Stuffed Turkey

with an orange and balsamic glaze and a summer vegetable salad

Hello everyone welcome back to the second installment of Robbies recipes. Well leading up to Christmas I am a bit of a traditionalist. I love my roasts but Australian summers are not exactly conducive to hot meals so I wanted to do a recipe that can be served cold or hot if you prefer.

Stuffed turkey, orange and balsamic glaze and a summer vegetable salad

• Turkey is one of the lowest fat mainstream meats around
• 100g of grilled turkey breast meat without its skin contains just 155 calories and 1.7g of fat
• Turkey(particularly the dark meat) is a good source of zinc - needed for a healthy immune system and for healing cuts and grazes. Zinc also makes many enzymes in our bodies involved in fat, protein and carbohydrate metabolism

Ingredients

For the turkey and stuffing you will need;

• 1.8kg turkey breast (approximately)
• 250gr lean pork mince
• 3 slices of wholegrain bread crusts removed
• 4 golden shallots diced
• 4 cloves of garlic chopped
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp of chopped sage
• 2 tbsp of chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1 tbsp of wholegrain mustard
• ½ cup of chicken stock
• Salt and Pepper
• Milk
• Glad wrap

For the sauce you will need;

• 2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
• ½ cup of orange juice
• 2 cups of chicken stock
• 2 tsps of cornflour

To make the stuffing;

In a bowl place the bread with crusts removed just place enough milk to make the bread wet, remove the bread and break into small enough pieces that it can be mixed through the stuffing mixture.

Place all the ingredients above in the bowl except the turkey breast and mix well until all ingredients are combined. Moisten your working surface and place one length of glad wrap approximately 30cm in length on the bench, so you should be looking at a square. Spoon all the stuffing mixture approximately 5cm in from the bottom of the glad wrap and until you have formed a rough looking sausage shape around the same length as your turkey breast. Now grab the bottom of the glad wrap below your stuffing and place the glad wrap up and over the stuffing mixture careful not to pull tight as the mixture will squeeze out the side. Lightly pat down the glad wrap which you pulled up and over the stuffing mixture. Now grab the glad wrap on each side of the stuffing mixture, pull tight and move the stuffing and glad wrap away from you as if you are rolling a rolling pin. Now you should have a bon bon shaped piece of stuffing within the glad wrap.

Lay another piece of glad wrap of the same size as the previous step and lay this flat on the bench and place your stuffing mixture on top of the glad wrap and repeat the process.

Place a pot or frying pan wide enough and deep enough as when it is filled with water it can cover your bon bon of stuffing. Bring the water to a simmer and place the stuffing mixture carefully in the water leave to cook for 10 minutes. Carefully remove the stuffing from the water with a slotted spoon it should feel firm like a sausage if not place back in the water until cooked. Remove and cool. Once the stuffing is cool remove the glad wrap carefully and place to the side.

To stuff your bird;

Place the turkey breast on a stable chopping board with a sharp knife place on hand flat on top of the breast and insert the knife into the breast as to make an incision along the length of the turkey breast long enough to house the sausage. Carefully insert the stuffing into the incision, if it does not go in easily slide in, enlarge the hole with your knife. Remove any excess stuffing outside of the turkey with your knife.

Pre heat the oven to 160c, heat a roasting pan over med to high heat and place 2 tbsps of olive oil and seal and brown the turkey breast on all sides. Place in oven and baste with pan juices every 10 minutes. Cook for approximately 45 mins or until the internal temperature of the breast at the thickest point reaches 70c or when pieced with a skewer the juices run clear. Remove from the over wrap in alfoil and rest.

For the sauce;

Skim any fat from the pan juices and add the balsamic, orange juice and chicken stock. Bring to boil and scraping any bits left in the pan. Dissolve the cornflour in enough water to dissolve and make liquid, whisk into pan juices and bring to boil, either add some more stock or reduce to achieve the desired consistency.

Summer vegetable salad

For the salad you will need;

• 1 bunch of green asparagus
• 3 radishes
• 100gr of green beans
• 100gr of fresh peas
• 300gr of small cocktail or new potatoes.
• 3 vine ripened tomatoes
• 50gr of pitted good quality olives
• 1 cucumber
• 1 bunch of watercress
• 1 small head of baby fennel
• 10 torn leaves of basil
• ½ bunch of chives finely sliced
• 5 leaves of torn mint
• Maldon salt or sea salt
• Ground black pepper
• For the dressing you will need;
• 1 tbsp of lemon juice
• 4 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
• Maldon salt or sea salt
• Ground black pepper

Method;

Place the potatoes in cold water with a good dash of salt bring to boil till cooked remove and cool. For the asparagus cut approximately 4 cm off the base of the asparagus, using a sharp peeler peel the bottom two thirds of the asparagus. Dice the asparagus into approximately 3 cm lengths

Place a large pot of water on the stove add salt to the water until it tastes salty. Bring to boil. Blanch separately the asparagus, green beans and and fresh peas until just cooked, refresh in a bowl of water with plenty of ice until cold drain well and reserve.

Wash and clean the watercress removing any large stems and place in a bowl with the well drained blanched vegetables. Remove the skin of the cooled potatoes dice into small 2cm chunks and add to the bowl. Slice the tomatoes in quarter through the eye of the tomato discard the seed and dice into 2cm pieces. With a peeler, peel the skin of the cucumber cut in half lengthwise and using a teaspoon discard the seeds and dice as well. With a sharp knife finely slice and the fennel and washed radishes, and add to the bowl along with the rest of the ingredients.

For the dressing;

Whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice, season to taste.

To assemble;

Toss the salad with the dressing and salt and pepper to taste, mound a nice pile on a plate, slice the turkey and drizzle with sauce. Serve and enjoy and merry Christmas.

Almost forgot what Robbie’s recipes without some bad jokes and useful facts.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept),we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second-a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

Lastly I know you have been waiting for it and here it is.

A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store, but couldn't find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, "Do these turkeys get any bigger?"

The stock boy replied, "No ma'am, they're dead."