Today in the Kitchen

More peaches. Today we skinned and sliced, tomorrow they'll get canned. Then for dinner I pulled out one of the last Poulet Rouge chickens out of the freezer. Isaac saw it and clapped and screamed excitedly! He signed chicken and wanted to eat right away. Sorry kiddo, it takes 2 hours to table. :)

I pulled out my red French Oven, a cast iron enamelled lovely pot. In it went halved mushrooms, a chopped leek, a yellow onion, celery, and red bell pepper. I placed the chicken on top of that, smeared it with Irish butter and Tickle a spice from The Spice Shed, sprinkled with course salt and then tiny potatoes from our garden tucked in around it.

I first broiled the chicken on high for 10 minutes and then turned the heat down to 350 degrees F. to cook the rest of the way. It took about 2 hours, but I don't trust timers. I always take the internal temperature with a meat thermometer.

Oh, this chicken was fantastic. The mushrooms and leek and the spices were just perfect and the carcass and leftover veggies are now back in pot with some carrots, more celery, and water filled to the top. That will simmer in the oven, covered, at 225 degrees over night. That is how I do stock in the summer, in the winter it sits covered on the wood burning stove.

I was really happy with how this turned out. 10 minutes of chopping prep is so very easy. We'll get three meals or more from this one bird.  I love our farm chicken so much.

Making a meal like this isn't actually hard. For my whole life I thought it was some magical feat to make nourishing food and that it would take all day to make it. Years of attempting and failing left me discouraged.

It wasn't until I stumbled on some historical fiction about French peasant women baking bread and soup that I realized that for centuries people made good food with only what was in their region, usually in season. Sometimes only with one pot, did they accomplish hearty meals. I started paying attention to food in historical accounts, living history museums, simple recipes.

That's where the change came, the heart of it. I studied the chemistry and the layering of ingredients and recipe equations, but the heart of food isn't the math and science..... it is something else. The joy I have in my simple kitchen, the fresh food from my farm, the joy on my child's face when he sees me pull out the red pot and chicken. It is the thankful gratitude my children share at the beginning our our meal together. The random exclamation in the middle of the day or the overheard conversation where they declare that I am the best at making food and it is always yummy, my husband sharing his delight at a simple meal with friends on social media, the intensity of centerdness that I get with my spoon swirling broth in the pot, breathing in the aroma of herbs and fresh meat are the heart of my kitchen. That isn't something in a book or a classroom that can be taught, it is something you experience in the moment. It is something that only simple food has given me.

Recipe for Summer French Pot Chicken:

1 leek, chopped
1 pint of mushrooms, chopped into bite size
1 yellow onion
1 red bell pepper
1 cup of chopped celery
seasoning and salt
handful of potatoes
1 run of the farm raised 3-4 lb chicken
4 T. grass fed butter

Broil for 10 minutes
350 until internal temperature reaches the safe temp for poultry


For the Bone Broth/Stock

Throw the bones back in after the meal, fill the pot with water, leftover veg, add carrots, bay leaf (optional), apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and simmer for 12-48 hours. Yup. 48 hours.

Ps....peaches are still in the making. They are so perfectly ripe that they are spoiling and we are focused on canning and freezing. The dessert posts are on their way, very soon.

Fried Green Tomatoes with Sweet Tea

Fried Green Tomatoes: 

• 3-4 green firm tomatoes, cut into 1/4 - 1/2 inch slices. 
• buttermilk
• fish fry breading (like Zatarain's Cajun Fish Fri, but a corn flour base with seasoning works too)
• frying oil (lard, coconut, peanut)

Dunk slices in buttermilk, dredge in breading, fry until brown, drain on plate.

Easy if you know how to fry things. That part is critical. Practice that. If you have the temp to high you'll set the kitchen on fire, too low and you get greasy soggy yuck that no one can eat. Fried green tomatoes are just to delicious to ruin, so make sure you or someone who can help knows how to fry food.

Sweet tea is the only appropriate drink to go with this. Some say glass bottle Coca-cola is acceptable, and I can maybe support that. Maybe.

Grilled Farmhand Sticks

Again with the easy week night meals! This is a favourite here, very versatile.  We often are in the middle of important farm work at dinner time, losing daylight hours. This is a side affect of working day jobs and coming home to the livestock chores of 4 different kinds of animals. Chad needs something that he can eat quickly, on the go, and is nutritionally dense.

I start with what veggies I have on hand. Load the kabobs with them. Then I cube up the meat to the size of the veggies. I brush with oil, usually butter but coconut oil and lard work well and olive oil is a last resort (temps too high for olive oil and it makes it taste off).

Once oil is brushed on I generously sprinkle with seasoning of choice. Swamp Fire works well. I also like Pensey's Bicentennial and Bavarian. Your favourite seasoned salt will work, but watch the salt quantity.

Grill until the meat is as done as you like, turning a few times while it grills.

Recipe that is shown above:

Grilled Farmhand Sticks

All of these cut into 1 inch cubes more or less:
Zucchini
Sweet pepper
Baby bella mushrooms
Onion slice
Beef stew meat
Butter
Seasoning and salt

I make variations, use different seasonings, use lamb, deer meat, pork, beef.....whatever vegetable is in season. That is why they have yet to get sick of it. You can even use the butter and seasoning that drips and pools into a roux and make a cream sauce for pasta/rice/couscous/quinoa, then serve the veggie and meat on top.

