Though this is a modern roast turkey recipe - it calls for white bread, which didn't exist in Italy until recently - it draws heavily on tradition, including both chestnuts and dried fruit in the stuffing. The chestnuts are boiled, and you can soak and then briefly boil dried chestnuts if fresh chestnuts are not available where you live. To serve about 12:
Prep Time: 60 minutes
Cook Time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Ingredients:
- A turkey weighing 9-11 pounds (4-5 k)
- 2 apples, of the kind you prefer, peeled, cored, and diced
- 2 medium-sized pears, peeled, cored, and diced
- 1/2 pound (225 g) pitted prunes, diced
- 2 cups (500 ml) dry white wine
- 1/4 cup (50 g) unsalted butter
- A medium onion, finely chopped
- 2/3 pound mild Italian sausage, casings removed
- 1/2 pound (225 g) ground veal
- 1/2 pound (225 g) boiled chestnuts -- finely chop half of them
- 4 slices white bread, crumbled
- Fresh rosemary and sage, minced (about a tablespoon of each, or 1/2 teaspoon each, dried)
- 1 cup (50 g) freshly grated Parmigiano or Grana Padano
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 2 bay leaves
- Salt and black peppercorns
Preparation:
Pour the wine into a bowl and season it with the bay leaves and 4 black peppercorns. Marinate the diced apples, pears, and plums in the wine for an hour.In the meantime, chop the onion. Heat the butter until it melts in a saucepan large enough to hold the fruit as well, sauté the onion until it is golden, but not browned, and add the sausage. Continue to cook, stirring, until it too is browned, and remove the mixture from the heat.
Drain the fruit, reserving the wine, and add the fruit to the sausage mixture, together with the ground veal, the crumbled bread, the chopped chestnuts, the grated cheese, and the minced herbs. Season the stuffing to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper and mix well.
Preheat your oven to 340 F (170 C). While it is heating, fill the turkey with the stuffing. Use skewers (or needle and thread) to shut the openings, truss the bird, and put it in a roasting pan. Brush it with some of the wine, season the skin with a little salt and pepper, and put the garlic and the bay leaves in the pan. Roast the turkey for about 3 1/2 hours, basting it often with either the wine or pan drippings (make certain the herbs remain moist), and after about 2 hours add the remaining chestnuts to the pan.
When the turkey is roasted (a the juices from a skewer poked into a thigh joint will run clear) remove it to a platter together with the chestnuts.
Deglaze the pan juices, using some of the marinade wine and scraping to get up anything stuck down, and make a light gravy of them. Serve the turkey with the vegetable of choice; I might go with mashed potatoes, which are quite Italian, and also with something whose bitterness will contrast with the sweetness of the stuffing, for example Joe's Brussels Sprouts and Winter Squash.
The wine? A lighter red, perhaps a Dolcetto or a Lagrein.
