DINNER PARTIES GALORE

For my final exam coming up in the next couple weeks, students are provided with ingredients from which they are expected to prepare three dishes: roasted stuffed chicken legs with a Jus Lie, sweet potato mash, and glazed battonets of turnips, carrots, and french green beans.  We were given lists of ingredients for each dish, but no method.  Instead, we filled out the method ourselves and handed this portion of our exam in a week before the practical.

Because I have such wonderful friends who are always more than willing to eat my food, I thought hosting a dinner party featuring this meal (well almost) would be great practice/studying for my final.  I invited 16 of my closest friends, ordered eight chickens from the butcher down at the market, purchased all the ingredients plus some, and got down to business.  Butchering and de-boning eight chickens was sure as hell more time consuming than I had anticipated, but very useful for the fine-tuning of my skills.  It took me almost three hours to butcher all of the chickens.

Instead of making the glazed battonets of vegetables, which I figure (or hope) I will have little trouble with, I made a simple ratatouille - as I cringed at the thought of serving such elementary garbage to my guests.

Instead of stuffing the chicken leg with a farce of ground chicken, I opted for ground lamb.  The idea of stuffing chicken with chicken seemed slightly redundant to be honest (and honestly, who wouldn't prefer lamb?).  The stuffing turned out better than I had expected, and everyone who didn't have a moral problem with eating lamb absolutely loved it!

Because I didn't want to waste any part of the chickens that I had butchered, and I knew some of my friends only eat white meat, I stuffed the breasts with a spinach, goat-cheese, and pine nut filling.  In addition, I used the bones from the chickens to make a stock that I used for a demi-glace sauce. I also kept all the extra fat and rendered it down, using it instead of butter in my ratatouille (as it has a lot more flavour!).

The stuffed chicken legs turned out great.  Everyone loved the meal, and I feel relatively confident that I will do well in my exam!  I'll let you guys know...