Easy. Prep time is about 5-10 minutes (how fast you are at chopping things into cubes and threading on the sticks) and grill time is about 10 minutes too, but mostly hands off.

Clean up is easier. If you just have the serving platter and everyone eats off sticks there is no need for dishes. Clean up gets longer if you make the pasta version. That's why I don't usually make that- but if I have the meat thawed and the grill going and unexpected guests pop in, the pasta is a great meal expander. I love feeding our farm guests!

Easy and Cheap Week Night Dinner

Polenta cakes. I am sure I could have made actual cakes that were fancy and formed. Whatever. Mush up log polenta with a fork and mash in butter and shredded asiago cheese. Add a lot of salt. Polenta erases salt, so if you want kick, 1/2 t. of seasoned salt EACH. 350 in the oven for 20 minutes. Take out and let cool slightly.

 

 Start with a log of frozen pork sausage. Why frozen? I never think of this in time to thaw it. I have mastered the art of quick thaw while cooking it up. I use butter and cover the skillet with the lid, open it up and push off the cooked meat from the frozen stir it up and repeat until all thawed and all is cooking.

 Then I add bell pepper and onions. This part is totally optional and where you can play with seasonal vegetables. Add celery, carrots, even mushrooms. I like peppers and onions.

In season you may have your own canned up crushed tomatoes. I'm out. I've been out for 2 years. Last summer I didn't can anything at all. Not one single jar of anything. Anyway, I order organic online because it is delivered to my farmhouse door and I don't have to give the local grocer the stink eye when I am faced with no options and overpriced organic stuff shoved in a corner of the newly remodeled store. Grrr. I like Muir Glen. The flavour is bright and sassy. I like sassy. Add the can (the big can) to the browned sausage and veggies. Since there is more meat than tomato we call this ragu.

 

At this point I was looking at my little polenta cakes and small pan of sauce. 5 hungry people? I need something else too. I found a bunch of asperagus in the fridge. Lemon, salt, and olive oil. 10 minutes to table? Stick it in the broiler.  While I set the table and wrangled small children into washing their hands before helping me bring forks out to the plate, it was sizzling away.

And ta da! Fancy dining servings on tea saucers! Ha! 

 

Just kidding. Check this out. Fancy schmancy healthy dinner on the table in 30 minutes from frozen. I rock. Kid approved. Really really good. All three food catagories met (meat, green veg, starch) plus some extra. Gluten free (for fun, not because of diet).

 

Ingredients for 5 BIG servings:
Log polenta 4$
1 lb Italian sausage (pastured pork is good) $5 retail but $3.50 if you bought bulk from our farm
1 bell pepper $0.50
1 onion $0.50
1 can of organic crushed tomato $2.75
1 bundle of asperagus $3
6 T Irish butter $1

$16.75 for the meal for 5 people, 30 minutes
Way cheaper than eating out. 

Red Chicken in a French Pot

Roasted Red Chicken in a Red Pot with Red Fire Peppers and Red Onions

That's what we call this recipe that I make in my red French Braiser oven. My husband got it for me for Valentine's Day/Birthday/ILoveYouAlwaysEveryDay.  We have a few, a very few poulet rouge chickens left in our freezer (translates Chicken Red Chicken). I love red onions best for cooking, had red potatoes and red bell peppers in the fridge, and nothing is complete without red cayenne and red/pink sea salt.  I also brine the chicken. I brine all poultry, always in sugar and salt water. Actually, this is how I thaw the frozen bird.

Put the chicken in and tuck quartered onions, potatoes, red bell pepper, and some butter all around. I also put in a few slices of citrus, this time it was clementine but lemon and blood orange work well too.  I put melted butter all over the bird and then sprinkled with salt and cayenne and white pepper. Sometimes I use our Swamp Fire mix, but your favourite seasoned salt will work. I have used the North African Berber seasoning from Pensey's and that is good too.

350 degrees until it is done. Usually 75 minutes, but this one was done in 45. Check. I start to check with the meat thermometer when it starts to smell good and brown on top. Always use a good meat thermometer. Always.

I cooked the chicken upside down. Not on purpose. I could not remember which way it was supposed to go.  We carve it up, leave the onions in the pot, put the bones back in, add carrots, celery, and vinegar. Fill pot with water and put back in the oven over night= 3-4 quarts of good bone broth.

The kids fight over the drum sticks and both girls eat all the meat off to the bone. Isaac gets a mini drum from the thigh. He eats it to bone too. The breast meat is tender and juicy and very deep in chicken flavour- that's the breed of chicken though, not the cooking method. Breed and feed matter, this hertiage bird is raised outside at our farm and fed goat milk whey. It takes a fabulous breed and makes it that much better. When we raise these to sell, we post on facebook and sell out 80 chickens in 20 minutes, with a waiting list. They are that good. They average 4-5 lbs each.

I had to hide my last 10 to keep them for our family. ;)

We do chicken at our house every 3 weeks or so. Each chicken will provide 4 meals. We don't waste any of it.

 

 

1 Whole Chicken, brined
8 small red potatoes or 4 large yellow potatoes quartered
1 red onion quartered
1 stick of butter
1-2 red bell peppers chopped into 2 inch chunks
salt, pepper, cayenne to taste (or seasoned salt)
1 orange or lemon (citrus)

350 degrees until done