Vin de Noix from the Living Larder: a Natural Light/Natural Food Story
It’s that green walnut time of year. Solstice. St. Jean’s. June 24.
Think mid-summer madness minus the fairies and Shakespeare; add sugar, spices and moonshine to the unripened walnuts. ‘Unripened’ means that under the thick green outer husk, the nut meat and shell are still unformed, a juicy white tannic miracle growing on heavy laden branches.
For me, noix verts herald the long days of looking at Camont’s fruit and nut trees, gardens and potagers as a living larder. White peaches for ice cream, summer pears for jam, blackberries and raspberries for liqueurs. But it is this very first recipe I learned to make at the hands of Claude and Vetou Pompele some 20 years ago that reminds me of my most important job here at the Gascon Kitchen– hands-on teacher of artisan culinary traditions.
The walnut tree has been growing for over the 20 years I have lived at Camont. It was a leggy12-foot sapling when I spared its life. Now it reaches up over 30 feet and spreads a deep shade for the lambs, chickens and us. I used the bottle of eau de vie made by old man Dupuy over 40 years ago. A gift from his daughter, Monique, I had tucked it away in the back of the boat cellar a few years back. Antique moonshine. The recipe was taught me by Claude Pompele and I published in “A Culinary Journey in Gascony”. This has been a story in the making for a long time.
Last week I had the pleasure of hosting accomplished food stylist Karen Gillingham for a Natural Light Natural Food photography workshop with Tim Clinch. We are delighted with the sort of easy camaraderie these workshops encourage. Between bouts of refilling the pink carafe with good local rosé, we talked about the change in food photography from the film years to the digital decade. How good food has grown and shaped our lives. How both experienced and ingenue eyes discover rich content in the tradition-steeped farms and village and markets of Gascony.
While Tim is loading the first student galleries to the www.clinch-hill.com site, I thought I share a sneak peek of a few of Karen’s photographs of the Vin de Noix I made on June 24 2010.
Vin de Noix- traditionally made on June 24
24 green walnuts
24 sugar cubes
750ml eau de vie
3 literes of inexpensive rosé wine
handful of lemon rinds
nutmeg shards, cloves and cardamon to taste
smash the green walnuts outside on board. wear aprons and gloves.
place all the above in an earthen ware crock, glass jar, stainless steel bucket.
cover with an old plate.
let sit 24 days.
filter, bottle and drink at your leisure in the cold short winter days.
Solstice Souvenirs… Natural Light Natural Food Workshop
Camont’s table is full to overflowing with good food, friendship… and talent.
This Summer Solstice brings us new visions of our Gascon Kitchen world through the eyes of Denise Woodward and Karen Gillingham- both here at Camont for our Natural Light Natural Food monthly workshop. Brava!
Denise Woodward aka @chezus
Karen Gillingham- Natural Light Natural Food Workshop
Life and Death in Gascony- an artisan life
Life at Camont
June days on the Gascon ranch are full of comings and goings. Workshops and students, workers and friends; the newly hatched and the unruly woolly critters. Best of all Camont loves it when the table is full of old friends… and new.
This month Camont’s table has been full of good friends- fabulous food photographer Tim Clinch, witty & sweet David Lebowitz, the Bleu Queen of Lectoure Denise Lambert, the flowering pouce verte of Lisa Maiklem, Camont’s own eagle eye on the world Erika J., and my own sister tita-dear, Steph Hill.
We’ve all been glued to the basse-cour (barnyard) as our Gascon Noir rooster Henri IV has held court while a late spring clutch of his offspring arrived including a snow white chick and seven little fluffy black siblings. Next we assisted our new Rouen Clair duck and drake into parenthood- momduck left the nest after the first two hatched, leaving us to rescue four remaining eggs in various stages of breaking free. Happy to say all survived our impromptu oven incubator and were out swimming in the pond within 24 hours of fluffying out.
Our two lambs Margot and Marie are turning into sheep. I get lots of comments about how I couldn’t possibly eat them if I have named them. Hmm… sorry folks. that’s 4 gigots d’agneau you’re looking at as well as a few racks of chops, ribs and collar meat. We’ll be including lamb butchery as well as pork in our new Artisan Butchery & Charcuterie course this fall. The French are famous for great lamb dishes, navarin d’agneau is a spring favorite so let me know if you have questions regarding cuts of lamb.
