Who Knew I Was A Leg Man?

I have never been a huge fan of chicken unless it's fried. That or roasted with crunchy skin. However, in meat fabrication class Thursday night, I not only learned a new technical skill, I learned a delicious recipe using the chicken leg and thigh.

First of all, I'm obsessed with the whole de-boning a chicken thing. When the Chef told us we'd be deboning a chicken leg/thigh and then STUFFING IT... well, I was all ears and drooling with anticipation. First was the demo. The Chef sets up his station, calls us over and proceeds to demonstrate how to take all the bones out of the leg quarter. OH MY FRIGGIN' GOD. It took under three minutes. With a Nick Nack Paddy Whack he pulled out the chicken's bones!! I couldn't wait to get to my station to try this out. I grabbed my leg with renewed interest and prepared to start boning! I ran my knife around the bone of the drumstick section of the leg and severed the tendons. Then severed the bone up in the thigh it was connected to and VOILA! One pull, the leg bone came right out. I giggled and did a small happy dance careful not to kill myself or anyone else with the boning knife in my hand! Now, when removing the hip/thigh bone, the Chef had done it by scraping the top of the thigh bone first and then made a slight incision to expose the bone and then scrape around it in order to completely remove it. I started by clearing away by the thigh bone and it started to roll down exposing the bone. I figured I'd keep this up until I had to make the slit to expose the rest of the bone. More scraping, more scraping and it happened! I had succeeded in pretty much turning the leg quarter inside out! No bones! WAHOOOO! Major happy dance for me - with my knife on the cutting board.

Now, comes the yummy part. We made a stuffing of sauteed green onions, diced prosciutto, mushrooms, leeks, a little heavy cream and a few tablespoons of bread crumbs. This get's tucked into the boneless leg quarter, tied up then ROASTED! Out of the oven, tender and juicy it gets sliced into little rolls and topped with a supreme sauce. I am definitely making this for my next dinner party!!!!!!!!! I now officially, am a leg man.