Capon with chestnuts

You don’t know it yet, but I am a real terrorist with my family when it comes to Christmas… Indeed, it is for me perfectly unthinkable to change anything in our tradition for the meals of the 24th and 25th. It’s been exactly the same since I was a kid and I’m sure nothing will change for a long time to come. This probably makes me feel better and I have the rest of the year to experiment with new recipes. So these two days are a kind of family and unchanging parenthesis. For me, Christmas has to have a big beautiful tree, cinnamon cakes that have to bake in the oven, it also means making crispy praline (which I put in my logs) and my mom has to make her capon with chestnuts (with chestnuts really). On the 25th, it’s always like this: we open our presents in the morning, then right after breakfast, we are in the kitchen to prepare the capon that will fill the whole house with a delicious smell. And for lunch, it’s “homemade” foie gras as a starter, then our capon! I never get tired of it… And most of all I love to eat the leftovers on the 26th…

I never published this recipe before because we only make it once a year. So this picture is from last year and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing this year. You probably have your own holiday traditions, but I’m happy to share ours with you. And I wish you all a very happy holiday season 2013!!! But before that, I will publish some new recipes…

Recipe for capon with chestnuts:

-1 capon of 3kg

For the stuffing:
-1 small glass of cognac
-1 egg
-1 veal cutlet (150 to 200g)
-1 chicken breast
-250g of poultry livers
-3 slices of bread soaked in milk
-80g of raisins
-1 large tablespoon of flour
-a good dozen chestnuts
-50g of nuts
-salt pepper

For cooking:
-50g of butter (or even a little more!)
-1kg of raw chestnuts (fresh or frozen from Picard, they are perfect!!)
-water

Here is the beautiful beast ! A beautiful capon of three kilos, with a meat much less dry than the turkey.

And here are all the ingredients for the stuffing. We’ll have to start sewing for this recipe… Soak the raisins in a little cognac and warm water.

Preheat your oven to 200°C. Place the veal cutlet, chicken breast, egg, glass of cognac and the bread soaked in milk (slightly wrung out) in a blender.

Mix to a paste.

Pour the dough into a container, add salt and pepper, and add the drained raisins and chestnuts. You can of course cut the chestnuts a little. For my part, I like to find big pieces in the stuffing, so I leave them whole!

Also add the flour.

Mix well and add the walnuts (always in kernels or pieces).

Make sure there is nothing left in the capon. There are often those big chunks of fat that need to be removed.

Fill the inside of the capon with the stuffing.

You should normally make it to the edge.

Tie the capon tightly by folding the thighs towards the entrance of the stuffing. We can see here that the skin has torn. It is finally a good thing to show you this because you will see that it is quite catchable!

All you have to do is take a thread and a needle and sew the skin like a garment.

And here is a beautiful capon frankenstein !

Once cleaned, you can hardly see anything.

Place the capon on the drip pan of your oven or in a large rimmed dish. Season generously with salt and pepper and place the butter pieces on top. Then sprinkle with a little water, enough so that there is a small puddle of water that will prevent the bottom from burning.

Put the capon in the oven at 200°C. You will now have to baste every 20 to 30 minutes with the cooking juices from the capon. If necessary, you can add a little water. After 40 minutes of cooking, lower the oven temperature to 170°C. After 1 hour and 15 minutes of cooking, turn the capon over and continue cooking for another 1 hour and 15 minutes, basting the meat regularly with the juices.

At the end of this time, so 2h30 in all, add the fresh or frozen chestnuts. At home, we use chestnuts from Picard which are perfect. Return to the oven.

Continue cooking for another 1 hour. The chestnuts cook in the fat of the capon… Turn them regularly in the sauce to keep them soft. A delight!

At the same time, I invite you to cook potatoes in duck fat. It is sure that it is heavy, but after all, the Christmas meal is only once in the year !

All that remains is to serve the cut meat with the well-cooked chestnuts and the cooking juice in a sauceboat.

All this with crispy potatoes and chestnuts.

And at home, it’s the same story every year…!

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Capon with chestnuts

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