Chicken thighs with Chestnut Stuffing

Method

Melt the butter in the pan, then add the bacon and onion, cooking them until the bacon is crisp and the onion soft. Add the chestnuts and cook for a further 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Add the breadcrumbs, parsley and seasoning (to taste) and bind the mixture together with the egg yolk. Roll up each chicken thigh around a quarter of the stuffing and place in a roasting tin. They should be ready to eat after 25minutes or so, the chicken cooked through and lightly browned.  Shirley served hers with fluffy potatoes mashed together with celeriac (delicious), whilst I did roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary, still making use of those garden herbs. I followed Shirley’s idea of adding a teaspoon of cranberry jelly to my chicken stock gravy, which worked well.

Chestnuts, finely chopped – I used 2 packs of chestnuts bought locally – Shirley uses a tin of chestnuts, or for this amount, 4oz frozen chestnuts  

On one hand it is somewhat demoralizing at times that my friends seem to be everything that I am not in the kitchen; confident, organized, efficient, imaginative and all the rest. On the other hand, it is an added bonus to come away from an enjoyable visit to a dear friend, laden with ideas to improve my own cuisine and kitchen management. So it was after a wonderful few days in France this summer, visiting the jazz café where Shirley weekly caters for up to 80 diners and jazz enthusiasts – yes, you’ll remember my mentioning her to you about a year ago. She continues to do a wonderful job, not attempting to cook in a French way, but producing meals, which she would make back here in her home county of Cornwall, and which are proving to be very popular in her part of Normandy. We were able to enjoy Chicken thighs with chestnut stuffing this summer, which I decided I must try out. I attempted to buy the requisite chestnuts on the way home from the ferry, with no success, but managed to obtain them – guess where – from our very own village shop. Is there anything they don’t stock there! Here’s the recipe, for which I used those wonderfully tasty and good value chicken thighs we can also buy locally. Remember that Shirley cooked this one up for 80 people, so how easily you could do this one for the family, as I have done.

Mrs Trewhitless