CSA

gratitude for a chicken life well-lived

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It’s only been since participating in our CSA plan that I’ve cooked whole chickens. We signed up for the chicken option since we do eat chicken, and I liked knowing that the birds would either come from the farm (laying hens) or from local Mennonites with whom our farmer has an arrangement (roasters). I wasn’t prepared, though, for how emotional I got the first time I had the little naked bird carcass in my house. I cooked it, but it was hard; we ate it, and had a long moment of gratitude for the chicken’s life. It was delicious; we appreciated each bite.

It’s less difficult for me to cook a chicken now, mostly because I know what I’m getting into. I reevaluate each year whether I want to continue to receive chickens, and two more times now I’ve chosen yes. While the roasters are delicious, it’s the stewing hens that I feel an affinity for. I, along with nearly 100 other families, have eaten the eggs they’ve lain over the past three years. I have eaten the vegetables grown with the potent addition of their waste and kept free of many insect pests by their daring predation. I accept that their lifetime is limited, and that they won’t be able to lay eggs forever. I also accept that our farmer has chosen not to be driven by a chicken’s schedule, and won’t be replacing this flock. So I choose to accept the last gift of not one but many meals, in the form of the chicken stock I make and the meat full of all the flavors of what passes for wild living for a chicken.

Today I picked up the first of this winter’s chickens, and I feel a bit sad for it. I appreciate it and am looking forward to the meals it will provide, but I’m grieving a little bit as well. In a moment of the kind of timing that was completely absent last week, my replacement stockpot arrived yesterday, so the hen is already stewing. I have ambivalence about eating her, but that ambivalence is only one part of the multifaceted evaluation I make each time I choose my food. On balance, I would choose the same way again. Still, she deserves her moments of recognition, and today I will take time to make sure that this one chicken’s life has not passed unnoticed.

Thank you for the eggs, and the predation, and the poop. Thank you for your years of avian service. Thank you, in advance, for the delicious soups we will enjoy this year, flavored with your years of chicken experiences. Never let it be said that I forgot my food was once a living being.

gratitude for a chicken life well-lived

food : chicken with pac choi

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I have this recipe that I found on the internet last year, for chicken with bok choy. I pull it out when I get bunches of pac choi from our farm share, which is a couple of times a season. It’s a tasty recipe, in a salty soy sauce kind of way, but it’s written terribly. The ingredients are in a weird order and the instructions about what you combine with what else when are completely unclear. I thought I’d written sufficient notes on the paper last year to be able to start a bit ahead this year, but I still struggled. So, I’m rewriting it and recording it here for posterity. If you follow my instructions it will be good (but not at all authentic, do not make the mistake of attempting to serve this as actual Asian food).

Chicken with Bok Choy (or Pac Choi)

Ingredients

3 skinless, deboned chicken breasts (chopped)
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. corn starch

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 lb. bok choy or pac choi, including stems (chopped)
1/2 c. water
1/4 tsp. salt

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 tsp. grated or minced fresh ginger root
4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp. oyster sauce or soy sauce
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. corn starch
1/4 c. water

Toss chopped chicken with soy sauce and cornstarch until coated; set aside. Heat oil in wok or large fry pan. Stir fry bok choy with salt and water until limp, then remove from heat and set aside. Heat oil in second wok or large fry pan. Stir fry ginger root and garlic until fragrant, then add chicken and stir fry until cooked. Mix together oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, corn starch and water; add to chicken and stir quickly to mix. Add bok choy and stir together. Remove from heat and serve immediately (with brown rice that you’ve already made in your rice cooker).

Enjoy!

food : chicken with pac choi

food : butternut sage orzo

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After searching high and low, I was able to find orzo at Whole Foods. Good to know for the future. For folks like me for whom cream is just a big no-no, orzo is the gift that allows us to have something resembling risotto. Which is what the Butternut Sage Orzo dish is. (Note: this version of the recipe omits the instructions to add the sage to simmer with the squash if you are using dried rather than fresh herb.)

