Stuffing time

If you haven't bought your chestnuts yet you might as well give up and focus on what you are going to cook for Easter instead.
Today is the day for making stuffing. There are few things more important than getting the stuffing right on the big day. From my perspective, there is little point in actually stuffing the bird of your choice, this does add great flavour but it can really mess up your timings as it will drastically alter the cooking time for the bird. Many people now opt for the stuffing ball approach, this is a trick used by caterers to make presenting a Christmas roast easy for large numbers. I have nothing against stuffing balls but I think we can do a bit better than that don't you?
There is a massive purchasing of sausage meat at this time of year in order to make stuffing. Don't buy any old sausage meat. If there is a particular sausage, made by a particular company or butcher that you like, then buy half a dozen of them and take them out of their skins. This way you will get exactly the flavour you want and no nasty surprises. Just for the record, I used Newitt's Oxfordshire sausage in mine.
So to making the stuffing: I made some breadcrumbs from a nutty, seedy loaf that was almost past its best. To this I added the sausage meat, a packet of chestnuts that I had finely chopped, some sage (from the garden) some egg whites (left over from making Chocolate Brownies for my Tutor group), salt, pepper (lots) and a small, very finely, chopped onion. This was all mixed with the hands to make a perfect sticky stuffing. I placed this in an old pie dish then finally, and this is quite important, I ran over the top with a fork to create little grooves in the surface. This then went in the freezer to be brought out on Christmas Eve to defrost. It will take about an hour to cook in the bottom of the oven (covered for about 40 minutes then open and studded with little bits of butter, nicely browned by the time it's till ready to serve.
The major joy of making stuffing in this way is that it means that it can be carved like a meatloaf on the day and, more importantly, on Boxing day as an extra cold cut.

Ready for the freezer