SC - Feast Themes-Feast of Illusion (long)

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

  -Farced Chickens filled with ground beef & pork sausage.  (Menagier, p.
  276; Tallevent #65.)  Farced chickens take about 20 minutes each to
  separate the meat from the bones.  Work on a cold surface & put the flesh
  in a chilled bowl. Slip your hand in the rear end of the chicken, between
  the skin & the meat & loosen the membrane.  Use a short-bladed paring knife
  to remove the meat.  Alternately, slit the skin up the back, peel back the
  skin & remove the flesh that way - Use toothpicks to re-fasten the skin
  together, & remove the toothpicks before service.  (A straw [see also Swiss
  Family Robinson trying this trick on a kangaroo!] probably won't work on
  commercially available birds because the head and neck have been removed &
  the hole at the bottom is too big.)  Stuff the bird between the skin &
  bones with the meat mixture, & shape the meat to look like a whole chicken.
  -Served with Creme Bastarde-filled eggs on a bed of greens.  The blown egg
  shells were sterilized & filled with Creme Bastarde.  The holes were
  stopped with flour & water paste. (Take 1000 Eggs, p. 196)

Hmmm.

We managed to "inflate" the birds with soda straws, inserting the straw
underneath the breast, and holding the neck shut with our fingers. It
required PAINFUL amounts of pressure on the cheeks.  And, it was damned hard
not to laugh out loud instead, as we all tried to inflate the birds. (Yes,
all the vulgar "blow" jokes got made.)  It worked, and did leave just the
skin intact.

I had read about boning and removing the frame and breast meet whole from a
chicken, leaving the skin intact.  I did so with a small paring knife, and a
warm chicken.  (If it is at refrigerator temperatures, your hands freeze.)
You spend an awful long time with your fingers inside the bird: about 20
minutes apiece.  I figured the hard part would be cutting the joints for the
legs and wings: the hard part was separating the skin from the breastbone
cartilage.  Eventually, I sliced into the soft parts of the cartilage, and
left a strip of inedible stuff attached to the skin.

We stuffed the birds, tied the wings and legs into a normal position, and
cooked.  For serving, we cut off the legs and wings, and sliced the
resulting "chicken skinned and shaped" meatloaf into about 4 servings per
3 pound bird.  Plus two servings of chicken.

I think with practice I could get it down to about 10 minutes a bird.
That's a LOT of work.  I'll probably do it sometime when I want to surprise
a guest.

Cindy, it appears that your approach was to leave the frame in place, and
strip the breast meat.  Is my understanding correct?

	Tibor