Galantine of Chicken with Kale and Chorizo

Here is a fantastic preparation of a whole chicken stuffed with kale and chorizo.  Boning a chicken to form a Galantine is a kind of art which has to be learned.  And there is no better person to learn this from than Jacques Pepin!  It is really not difficult and very much worth a try.

1 roasting chicken
2 links chorizo sausage, sliced
1 leek, cleaned and diced
2 cups shredded kale leaves, rinsed and spun dry
2 cloves garlic, minced
Freshly grated nutmeg, about 1/4 tsp

Bone the chicken, carefully so as not to cut the skin.  Jacques Pepin has an excellent tutorial video here:

Preheat oven to 375F.  Sauté the sausage and leek with a bit of olive oil, in a large skillet, long enough to brown the sausage disks and soften the leek.  Add the garlic and nutmeg and cook together 2-3 minutes.  Add the kale leaves and cover skillet.  Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring every once in a while.  Remove cover for last few minutes of cooking; the mixture should be dried out, without allowing to burn, so that there is no standing liquid.

Lay out the chicken on a large working surface, skin-side down.  Distribute the kale mixture evenly on top of the chicken.  Carefully fold the chicken legs and sides up over the kale, overlapping the skin slightly.  The chicken should resemble a stuffed roaster.  Carefully tie up the package - again, Jacques Pepin shows this delicate procedure very well in his video; this is best learned visually!

Place chicken roll in a non-stick skillet and brown both sides a bit to get a good color going.  Move to an oiled roasting pan and insert a digital thermometer probe halfway into the chicken.   Roast for about an hour.  Remove from oven when internal temperature reaches 160F.  Allow to sit covered with foil for 10 minutes, and then slice for serving, removing all the string.

Serves 4-6.