Prep Time 15 minutes - Total Time 2 hours - Serves 6
Ok, you can’t mess about with Christmas dinner, it’s probably the most important meal of the year. And in my house, there are a few essentials that are a MUST!!
One, obviously a beautiful juicy turkey.
Two, proper pan gravy (no granules).
Three, crispy and fluffy roast potatoes.
& Four, stuffing!!!
This stuffing eats like a meal just on its own! Made using good quality sausage meat, smoked streaky bacon courtesy of The Jolly Hog, mixed with dry fruits, chestnuts and a few other bits all wrapped in puff pastry. This is a cracker you can’t wait to pull.
O yeah & Five, croquettes, without these Isabella, wouldn’t be happy!
Ingredients
400 g of good quality sausagemeat.
1 small onion, finely diced.
4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, roughly chopped.
50 g of breadcrumbs, I used Panko.
1 small handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped.
1 small handful of fresh sage leaves, roughly chopped.
1 tsp of mixed spice.
50 g of dried apricots, roughly chopped.
50 g of dried cranberries, roughly chopped.
50 g of cooked chestnuts.
1 clementine, zest and juice.
1 tbsp of goose fat.
1 x 320g of ready rolled puff pastry sheet.
1 egg yolk, whisked.
Method
Fry the onions with bacon and the sage in the fat with salt and pepper, over low light for 15 minutes then leave to cool completely.
In a large bowl add the rest of the ingredients along with the cooled onions and bacon, season and mix well. Then roll out the stuffing mixture into a large sausage, 30 cm long, wrapped in clingfilm and chill for an hour.
Flour your worktop and unroll the pastry sheet lengthways, place the stuffing mixture at the edge on the pasty but leave a gap at either end. Now roll the pastry over itself to completely encase the stuffing. Then pinch each end of the pasty closes to the stuffing so you are left with an overhang which you can fan out, basically, you're trying to make it look like a cracker.
Once you're happy with your Christmas cracker place it on a large baking tray lined with parchment paper and give it a good egg wash. Then using the back of a knife gently score the pastry in whatever pattern that takes your fancy. Sprinkle with some flake salt then bake in a preheated oven at 200℃ for 40 minutes or until the pastry is golden and cooked through.