Stuffing is a fabulously tasty way to use up leftover challah — or any bread you don’t want to waste. I’ve replaced traditional sausage meat with lamb paired with sweet apricots and zesty orange. It can be used to stuff a chicken or turkey but is also delicious baked on its own or for stuffing vegetables.

Method:

• Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the meat until cooked, remove to a bowl, leaving the fat in the pan.

• Now fry the onion in the remaining fat until golden then tip it in with the meat. Now roughly chop 3/4 of the chestnuts into large pieces (keeping some whole for garnish), add them to the pan and fry until they turn slightly golden and remove. Leave any fat in the pan as you will add it to the final mixture.

• In a food processor, lightly pulse the challah until it becomes crumbs, add the meat with the chestnut, onion and chopped herbs and give 2, 3 pulses until everything is combined. Avoid over- mixing so it doesn’t turn to mush!

• Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, add the orange zest and juice, apricots and honey plus salt and pepper to taste. Mix by hand.

• Heat the oven to 180°C (fan).

• Add any fat remaining in the pan to the mixture and mix again.

• Spread the whole mixture in a baking dish approx 20cm x 30cm (but don’t worry if it’s larger or smaller) and cover with foil. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes to brown the top.

• Fry the remaining whole chestnuts with a little olive oil and some sage leaves until the chestnuts are golden and the sage leaves are crisp and sprinkle over the prepared mixture.
  
  Amir Batito is chef and co-owner of The Black Cow, Camden