You can look up the original recipe (and you should) at the link above. I'll just present the modified version I tried.
1 lb Italian sausage
12 oz package of diced celery and white onion
1 cup of pomegranate arils
4 large eggs, beaten
6 pieces prosciutto
10 oz package of dry stuffing/bread cubes
1 t fennel
1 t dried thyme
2 c juice from a turducken (cooked, of course--how else would you get any water out? Don't tell me.)
I didn't particularly plan it out. I saw that fennel sausage was the first thing listed in Kelsey Nixon's recipe and couldn't find any so I thought I was being clever when I opted for Italian sausage and added fennel instead of fennel sausage and various other spices, and was feeling smugly clever until I just now noticed that Italian sausage was also called out in the original recipe. Well, there was plenty of meat as is; it may have been more like a meatball than stuffing, in my book, if I'd doubled the amount of sausage.
I can't believe I just said "there was plenty of meat as is."
Since I was low on prosciutto I ended up just doing one slice per muffin tin cup and filling a small breadpan with the rest of the stuffing, but it was fine since I still needed something to go with that turducken.
It turned out pretty well, too, although I made the mistake of trying to eat it while watching "Eraserhead" and I just had to stop. But we're getting ahead of ourselves; I was barely able to get the prosciutto out of the package without tearing it apart, so I ended up breaking each slice in half and trying to work with two rough square of ham tissue, which was a bit easier. I had foreseen the possibility of this working better, but I sadly failed to honor this prophecy in my own mind.
The arils were just serendipity. I hadn't read much past the ingredient list when I was shopping so I was half inclined to get fresh cranberries if I could find any, thinking about how the balance against Granny Smith apples would change if I did, when I just saw the package of fresh arils. Also, they were on sale, and I didn't remember the apples until I was leaving the parking lot Meh; world didn't end without them.
I admit, I've been going the slightly processed/prepackaged route here and there, but when I'm trying to discern something new, I try to weigh convenience allowing me to focus on the novel aspects of a dish against the superior quality of ingredients prepared freshly and properly by me in the kitchen. In this case the sacrifice seemed negligible; in other cases, it's usually because I can't even find the best stuff fresh.
On with the cooking! As I would presume, you turned your oven on to 325°F back when I was talking about David Lynch's ouvre killing my appetite. If not, there's plenty of time while the sausage is browning over medium to medium-high heat in a skillet.
When the meat was browned, I added the celery/onion mixture and a little under half the arils. When they started to cook down, I started adding the spices and half the juice (I had just pulled the turducken out of my slow cooker and the bag it was in still had all its juices). I think I over did the juice a bit, and feared it might not have had as rich a flavor of legitimate chicken stock, so I let it reduce by approximately half before transferring it to a large bowl with the dry stuffing. Meanwhile, I used the rest of the poultry juice--ugh, it sounds awful phrased this way, doesn't it?--to deglaze the skillet and allow the sausage-bread mixture to cool before adding the eggs and the remainder of the arils.
Oh, I threw in a little red-black pepper mix just before taking the sausage off heat, too, because I couldn't find a jar of black pepper. Worked fine.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLN2ucfS7xeW2jAi046aaPpljVXopXEB4uPTC1z6MU-x8zstpZy6l32MmBu4BIlU9cDdnjSSVZOUBuWAY4uXoEajjLGjKuDjMtIB1VCiNVT3Z1wPAGs1_I5k4eQkEXF_K2jnQAIAIV8VM/s320/stuffed+prosciutto+cups.jpg)
It looks pretty much like this when it comes out, only the meat is visibly crispy and everything else is slightly darker on top. I remembered to take a "before" picture but not an "after" one, sorry.
It's not a stuffing recipe like what I normally use, but it was quite good. The pomegranate's sweet tartness worked with the savory meat just as well as I could have hoped. It was just a bit crumbly around the edges, but nothing that shouldn't be resolvable by a plate. Maybe that second pack of sausage would have turned it into a less frangible fluffy meatball like you get in some restaurants, but whatever.
Some variations to consider for the future: bacon instead of prosciutto, and mini-muffin tins, which would have been more accommodating to my half slices of prosciutto.
UPDATE--The photos should be visible in the published posting of this recipe now, not just in the draft preview that only I can see. What would have been the good of that? I was in the room with them at the time; it's not like I need to prove that to anybody.
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