Roast chicken with mace butter and orange-chorizo stuffing

Mace is the outer casing of a nutmeg. One piece of it is called a blade of mace. It is a finger-like little crunchy thing with a caramel hue. Its taste is subtle, something like the nutmeg it holds in its claw-like grasp, but with a flavour of its own. Spice shops are likely to stock it. If they don’t, please nag them until they do.

While you need to use only a little nutmeg in a dish, as its flavour is pervasive, the taste of mace is gentle enough for it to be used more boldly in a dish. I have been known to throw a small handful of it into a stew.

It’s warm and a little sweet, something like cinnamon but more more restrained, nutty too, and It Needs To Come Back to every Cape kitchen. (I also wrote about it in 2023.)

For this recipe, I melted butter and added several blades of mace. I left it to simmer for a while on the lowest heat, then turned off the heat and let it steep for longer.

C Louis Leipoldt, the poet, sometime Cape rebel and gourmand, knew all about mace. He wrote: “With cinnamon and pepper, nutmeg and mace may be said to be the most important spices employed in Cape cookery, for they figure in the oldest recipes and are still extensively used.”

Meanwhile, the insides of the chicken were telling a different story, and making this a very substantial meal even before adding vegetable side dishes.

I made a stuffing based on chorizo, and of course I added mace to the mix, along with orange zest, onion, garlic, wine and honey. Everything worked in harmony, which often happens when you think about a collection of ingredients and decide whether they will work together. You can always take something out that you think might not belong. Your instincts are likely to be right.

Tony’s roast chicken with mace butter and chorizo-orange stuffing

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

1 x 1.8kg whole chicken, wingtips removed

⅓ cup butter

6 to 8 blades of mace

Salt and white pepper for seasoning the bird

For the stuffing:

¼ cup butter

1 medium white onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 Tbsp garlic paste

Zest of an orange

5 blades of mace

A glass of white wine

1/2 cup chopped chorizo

2 Tbsp raw honey

2 slices day-old white bread

Salt

White pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan) or 220°C.

In a small pot, melt ⅓ cup butter and add 6 to 8 blades of mace. Simmer very gently for 3 or 4 minutes, turn off the heat and leave it for the flavours to develop.

For the stuffing:

Melt butter in a saucepan and add the chopped onion. Simmer gently until translucent, about 4 minutes.

Add the garlic paste, zest and mace and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring.

Add the wine, chorizo and honey, and simmer for 3 or 4 minutes.

Crumble the bread in, using your fingers, season with salt and pepper and stir well to combine.

Season the cavity of the chicken and spoon in the stuffing, packing it in tightly.

Using a teaspoon, spoon half of the mace butter under the breast skin (prise it from the end with your fingers and push a thumb in carefully to separate it from the breast flesh). Smear the rest of the mace butter all over the chicken skin. Season with salt and white pepper.

Place the prepared chicken in a roasting pan and roast at 200°C or 220°C for 90 minutes or until the juices run clear when a skewer is inserted into the breast bone.

Serve with roast potatoes and your favourite vegetables. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a platter by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.