Roasted delight

I just had to post about this - I made up a recipe last night, and we both think it's yummy! We've just had the leftovers for lunch, and the yumm-ing noises were too much for the poor dog, who put his head under his paws and closed his eyes in pain.

But he got the leftovers, so all was not lost.

Here it is!

Rolled Stuffed Turkey Breast

1 turkey breast fillet, something in the order of 800g or so
1/2 brown onion
1 apple
finger-long chunk of Polish wedding sausage (very lean cooked pork and garlic sausage)
1/3-1/2 cup leftover mashed potatoes
small handful leftover steamed green beans
dried basil
dried thyme
dried oregano
salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 375 degrees and oil a small roasting pan.

Finely chop the onions, slice and chop the sausage into small cubes, and peel and chop the apple. Chop up the green beans into small pieces.

Heat a small drop of olive oil in a frying pan and fry the onion and sausage together until the onion starts to cook, 2-3 mins. When the onions are cooking, dollop in the cold potato and stir it around until it heats up and starts to stick together in a large lump (your potato is your glue to stick this stuffing together!)

Take it off the heat and put it all in a medium bowl. Add the peeled, chopped apple, the green beans, and about 1/4 teaspoon basil, 1/2 teaspoon thyme, and 1/4 teaspoon oregano. Stir everything together briefly.

Lay your turkey breast out flat on a cutting board, as flat as it will go. Slice into the bulgy part to enable you to open it out further (creating a large flat piece that you can roll closed over the stuffing).
Cut a long piece of butchers' string (mine was about 3 feet or roughly 90cm) and slide one end under the end of the turkey.

Dollop the stuffing down the middle of the turkey breast, making sure it's well packed down the middle. (I used about 2 1/2 cups of stuffing for a 800g turkey breast, and the leftovers went in a little ramekin to get cooked separately.) I put two tiny pats of butter in the middle in amongst the stuffing.


Start tying up the turkey. If you know how to do this, skip this bit! If you don't, what I do is to work slowly to create a long tied-up rolled turkey, by tying the string around one end. Then gently lift that end and slide the string underneath, trying not to tip out all the stuffing. Loop the end through the string and pull tight, rolling everything neatly and poking bits in as you go. Continue in a long line of pulled-through loops until you reach the other end. You may need to use a knife or a wooden spatula to gently lift the already-tied part as you go, allowing you to slide the string underneath as you go.
Carefully pop the whole bundle into a roasting tin and season lightly. Any leftover stuffing can go in a ramekin in the pan, too.
Cook at 380 for about 40 minutes, rolled seam upwards, to allow the drippy juices to go into the meat. Test it to see if it's almost done (cut into one end and look for pink juices), and then I flipped it over carefully, turned the oven up to 400 and roasted it for a further 10 minutes to cook the skin on the underside (there was just a little bit of skin on mine: most of it was skinless).

We ate this with a large salad, and today we had thick slices in delicious cold roast turkey sandwiches!

It was a great way to stuff the turkey without using lots of bread, and the potato worked well as the 'binding' agent to help it all stay in. The apple was sweet and the green beans added poisture to the meat, too. Very yummy!

Bev