Francatelli was Queen Victoria’s Chef but don’t let that put you off! Venison is a very healthy meat dense and rich in flavour but low in fat, good for those watching their cholesterol. It is important to keep the meat moist while cooking without adding extra fat and defeating the object! That’s where Francetelli comes in. Strictly speaking the sauce was made separately and served with the cooked venison but try it like this……….

500gms Venison sausages
2 shallots
1 tin chopped tomatoes
3 table spoons red wine
3 tablespoons red currant jelly
grated rind of lemon
small stick of cinnamon (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Chop the shallots finely. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Add shallots and allow to soften but not brown, add the sausages and the tomatoes. Simmer for 15-20 minutes stirring occasionally until the sausages are cooked through. Cut one in half to make sure. Add the wine, lemon zest, cinnamon and redcurrant jelly to the pan and give it a stir. Heat gently, taste, season, remove the cinnamon stick and serve with new potatoes and summer vegetables or a green salad.

Here is an OLD ENGLISH recipe which still survives in Sussex.

Line a deep pudding basin with suet crust pastry, pack tightly with pieces of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy. Cover with a lid of the suet crust and steam as you would a steak and kidney pudding.

Dorothy Hartley ( Food in England: 1974) says a mushroom sauce goes very well with this.
Bonne Appetite!!

Gently poach two chicken Supremes or chicken breasts in enough stock to just cover them. Add a little white wine and a few sprigs of fresh French tarragon. Cook for about twenty minutes. Set chicken aside in a warm place (not a hot oven!!) while you make the sauce.

Strain the cooking juices through a sieve. Melt 1 oz of butter in a little pan, stir in a tablespoon of flour…..off the heat…..gradually add the strained juice stirring all the time to make a smooth mixture. Return to the heat and continue to stir until the sauce thickens. Cook two more minutes. Add a large spoonful of crème fraiche or cream. Warm gently, don’t boil!

Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve with the new potatoes, spinach and asparagus!

Fresh free range chicken
2 garlic cloves crushed with salt
2 chopped shallots
2 tbsp olive oil
large knob of butter
glass white wine
juice half lemon

Mixed chopped fresh herbs: parsley, thyme, a little sage and a few wild garlic leaves at this time of year. In spring and summer the mix will be different, maybe tarragon and lemon zest or basil , chives and marjoram. The flavour of the dish will reflect the season.

Cut the chicken into six or eight pieces, save the carcass*.
Melt the butter in a heavy based pan, one which has a close fitting lid, add the olive oil. Put the chicken pieces in the pan skin side down. Brown a little then lower the heat and turn the meat. Cover the pan and cook for 40 - 45 minutes turning again occasionally, till the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm.

Now add the crushed garlic cloves and chopped shallot to the pan, stir in the wine scraping up all the residue with a wooden spoon, let it bubble, add lemon juice and half chopped herbs, taste and adjust the seasoning.

Put the chicken back into the pan, cover and cook a further five minutes.
Remove from the heat sprinkle with remaining herbs. Serve straight from the cooking pot with crusty bread and a green winter salad.

* Make chicken soup for tomorrow with the carcass!

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas mark 6

Remove giblets from inside turkey. You may like to make a little stock with these for your gravy later….or…go straight to “Stuffing” !

Fill the central cavity with a stuffing of your choice and weigh the turkey again.
To calculate cooking time allow 15 minutes per lb for a bird up to 14lb and 20-25 minutes for a larger bird.

Melt a little butter and oil in the roasting tin and place the bird on its side on a rack in the tin. Spread it with more butter, or wrap in butter-soaked muslin. Add the giblets and a pint of water to the tin and cover the whole thing in tin foil. Keep the liver to fry and add to the gravy later. Place the bird in the centre of the hot oven.

A little before half time take the turkey out of the oven, turn it onto its other side, baste well and re -cover carefully.

Twenty minutes before the end of the cooking time remove the bird from the oven and turn breast up, baste again and sprinkle with salt and pepper and return to the hot oven to brown.

Test at the end of cooking time by sticking a long skewer into the thickest part of the thigh, if the juice is clear the turkey is cooked.

When cooked allow the bird to REST, covered in a warm place for about 20 minutes. This will make it much easier to carve.

To make the GRAVY remove a little of the melted butter from the roasting pan, mix it with a desert spoon of corn flour and return to the roasting pan. Add a little red wine and red currant jelly, then stir the gravy over a brisk heat until it is a rich syrupy consistency. Strain before serving. The sliced and lightly fried liver may be added to the gravy after straining.

STUFFING helps to keep the bird moist, it bastes from within. Older cookery books often suggest stuffing the turkey at each end; traditionally forcemeat one end and chestnut the other.

12 prunes soaked in red wine
grated rind half lemon
8oz peeled and cooked chestnuts
1oz butter
1 head celery chopped
2oz chopped onion
1dsp chopped mixed herbs
salt & pepper
1 small beaten egg
Simmer the prunes in the wine till tender, cool, stone and cut into four. Soften celery and onion in butter over a low heat, add prunes, herbs, salt and pepper, lemon rind, and chestnuts, broken into pieces. Stir lightly with a fork, allow to cool thoroughly before binding together with the beaten egg.

