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£170 turkey with extra stuffing

IT is the Christmas dinner for cooks who love a challenge.

Instead of mixing up a packet of sage and onion, butcher Geoff Riley is inviting his customers in Rossendale to try a turkey stuffed with no less than six other birds!

He is selling the 30lb Christmas special which consists of a turkey stuffed with a goose, a duck, a chicken, a guinea fowl, a pheasant and a wood pigeon.

Geoff, 33, reckons the meal will be enough to feed 30 people, but warns that it takes two hours to prepare all the birds and lay them all inside one another - and another five hours to cook.

Spectacular

Geoff said: "We got the idea after seeing it done on TV. There has been a resurgence in the popularity of the stuffed bird roast - it's something a bit unusual for your Christmas dinner, isn't it?

"Turkey can be a bit bland on its own and so this is something special for the table. The best bit is the flavours from all the different birds mingle together and, of course, you have all the different meats to try as well.

"One woman I know has bought the bird to feed 18 people, but there's enough meat there to feed twice that. It is a huge and great looking dish, really impressive."

The seven-bird roast on sale at Riley Bros Butchers will set you back a whopping £170.

Multi-bird roasts were a medieval Yuletide feast popular with French aristocrats and were known to include up to 17 birds.

TV chef Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall has helped revive the tradition this year. He has described it as "one of the most spectacular and delicious roasts you can lay before your loved ones at Yuletide".

Fernley-Whittingstall made his creation a 10-bird roast by adding a mallard, partridge and woodcock to the line-up for the Christmas special of his Channel 4 River Cottage series.

The recipe also includes two pounds of sausage meat and half a pound of streaky bacon.

Geoff said: "I did want to put more birds inside the turkey, including a wood pigeon in each of the leg cavities. But you have to draw a line somewhere and it would have been too much, so I will be sticking to seven birds for the time being."

dan.mcmullan@men-news.co.uk

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In Texas, this is called a Turducken and is a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey.

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I thought this article was a stroke of genius. I am a big fan of Hugh Fearnly- Whittingstall and was glad to see that his art of stuffing some game birds inside each other has been bought back to life by Geoff Riley.

Keep these fun and real life articles coming and i will keep reading.

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