As mentioned in Day 100 of The Challenge
My grandmother was a big lover of veal, and so ordered and bought an entire veal which went into the chest freezer. Her health then declined, she cooked less and then passed away, leaving a still significant amount of veal behind. We cooked stuffed veal breast while at my parents' this summer, and then we were sent away with the other one. I had been toying with what to do with it when I started my adventures into fenugreek exploration, and for the past couple of months had been sitting on this idea, of using orange, fenugreek seeds and fenugreek leaves. All in all it came out very well!
Ingredients:
3-4 slices of bread, toasted
1 apple, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1/2 head of garlic, minced or sliced fine
1/2 tbsp olive oil
A handful of dates, chopped
A handful of raisins
2 tsp orange peel
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/4 -1/2 tsp tandoori powder
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp fenugreek leaves
1/3 c apple juice
Salt and pepper
Broth or apple juice (optional) for moistening if roasting separate from the meat
1) Sauté the onions and garlic in the olive oil until translucent.
2) Crumble the toasted slices of bread into a large bowl. Add the other ingredients and mix well.
3) Stuff your bird, or roll up in veal breast and roast. Alternatively add a little extra liquid (broth or apple juice) and roast in an oven proof dish for 30-40 minutes at 180°C.
We have now had this stuffing on two occasions. The first time I rolled some up in the veal breast and placed the rest under the meat in the roasting pan. On this occasion the stuffing was perhaps the best part of the meal and we fell in love with it, bathed in the veal's roasting juices, and very moist. The tandoori came across a little too strongly though (although whether that was from the stuffing or the rosehip glaze on top of the veal I am not sure).
The second time, we used this stuffing instead of our traditional cornbread stuffing to have with our Thanksgiving chicken for our much-delayed Thanksgiving dinner (I am afraid I forgot to take a picture of the roast). On this occasion I layered the roasting pan with sweet potatoes, then the stuffing which didn't fit in the bird, then the bird with chestnuts (parboiled and peeled) snuggled in around it. I did not use any tandoori powder this time, and the flavours played off of each other very nicely, with the exception of a little bitterness from the fenugreek leaves. This stuffing I think is better suited to a slightly more strongly flavoured meat, and if I were to do it with chicken again I would use less of the fenugreek leaves, and possibly a little less garlic.
The third use of this stuffing has been in leftovers pies, made using the remaining sweet potato, stuffing and chestnuts from Thanksgiving dinner. I spread cranberry sauce on one side of the pastry, placed the roasting side mix in the middle and sealed the pies into half moons and brushed with a little milk. They were super tasty! No issues with the garlic or fenugreek in this little lunch dish. The sweeter notes of the sweet potato and chestnut played well with the more savoury tones from the stuffing. It also worked well with a slice or two of roast pumpkin stuffed in there, or a couple of pieces of persimmon in the pie. I highly recommend doing this if you don't know what to do with roast dinner left-overs any time, but this stuffing lent itself particularly well to this.
