Roast Stuffed Turkey

Tacchino Arrosoto Ripieno
Serves 6

How would you like a holiday turkey that gobbles with an Italian accent? Well, we have one for you in this recipe. Cooking a turkey in this manner takes this American bird to the shores of Italy and makes him sing an Italian serenade. This gobbler would be just as at home steering a gondola in Venice as driving a Ford on an interstate highway in the good old U.S.A. Here is the best of both worlds; America's native bird cooked in an Italian manner.

1 6-8 pound turkey
(OK, it's small, but it's tender)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
20 large pitted black olives, chopped
20 roasted chestnuts, skinned and chopped
1 pound fresh Italian sweet sausage, skinned
4 slices fatty bacon
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Wash the turkey under cold running water and pat dry with paper towels. Season the inside of the bird with salt and pepper. Mix the olives, chestnuts, and sausage meat together and stuff the turkey. Place the turkey on a rack in a roasting pan, lay the bacon strips across the breast, and roast the bird for 2-1/2 hours or longer according to the size of the turkey—use a meat thermometer.

When the turkey is cooked as indicated on the meat thermometer, remove the bacon, crumble it, and add it to the pan juices. Sprinkle the breast with the flour, return the turkey to the oven, and cook until the skin is golden brown and crisp, basting it at intervals. Serve as usual, using the pan juices as a light, tasty gravy.

Buy the Book!

Italian Family Cooking:
Unlocking a Treasury of Recipes and Stories
By Father Joseph
Foreword by Regis Philbin
St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books
Hardback, $27.50
208 pages, April 2000
ISBN 0-312-24225-5
Recipe reprinted by permission.