25 Days of Christmas Recipes, Day 5: Citrus Stuffed Guinea Fowl with Hummus Style Bread Sauce

It’s the day of 5 gold rings and we have a golden bird. Guinea Fowl is a slightly darker, meatier version of chicken and it’s absolutely delicious. At this time of year my neighbours are usually raising some, we presume for their own family’s Christmas table. This recipe gives it a bit of a Moroccan-ish twist– a fusion of some of my family’s favourite flavours (why yes, we do love breads and dips, why do you ask?) and some more traditional British Christmas fare in Bread Sauce etc. Most people wouldn’t believe it, being that I am British and I lived most of my life in the North of England, but I had never eaten Bread Sauce, nor did I know what it really was, until I was an adult. I attribute this to the fact that I, unlike most other British people I’ve spoken to, didn’t grow up having Roast Dinners every Sunday– and very rarely had fully traditional Christmas meals. My Mum, and her side of the family, really disliked Roast Dinners so we really only had them sporadically (often at my Dad’s Mum’s house) and Bread Sauce was never served. For all those people who, like me, don’t know what Bread Sauce is– imagine if you shoved a sliced white loaf into hot milk and left it to go mushy. That’s it. That’s bread sauce. Strange… but oddly, not bad? No, I don’t get it either. If you can’t find Guinea-Fowl, then try it with chicken. No harm, no fowl (Get it? Sorry. I had to).

Ingredients:

• 1.5kg Guinea Fowl (15 minutes of cooking for every 500g, plus 15 minutes)
• ½ Lemon
• 1 Onion
• 1 Carrot

FLAVOURED BUTTER

• 100g Soft Butter
• 1 ½tsp Ras Al Hanout
• 1 Orange
• ½tsp Cumin Powder
• ½tsp Nutmeg Powder

BREAD SAUCE

• 4 Slices of Thick White Bread
• 600ml Semi-Skimmed or Full-Fat Milk
• 4 Cardamon Pods
• 1 Onion, peeled
• 2 Garlic Cloves
• 1tsp Tahini
• Lemon, juiced
• 1 Orange

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200 Degree C/Gas Mark 6.
2. Zest your orange and put in a bowl with your butter.
3. Add the rest of your butter ingredients together and mix until smooth. Season.
4. Gently put your hand under the guinea-fowl’s skin and slowly create a gap between it and the meat.
5. Spread your butter under the skin in an even layer. Massage it gently to push it all the way down.
6. Take the skin off an onion. Cut onion into quarters and put on bottom of a deep-sided oven tray.
7. Wash carrot. Cut into thick sticks (unpeeled) and put on the bottom of the tray with the onions.
8. Lay your guinea-fowl on top of your vegetables in the tray.
9. Check your cavity and pull out and discard any innards. Cut your zested orange in half and insert half into the cavity with half a lemon.
10. Season breast with salt and pepper. Put into your preheated oven and cook for 1hr.
11. Make your bread sauce:  Put milk in medium sized pan.  Stud the onion with the cardamon pods and add this and a garlic clove to the milk. 
12. Bring the milk to the boil on a high heat.  Reduce the temperature and simmer for 5 mins.
13. Take off the heat and leave for 2 minutes then strain the milk through a sieve into a clean bowl. 
14. Add the bread to the milk breaking it into chunks and mix so it is all submerged.
15. Grate another clove of garlic and zest of half an orange into the mixture.
16. Add your tahini and tsp of lemon juice and mix thoroughly.
17. Take the Guinea Fowl out of the oven and leave to rest by covering with tin foil for 10 mins.
18. Either carve at the table or in the kitchen, serve with the bread sauce and enjoy.