Recipe: Olive & Lemon Stuffing

I concocted this one today to go with our roast chicken. And it was good, so I thought I should share it.
You will need:
Good bread – I used a mean half an olive ficelle and an olive roll, but ¼-⅓ a large loaf or ½ a small loaf is fine.
2 medium onions
1 lemon (the fresher the better)
6 cloves of garlic (more or less according to taste)
3-4 tbsp olive oil
Good handful of olives of your choice, stoned & roughly chopped – I used a dozen Nocellara olives;
3 tbsp tomato paste
Good dash Worc. Sauce
salt & pepper
hot water
This is what you do:

  1. Peel the onions and cut each into 8. Wash the lemon, remove the stalk and cut that also into 8 (yes the whole lemon!). Peel the garlic.
  2. Put onions, lemon and garlic in the food processor and blitz until fine. Tip this out into a mixing bowl.
  3. Cut/break the bread into pieces and blitz that in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. Add this to the onion mix.
  4. Add all the other ingredients (except the water) and mix well.
  5. Carefully add hot water and keep mixing – be careful not to make the mix too wet; it should stick together and hold its shape.
  6. Make into balls (this should make 8-10 large stuffing balls), place in a greased dish or tray and cook in the oven with your chicken until golden brown and just beginning to crisp (probably 40 minutes or so).
  7. Serve alongside your roast chicken (or it would work well with pork or any other bird).

We overcooked ours slightly but they were still excellent and I liked the extra crispiness – they came out rather like onion bhaji: crisp, tangy, lemony and oniony. The cold ones will make super stuffing sandwiches! Yum!