Yesterday, Jean & I think we had one of the best Christmas dinners we can remember 🙂 We had intended on having an early dinner/lunch which would have needed us to get up fairly early Christmas morning. However, after entertaining a dear friend and us attending Midnight Mass, we did not get to bed until 2.30am as happens to us most Christmas Eves! We still were up around 9am and started to prepare our main meal. We had bought most of the food, meat vegetables etc fresh at Chapel Street Market, Islington, N.London last Saturday.
We found that most of the shops did not have cranberry & chestnut stuffing an essential must for Xmas Turkey. We decided that we would make our own. Donning my Christmas Chef’s hat and apron, I gathered the stuffing ingredients.
Last year we were given a gift of a Kenwood food processor/blender. We had not used fully, but it proved most useful in making the stuffing, I think we will use it more!
Jean worked on the main part of the dinner preparation I assisted when needed!
Being the stuffing (not stuffed) ‘chef’, I first baked 3/4 pound (340 grams) (about 15 sweet chestnuts) (Castanea sativa) on a baking tray. A tip before baking chestnuts in the oven is to crack the hard ‘shell’ this will allow air to escape when heating as the nuts will expand and burst/pop open in the oven. I baked them for about 20 minutes.
Sweet chestnuts
After taking the chestnuts out of the oven and allow to cool I opened the shell scooped out the soft edible white nut. Very tasty, we were tempted to eat the delicious warm nuts. I placed the nuts into the blender to crush -not painful. 😉
Blending the stuffing ingredients
After blending the chestnuts I crumbled three slices of white bread (stale bread can be used too). I blended the bread pieces into crumbs. I then blended one onion, two rashers of bacon and 2 lbs (907 grams) of sausage meat and of course half a jar (125 ml) pure cranberry sauce.
Mixing the stuffing ingredients
I mixed & kneaded all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl, then shaped into 20 small balls and placed on a baking tray.
Christmas Dinner – Home Made Chestnut & Cranberry Sauce Stuffing
I baked the stuffing balls for about 30 minutes 190c. It is best to do this together with the last 30 minutes of roasting the turkey. I was pleased the result was delicious stuffing to accompany the turkey. 🙂
Cooked Chestnut & Cranberry stuffing ready for the turkey
Did you know?
The first meal eaten by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while on the moon was a tin-foil packed roast turkey with all the trimmings.