Chicken is boring. I will rephrase that. Chicken is boring in most cases. Most people make chicken boring and dry it out. But chicken is an amazing ingredient when handled right. I recently bought a bunch of old cookbooks from second hand stores so I went strumming through them looking for something to do for dinner. I was in search of something to do with eggplant. The revelation came in an old French cookbook. A deboned chicken stuffed with a eggplant and mushroom stuffing. So there began my first challenge; deboning a chicken.
I had heard about how chickens can be deboned and once had a painful Thanksgiving with a bone free turducken. But I never seen someone debone a chicken or have I ever attempted to. I only a few months ago learned how to take apart a chicken. I looked in my copy of The New Professional Chef with no avail so I had to use the extremely vague a pictureless instructions in the French cookbook. This was my aid in deboning the chicken; “working on one side, peel away the leg and thigh, the wing, and the whole breast in one piece along with the skin… repeat the boning operation on the other side…” So I was basically flying blind.
Well after some struggling I sloppily got the carcass out of the chicken and had a deboned chicken.
Then I stuffed the chicken with a mixture of eggplant, chicken liver, mushrooms, egg, cream, breadcrumbs, nutmeg, and Madeira wine. Then tied it up, in a big sloppy mess forming it accidentally into the shape of a pig.
I cooked in on convection which gave it amazingly crispy skin and it came out extremely moist. It also tasted great. Whole new flavors to me, not overpowered by onion, salt, or pepper. Was a little garlicky even though I only put one clove in.
Then I made a squash risotto as a side.
