) in the oven at around 140/150C for a good 3 or 4 hours keeping an eye on the water level from time to time and topping up if necessary.

Whether you use the water bath or bain marie method it'll be necessary to colour the finished ballantine before serving, to do this remove the Clingfilm/vacuum wrapping from the ballantine while heating some butter and oil in a frying pan until hot then simply roll the whole sausage in the pan until you have the colour you desire.

Leave it to rest for 15/20 minutes before carving into rounds.

It really does sound harder than it actually is. This is such a good way to make a very substantial and tasty meal using fresh ingredients at low cost.

The cooking method too can be employed on a multitude of different meats and even fish. Monkfish in parma ham is an outrageously good combination and cooking it this way (although adjusting the cooking times to suit) locks in all those delicious flavours.