Sausage-Stuffed Cornish Hens # French Fridays with Dorie

For this Friday, the Doristas were assigned to cook Sausage-Stuffed Cornish Hens.

I had really been looking forward for this week's assignment. I had spotted this recipe soon after getting my copy of the book . It had reminded me of my mother's stuffed chicken roast, the dish that used she took pride in and cooked only for very special guests. Her chicken roasts used to be deliciously infused with a mix of Afghan and Indian flavors. I guess she had found the recipe in one of the cooking magazines that she read from cover to cover. While her new finds constantly replaced the old ones, some recipes like the stuffed chicken roast continued to be the show stopper in many of her dinner parties...  

Compared to the stuffed chicken roast of my childhood, Dorie's recipe of the sausage-stuffed cornish hens felt much simpler and easy to put together... delicious nevertheless. I could easily pull it off on a weeknight without much fuss or preparation. No overnight brining, no marination was required. All I had to do was to prepare the sausage stuffing, loosely stuff the hen with it, heavily season and oil-massage its exterior,  then roast the hen using the side-side-back method also referred to as the hurry-up-and-wait chicken roast method. 

Few months back the Doristas reviewed Dorie's Hurry-up-and-wait chicken roast. I had skipped FFwD that week but had tried the recipe later... Since this week's recipe involves the same method, I thought it would be appropriate to share my views on that here....

Okay, let me quickly elaborate on the "hurry-up-and-wait" chicken roast method. This method is inspired by the famous French chef, Joël Robuchon. When in a hurry, he advises on roasting the bird at a high temperature, turning it  from one side to another at 15 to 25 minutes interval, depending on the size of the fowl, then laying it on its back for about 5 to 10 minutes before removing it from the oven and giving the fowl a feet-in-the-air rest for 5 to 10 minutes.

During those last 5-10 minutes of feet-in-the-air-moments he recommends tenting the roast with a foil. Dorie says that that final step is a crucial part of his method as it  allows the juices to return to the breast, thereby producing the most succulent chicken roasts ever. As tedious and cumbersome as the method looks/sounds, it produces real juicy roasts and has ever since become my favorite way of roasting chickens....

So I was  happy to try it on the stuffed cornish hens as well and as always the method delivered. I must however mention here that it was much easier to execute the method on the cornish hen as I could easily lift it up by the legs and rest it  on the edges of the pan in that inverted position... 

Giving the Roasted Cornish hen a feet-in-the-air treatment..

Now about the stuffing.. For that, all we had to do was to saute some finely chopped onions and garlic in a oil and butter mixture, cook the chopped sausages in it, cool the mixture before adding diced bread, a beaten egg, some parsley and salt and pepper to it. I on my part could not help throwing in some peas, chopped olives, bit of red wine and a fillet of anchovy into the skillet. With all the additions, I had quite a bit of stuffing left which I added to the sauce of butter and white wine. The outcome was lovely. We really enjoyed our halves of the stuffed cornish hen with rice, roasted veggies and the delicious sauce.... Even the little boy seemed to like his portion of  the chicken without the stuffing. So dinner time was sweet and unfussy... the way I would love each of our mealtimes to be..... 

Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about the stuffed roast. You can find the cornish-hen recipe here and the recipe for Hurry-up-and-wait chicken roast here. or more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at all these parties.