Stuffed Roast Chicken Recipe – Pollo Ripieno Arrosto
There are all sorts of ways to stuff a chicken. Artusi uses chestnuts, among other things, and says: “This filling isn’t refined cuisine, but is rather for family use. For a mid-sized chicken, the following quantities of ingredients will suffice.”
INGREDIENTS
- A fairly large chicken, boned
- 2 sausages (mild Italian, not the spicy Neapolitan variety)
- The liver, comb, and wattles of the chicken.
- 8 to 10 well roasted chestnuts
- A small truffle, or, in its absence, some dried porcini
- Nutmeg to taste
- 1 egg
PREPARATION
If you are stuffing a turkey rather than a chicken, double the quantities.
Begin by cooking the sausages and the chicken parts till they’re half done in butter, adding broth if necessary to keep them from drying out and toughening. Meanwhile, steep the mushrooms in boiling water. Remove the meat from the pan and mix some bread crumbs and enough broth into the drippings to have two tablespoons of firm paste.
Skin the sausages, mince the soaked mushrooms and the chicken parts, and mix these ingredients with the paste, the egg, and the chestnuts. Grind everything except the truffles to a fine paste with a mortar (Artusi was writing before the days of food processors, which you should feel free to use). Then finely slice the truffle, add it to the filling, stuff the chicken, and roast it.
Before you stuff the chicken, preheat your oven to 450 °F (200 °C). Put the stuffed bird on a rack, grease it, dust it with salt and pepper, and put it into the oven, uncovered; reduce the heat to 375 °F (170 °C). Cook about twenty minutes per pound, basting if necessary.
A wine? Red, and a moderately oaked Barbera Superiore would be nice.