Or…….how about this adapted version of a Traditional Italian stuffing based on Orvieto Chicken…..

turkey giblets
1 lb potatoes
large onion
30 garlic cloves unpeeled ..yes!
fennel bulb
8oz black olives
fresh sprig rosemary
lemon zest and juice
glass dry white wine
3 tbsp. virgin olive oil

Take the turkey giblets : first remove “oysters” of meat from gizzard with a sharp knife then chop up together with the heart and liver. .
Dice peeled potatoes, fennel and onion.
Pull apart Garlic heads until you have about 30 cloves.
Crush 2 cloves of garlic.

Pit olives …..or better still…….buy them pitted!
Pull leaves of rosemary from the twig and chop (please don’t bother with dried rosemary…!!)
Zest and juice the lemon

Melt the potatoes, fennel and onions in the olive oil until just soft. Add the giblets and crushed garlic, then stir in the whole garlic cloves ( don’t bother to peel!), then the olives, fresh chopped rosemary, zest and juice of lemon, salt and pepper and the white wine.
Spoon all this mixture into the turkey….Delicious!

Cold Turkey is delicious but just in case you want to ring the changes here are a couple of ideas… … .

LA GOUGERE

Now here is a really delicious and exotic way to use up that left over turkey! And very simple too… .

Bake a ring of Cheese Choux Pastry and fill it with the turkey, warmed in a rich cream and sherry sauce.

For the pastry put 150ml of water in a small pan with 50gm of butter. Bring it to the boil and then shoot in 75gm of sifted plain flour and beat like mad with a wooden spoon having taken it off the heat. Leave it to cool then beat in two eggs. Next stir in 80gms of tiny cubes of gruyere cheese (cheddar will do!) a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Grease an oven proof dish and pile the rich yellow paste around the edges to make a ring (with a hole in the centre for the turkey filling later). Bake at 220c ((425f or gas 7) for about 40 mins. depending on your oven. The secret with choux pastry is to cook it longer than you think you should! It smells wonderful after 20 mins. but it must have a chance to dry out inside.

Meanwhile make a sauce in the usual way: 25gm butter and 25gm flour melted and mixed to form a roux, whisk in 300ml milk, stock or left over gravy ( if you use gravy remember to cut down on the flour in the roux). Bring to the boil stirring all the time and continue to cook for a couple of minutes to cook the flour. Cheer it up with a dash of sherry, a spoonful of that cream at the back of the fridge or a dollop of crème farce. You can add mushrooms, a little blanched broccoli, left over stuffing….whatever you fancy. Season it well and pile it up into the crispy ring of Gouger.
All you need now is a green salad and a glass of wine.

TURKEY PUDDING !

Here is an OLD ENGLISH recipe which still survives in Sussex.

Line a deep pudding basin with suet crust pastry, pack tightly with pieces of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy. Cover with a lid of the suet crust and steam as you would a steak and kidney pudding.
Dorothy Hartley ( Food in England: 1974) says a mushroom sauce goes very well with this.
Bonne Appetite!!

Rillettes de Lapin: A traditional rillettes recipe with rabbit replacing some of the pork. Cook the rabbit slowly with garlic, herbs and pork belly, then drain off the fat, first pound, then pull apart the meat with two forks, pile into an earthenware dish and completely cover with the carefully strained fat. Cover with foil and store in the fridge. Eat with toast or crusty bread.

Sauce au Vin du Medoc: Rabbit stewed so slowly in red wine with beef and pork that is almost becomes a sauce. Chop 6 shallots and brown them in dripping, add 3 large carrots cut into big pieces. Add the meat,1 jointed rabbit, 1 ½ lbs each of stewing beef and pork, add garlic and herbs, sprinkle with flour, stir and pour over a bottle of red wine (!) Add a little water and a square of plain chocolate. Simmer, “just murmur”, for three hours. Let the dish cool completely. Leave in the fridge over night then simmer again the following day for a further two hours. Serve with plenty of bread and / or a mousseline of potatoes.

It is “la grosse cuisine de la campagne” and sounds the perfect dish for cold winter days not, I stress, in the heat wave of today! Bon appetite!

Now here is a really delicious and exotic way to use up that left over turkey! And very simple too… .

Bake a ring of Cheese Choux Pastry and fill it with the turkey, warmed in a rich cream and sherry sauce.

For the pastry put 150ml of water in a small pan with 50gm of butter. Bring it to the boil and then shoot in 75gm of sifted plain flour and beat like mad with a wooden spoon having taken it off the heat. Leave it to cool then beat in two eggs. Next stir in 80gms of tiny cubes of gruyere cheese (cheddar will do!) a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Grease an oven proof dish and pile the rich yellow paste around the edges to make a ring (with a hole in the centre for the turkey filling later). Bake at 220c ((425f or gas 7) for about 40 mins. depending on your oven. The secret with choux pastry is to cook it longer than you think you should! It smells wonderful after 20 mins. but it must have a chance to dry out inside.

Meanwhile make a sauce in the usual way: 25gm butter and 25gm flour melted and mixed to form a roux, whisk in 300ml milk, stock or left over gravy ( if you use gravy remember to cut down on the flour in the roux). Bring to the boil stirring all the time and continue to cook for a couple of minutes to cook the flour. Cheer it up with a dash of sherry, a spoonful of that cream at the back of the fridge or a dollop of crème farce. You can add mushrooms, a little blanched broccoli, left over stuffing….whatever you fancy. Season it well and pile it up into the crispy ring of Gouger.
All you need now is a green salad and a glass of wine.