Our lovely Monkey Queen of Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys, was our May Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to dive into the world of en Croute! We were encouraged to make Beef Wellington, Stuffed Mushroom en Croute and to bring our kids into the challenge by encouraging them to create their own en Croute recipes!

“Mandatory Items: Wrap whatever suits your taste in some type of pastry and bake it.” – that sounded perfect to me… but how to make it interesting? Pate En Croute is a common recipe, as is Beef Wellington but as far as I could see no one had ever made Squirrel En Croute – four ingredients or more!

A quick shopping trip for a squirrel from Ridley’s Fish & Game at the Stockbridge Market and I was sorted. My ingredients were:

• 1 squirrel
• 1 pack of pate
• 1 pack of puff pastry
• 1 egg 

I braised and then simmered the squirrel before taking the meat off the bone. I rolled the pastry, layered on the pate and the squirrel meat and then brushed egg around the pastry. It took ages to cook but that’s because my wife informed me that I shouldn’t have used a whole pack of pastry, who knew! The end result was very tasty – the squirrel meat was moister than I expected and it all tasted pretty awesome!

crossposted to tumblr http://hellyeahfouringredientrecipes.tumblr.com/post/50408414510

I’m normally game for a challenge but I have to say that this one made me feel a little queazy! For the April Daring Cooks Challenge, Lisa from Parsley, Sage and Sweet has challenged us to debone a whole chicken, using this video by Jacques Pepin as our guide; then stuff it, tie it and roast it, to create a Chicken Ballotine.

And I wanted to try all of that using only 4 ingredients!! Ingredient 1 – the chicken… leaving 3 ingredients for the stuffing. 

The process in the video wasn’t too hard to follow (although I think I got the front and back a bit mixed up at one point!) but I have to say that it took me a while to get it right. The wing bones were fairly easy to sort out but I struggled a bit with the fillets – possibly because they were quite small, maybe because I am so strong I ripped them off too early!! Once I was done I seasoned with salt, pepper and a little paprika and chilli. 

For the stuffing I used:

• My wife’s dad’s bread
• Mushrooms
• Yellow pepper

I finely chopped the mushrooms and pepper and softened them in the microwave then breadcrumbed the bread (although my wife pointed out that I should have removed the crusts!). I mixed the stuffing together and layered out on top of the chicken. The wrapping and tying were easier than the deboning! Cooked and cooled it’s even able to be sliced for sandwiches! A great challenge and thanks to my wife’s assistance with working out which part of a chicken was which – as well as awesome knowledge of chicken anatomy her ballotine was tastier than mine too!

Thank you for a great challenge – definitely would do this again.

crossposted to tumblr http://hellyeahfouringredientrecipes.tumblr.com/post/47982478294