Bayou birds
Chef adds Cajun spice to 3-in-1 poultry dish

By Joyce Davis
The Daily Times-Call

    LONGMONT - It's a far cry from Bayou country, but Mike Elgin can bring a Louisiana flavor to your table for the asking.  The owner and chef of Just Me Catering, Elgin's love lies with Cajun cuisine, and he's perfected many a recipe to delight diners.  One of his favorites is the turducken, a common poultry affair that involves stuffing a chicken into a duck into a turkey - thus the name turducken.
    A delicacy on any table, north or south, the turducken is quite tedious to make, yet the results are extraordinary.  It takes Elgin two hours to bone the turkey, plus another 45 minutes each for the chicken and the duck.  The boned fowl are then stuffed with one of three dressings prepared by Elgin:  an oyster and bread stuffing; a sweet and spicy cornbread and a piquant andouille sausage stuffing delectable enough to "make you slap your Mama."
    Elgin first heard about the turducken 20 years ago when he worked as a meat cutter at the Corner Pantry at Ninth Avenue and Main Street.  "A lady came in and asked if I'd ever made one, and I was intrigued," he says.  "But when everyone heard about the process, nobody else wanted to do it.  That was about the time I first started hearing about Cajun food, and I loved the thought of it."  Elgin had his first taste of authentic Cajun food when he and his wife traveled to New York and ate at Paul Prudhomme's Lafitte Restaurant, where the legendary Louisiana chef introduced his fiery cuisine to the Big Apple.  "I had an etouffee there made with the blackest roux I ever saw in my life, yet the best I've ever tasted," Elgin remembers.  "After that, Prudhomme took his Cajun cooking back to New Orleans."  When he returned to Colorado, Elgin regularly ordered specialty meats and spices from New Orleans and began refining his repertoire of Cajun dishes.  He made a few turduckens now and then but had little call to make them until John Madden, former football coach and television host of Monday Night Football, mentioned the turducken on air.  "I'd almost forgotten about turducken until he brought it up," says Elgin.  "Once he did, people started talking about turducken and wondering about it.  It's funny to see how things go in and out of style like that."
    Since then, Elgin has whipped up turducken for those who want the experience of eating this bird upon bird creation.  When the dish is finished, diners end up with nearly 30 pounds of pure meat to savor, bound together with tasty stuffing.  In honor of next week's Mardi Gras, we asked the chef to make a turducken.  It turned out to be a feast for the eyes and the palate.  The roasting of the three-birdies-in-one took close to 14 hours, but was well worth the wait.  As you slice through the bird, the knife goes effortlessly through the turducken, yielding a slice that features a core layer of chicken, then stuffing, then duck, more stuffing and finally the moist turkey.  Elgin says a dirty rice, yams, red beans and rice or sugared pecans make a nice side dish for the turducken.  "There's a gravy that's out of this world made from sweet potatoes, eggplant and Grand Marnier," Elgin says.  "I'm not one to follow directions, but my wife Laura made it and followed the directions so closely it seemed like a science project.  Her effort was worth it because that gravy was marvelous." 
    Space does not allow us to print all the steps and instructions to make a turducken.  But in keeping with the Mardi Gras celebration, we offer two variations of dirty rice sure to light up any dinner table.

One of Just Me Catering owner and chef Mike Elgin's favorite Cajun recipes is the turducken.  Decked out for Mardi Gras, the turducken pictured above and left contains nearly 30 pounds of delicious meat and stuffing.  Call Elgin at 303-772-6132.