In
English, we categorise game into two distinct categories: furred game and
feathered game. In Italian, the feathered game is called volatili (fliers). Christmas Day calls for a flier.
Or maybe two!
My
morning walks take me past the restaurant Fuori Porta and into the back of the
areas of the San Niccolò area, winding up to piazzale Michelangelo. Soon after
I exit the city walls, I pass a contadino who keeps chickens. Further along, I pass sloping fields, bare at this time
of the year but for the barren olive trees and the occasional pheasant. The
pheasants get me thinking about Christmas dinner, for they bring to mind an old
French dish: a goose stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a quail that is
stuffed with savoury stuffing; or a more modern Christmas dinner bird stuffed
with a bird that is stuffed with another bird. This concoction is known as
turducken, which, as its portmanteau name suggests, is a turkey stuffed with a
duck that is stuffed with a chicken.
Not
interested in making something that complicated, and wanting to keep things
Tuscan, I decide, after my morning walk past the pheasants and the chickens,
that two birds will be enough this Christmas-along with their livers and a bit
of lardo di Colonnata, tartufo,
mortadella, salvia, alloro…
Tuscans
have been serving fagiano, pheasant,
for centuries as the most important course for a Christmas day lunch (not to be
confused with the traditional late-night feast with many courses on December
24, Christmas Eve). Alternatively, they might serve cappone or even turkey, often with pancetta or prosciutto,
some sage or bay leaves, stock or red wine in the cooking.
Pheasants
look so stunning when alive, with their plumage and cobalt blue feathers among
other colours. I believe their visual beauty deserves careful attention to
their taste and presentation as the centrepiece of a beautiful feast.
Therefore,
I am going to make a pheasant stuffed with some of the chicken from the contadino, enriched with mortadella and Tuscan tartufo nero, black truffle, and some
fresh herbs such as bay and sage. And with the rest of the chicken, I will make
sausages to throw into the roasting dish 20 minutes before my flier comes out
of the oven.
Here,
then, is my recipe to you for a Tuscan Christmas Day dinner.
Buon
appetito!
Recipe
Fagiano farcito con tartufo, lardo di Colonnata,
pollo, mortadella, salvia e alloro
Ingredients
1
fagiano, one pheasant, frollato (hung, plucked and gutted), with fegatino (put
liver aside)
1
chicken, same as above (put liver aside)
1
onion
2
cloves of garlic
2
bay leaves
8
sage leaves
2
whole eggs
salt,
pepper to taste
day-old
bread
200ml
cold milk
100g
lardo di Colonnata, roughly diced
80g
lardo di Colonnata, cut into strips
80g
mortadella
2
tartufi neri, black truffles
extra
virgin olive oil
PREPARATION
Check the pheasant for small
feathers; if you find any, burn them off. Wash the bird under cold running
water inside and out, and pat dry with a clean cloth.
Make
the stuffing. Mince the whole chicken with the livers of both birds, add a finely chopped
onion with the 2 cloves of garlic, sliced finely, adding the chopped sage and
bay leaves. Mix in the two eggs and the half cup of breadcrumbs soaked in the
milk, and add the mortadella, diced lardo di Colonnata, and two beautiful
winter tartufi neri, Tuscan black
truffles. Don’t even slice them in half: the treat is in which slice of the
stuffing they turn up in, and they really do flavour the whole bird from the
inside out.
Prepare
the bird. First, season the washed and dried fagiano with salt and pepper inside and out, then prepare to cover the breast.
Next, cover the breast of
the fagiano in thick strips of lardo di Colonnata, overlapping each
strip of lardo to cover the breast completely. Tuck the edges of the lardo between the thigh and the breast
of the bird and sprinkle the entire top area with pepper.
Now take the stuffing, and
fill the fagiano by hand until the
inner cavity of the bird is full. With the remainder of the stuffing, make a
type of sausage by piping the stuffing mixture onto tin foil sheets, then
rolling them into tubes like bonbons; bake them in the oven along with the fagiano, adding them to the roasting pan
with the fagiano only for its last 30
minutes of cooking.
Prepare
the fagiano. Heat the oven to 200 degrees
Celsius and brush the whole bird with olive oil. Put the whole fagiano stuffed with the chicken, the
livers, mortadella, and beautiful
black truffles into the preheated oven.
After it has been in the
oven 20 minutes, begin the process of basting the fagiano with the olive oil and cooking juices di tanto in tanto (every so often), to keep the bird moist and
flavoursome. Place the sausages in the roasting pan for the last 20 minutes.
Depending on the size of the
bird and the consistency of the stuffing, after around 90 minutes the fagiano should be ready to take out of
the oven. Leave it to rest in a warm place above the oven, loosely covered in
tinfoil, for 20-30 minutes. Then carve your beautiful bird, serve with the
extra stuffing and your favourite side dishes. My suggestions are fried
artichokes; mashed potatoes with truffle; cavolo nero sauteed with olive oil, garlic, hot pepper.
A
beautiful wine to accompany your beautiful bird would be Brunello di Monalcino
DOCG: Collelceto 2007.
