CONFIT DODINE OF squab
with a Salad of Walnuts, Salsify and Muscatels

STUFFING

2 teaspoons non-scented cooking oil

6 small Calves’ Sweetbreads

salt and freshly ground pepper

30 g (1 oz) unsalted butter

drop lemon juice

3–4 fresh or reconstituted dried trompette mushrooms, finely shredded (available from good food stores)

200 g (7 oz) Chicken Mousse

8 Confit Duck Gizzards, cut into large dice

60 g (2 oz) pistachio nuts, blanched and peeled

1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

splash of Armagnac

A dodine is a wonderful ‘special occasion’ dish, which is a little tricky to prepare but quite spectacular. Poultry or game birds (often duck) are boned and stuffed with a mixture of the breast meat, confit leg meat and offal. The birds are then sewn back to their original shape in order to confit, then caramelised.

You will need good knife skills to bone the birds. But it’s well worth taking the time to learn the techniques as, once learned, they can be used time and time again for all manner of poultry and game dishes.

TO PREPARE THE STUFFING, heat a frying pan over a high heat then add the oil. Season the sweetbreads lightly with salt and pepper and add them to the pan. Add the butter and heat to a nutbrown foam. Fry the sweetbreads, turning them in the foam until they are golden and caramelised. Add the lemon juice and stir briefly then remove from the pan and drain on kitchen paper until cool.

Add the mushrooms to the same pan, add a little more butter and sauté the mushrooms. Season well with salt and pepper then drain and leave to cool.

Put the chicken mousse in a small bowl and gently fold in all the remaining ingredients, including the sweetbreads and mushrooms. The stuffing will be quite lumpy, but this adds to the visual appeal when the squabs are carved.

To test the flavour balance of the stuffing, wrap a teaspoonful in cling film, secure tightly and poach for 2 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings if required.

TO PREPARE THE SQUAB, place breast side down on a secure chopping board and, using your sharpest boning knife, make a neat incision lengthwise down the undercarriage of the bird. Carefully bone down the left side, disconnecting the wing and leg from the ball and socket joints where they are attached to the main carcass. Keep your knife flush against the carcass in order to remove all the meat. Continue working your knife under and along the breast until you reach the centre of the breastbone. Repeat this procedure down the right side of the bird until you meet the centre breastbone. Then remove carcass – it should come away as one whole piece leaving the bird behind. Chop the carcass into small pieces and reserve for the jus gras.

Remove the wing tips and clean the wing bones that are still attached to the bird. Bone out and remove the thigh bones from the birds. The wing tips and the thigh bones can be used to make the jus gras.

Repeat the boning-out process with the other squab then lay the 2 birds out on the board, breast side down, and open them up as wide as you can. Remove the throat sacks from the necks and scrape away any excess fat.

Divide the stuffing mixture in two and place in the cavities. Try to make sure the sweetbreads and mushrooms are evenly distributed down the centres of the birds. Bring the sides up around the stuffing to reform the birds and sew neatly along the join with string. Spear through the legs with toothpicks to secure them.