Preparing the Christmas Three Bird Roast, the Quail, the Guinea Fowl and the Chicken

This Christmas was always destined to become an event that I would remember for years and years to come, with fondness and huge amounts of affection purely because of the wonderful friends I shared it all with. With so much love in the air I figured we needed a ceremonious bird (well it turns out to be birds) to carve up at the Christmas lunch table. I have always been quite intruiged by age old recipes for lavish multi-bird roasts, which seem to conjure all that is representative of Christmas plenty. I did however figure that 5, 7, or 10 birds stuffed into one another seemed a little excessive, so I opted for a modest three bird ensemble. I am not a huge fan of turkey, nor are many of my friends, so we quickly established that it wouldn't be a feature on our table this year. We had pondered Goose too - but I feel that a Goose is too magnificent a bird to be played with, and demands to have its own one man show at Christmas. Quails I have always loved and were already on my list. Guinea Fowl was a good compliment to the Quail, without being excessively gamey. So the last bird had to be weighty, delicious and awesome - so we opted for a beautiful free range organic Chicken that had obviously lived a very fine life indeed on a farm in Devon. The birds were bought whole, which meant that I had the challenge of boning them ready for layers of stuffing, followed by trussing with yards of twine to transform them back to a bird like shape again.