It’s likely that this dish was meant to be more of a pasta dish, in the sense that the squash chunks would remain whole and be tossed with the orzo. I wanted a risotto impersonation, however, so I used my handy potato masher to mash the squash toward the end of the cooking time and create a nice thick soupy sauce to be mixed in with the orzo. It was delicious! After our experience with the Winter Squash Galette, I was pretty confident that the dish would be great, as it had the same winning combination of sage and parmesan cheese (pecorino again, in my case). I didn’t take any pictures, but I’m sure you can imagine: it looked like a warm bowl of yummy squash and orzo with sage!

There is really not much else to say about this dish or squash. Except that I still have three pumpkins, one butternut squash, and one spaghetti squash hanging about, as well as something like two quarts each of pureed pumpkin and courge longue de nice in the freezer. I will bring another batch of pumpkin bars to a dinner next week, but beyond that I got nothin. Except a recipe for pumpkin apple muffins that looks delicious if I ever get around to making it. I fear that we’re a little muffined out on pumpkin, though, after last year’s seemingly endless stream of pumpkin bread. We’ll see.

food : butternut sage orzo

squash baked with apples and walnuts

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The whole kit and kaboodle, pre-baking.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m dealing with a bit of a squash situation? Right. Last week’s efforts involved an upgrade of squash-baked-with-garlic that was inspired by a recipe at Simply Recipes (a site I use as a starting point for both new ingredients and classics that I just never tried to make before). I was planning to make the recipe as written, with adjustments to the butter and sugar, but because we live Down South, cranberries aren’t available in the grocery stores yet, even though it’s been autumn for three weeks. (Maybe this is unfair and you don’t have fresh or frozen cranberries available Up North yet, either?)

My version: toss together peeled and chunked squash (I used courge longue de Nice), peeled and chopped apples (I used Stayman, because I wanted them to keep their shape), minced garlic (I used about 4 or 5 or 6 cloves), whole walnuts, olive oil, and salt and pepper (I could have used more salt), and then bake at 375F for about an hour (until the squash gets soft). It was, I have to say, pretty good.

squash baked with apples and walnuts

gingery butternut squash soup

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Four kinds of apples, two for eating and two for cooking.

I am generally hard-pressed to choose a favorite aspect of autumn, but apples are very close to the top of the list. Each time I come home from the farmers’ market, I bring more apples with me. More types in greater volume on every trip. Today I went in search of apples for eating (my partner takes them in his lunch, and we have decided that local minimally-sprayed-and-delicious is better than shipped-from-another-continent-and-tasteless organic) and for cooking. The soup I was planning to make last week to use up some of the squash includes apples, and I’ve been waiting to get going on it since Thursday’s market was rained out. In addition to using one of the butternut squashes, it required the last of the fresh ginger from the container in the freezer and a container of broth, so I have been excited about it for many reasons. Yes, my college Tetris addiction is manifesting in an obsession with constantly rearranging the freezer to maximize space, I admit that.

Today I made it to the afternoon market and collected more apples than I currently know what to do with, including the two I need for the soup. I’ll worry about the rest of the apples later. The soup is easy (again from Simply In Season): sauté two chopped onions and two tablespoons of minced fresh ginger in oil until the onions are translucent; add 1 chopped (peeled, deseeded) butternut squash, two chopped (peeled, cored) apples, and 4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock; bring to a boil and then simmer until the squash is tender.


Soup, in the beginning.

You are then directed to puree the soup, but I hate pureeing soups so I just usually mash everything in the pot with the potato masher instead. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used the masher to actually mash potatoes, only for soup, although a friend once used it to get holiday cookie frosting to the right consistency before I bought the hand mixer two years ago. Back to the soup: mashing works pretty well if you are not French and don’t mind having slightly lumpy soup (the onions don’t mash). You’ll also probably want to add salt, unless you put a lot of salt in your stock. I don’t include any, and I’ve had to add salt for taste to every recipe in this book that calls for stock, which makes me suspect they’re assuming salty broth.


Soup, at the end.

And there you have it: soup. This recipe would probably adapt fine to the stronger, less sweetly flavored courge longue de Nice, which is good because figuring out what to do with all that squash is next week’s task.

gingery butternut squash soup