The potager is finally getting under control thanks to Helpxer’s Max, Katie, Larissa and Andrew. Lisa M is overseeing the planting in an expanded land share program to produce enough organic flowers and produce to create some Gascon Kitchen conserves to sell at the Nerac market. Wait til you see the colors that will pop next month! Later this August and September, we’ll be creating my favorite figgy BBQ sauce as well reaping the harvest of a hundred heritage tomato plants.
With all the comings there are goings as well. The everyday life force that scratches, pecks and munches this fertile Garonne River valley field also has a built in end in sight. What we celebrate in growing, hatching and raising we do with the food at the table as its goal. When you look at our pictures and read our poetic thoughts, remember that we, too, are cultivating a full circle approach to living- where “Life at Camont” is not a sentence for the wicked but a creative way of passing through and touching this French dirt. We teach the artisan way of life. Come join us.
An in-the-pink interview with Sweet David Lebovitz-
When my friend David Lebovitz, came southwest- first to Cahors and its Malbec festival- then down the slow train to Agen, I knew he would need a bit of Gascon/American hospitality to balance the gallons of teeth-staining ‘black’ wine they were pouring on the bridge over the Lot. Here at Camont when the temps reach toward the 90′s, we put the dark stuff away and grab for our favorite white wine- rosé. When winter dishes like cassoulet and garbure are shelved until fall, we throw a couple duck steaks on the grill, pop open a jar of rillettes, flip the lid on a le parfait jar of foie gras and open yet another bottle of rosé glaceé.
As we sat down to an apero hour on the Gascon Kitchen terrace and the rosé began to color the late afternoon, I asked DL a few pointed questions. What does the City boy who’s living the Sweet Life in Paris do on a busman’s holiday in dept. 47? Enjoy the good life in Gascony in the kitchen at Camont.
Q: What do you like about the country?
DL: I don’t know- eating outside. drinking rosé with ice
There’s wifi.
Prunes
Q: What’s your favorite thing to eat
DL: drinking rose with ice with nice people
Q: What’s your favorite food here?
DL: Does rosé count? Is it rosé o’clock ?
Q: How many prunes do you eat a day?
DL: At least five, regularly.
Q: How do like sleeping in a gypsy’s trailer?
DL: I love it.
Q: When you made the apple rhubarb tarte last night did you use a recipe? measure anything?
DL: No, I did it au piff
Q: What did you find at the brocante?
DL: 3 old bistrot glasses… and the nice lady gave me an orange handled whisk.
Q: What are you taking on the TGV when you leave Agen tomorrow?
DL: Prunes! A ham sandwich, some Le Temple cheese and an apple, water… oh, and rosé.
Q: And most importantly… When will you come back to Camont?
DL: for Camp Charcuterie in early November.
What we did in the Lot-et-Garonne on a sunny may afternoon:
make a perfect tomato tarte and take 500 pictures of it for Natural Light Natural Food
go shopping at the Prune farm & buy 10 liters of rosé
Making good food with friends together in the Gascon Kitchen.
See you in November!
photos by Tim Clinch, Erika Johnson & Steph Hill
Natural Light Natural Food
Spring light floods the potager first thing these May mornings at Camont. Before the crew awakes, ‘summer snow’ drifts from the canal-side poplar trees onto the new lamb pasture. Dried acacia blossoms scent the air. I am up even before Henri crows today– and he has a lot to crow about these days. Meet Snowy, the first of the new brood just hatching this summer snow weekend.
Snowy- 12 hours old.
Le printemps is about beginnings. Here at the Gascon Kitchen at Camont we have many new beginnings- chicks, gardens and a new series of food photography workshops with my good friend Tim Clinch. The first Natural Light Natural Food workshop begins today. Working on a series of black and white food shots for a new publication, Tim Clinch captures the spirit of the good food of Gascony as well as my beloved Gascon Kitchenalia.
practical asparagus
We’ll be offering a series of Natural Light Natural Food workshops through the rest of summer.
For more information and to sign up for the next June 19 workshops contact us at www.clinch-hill.com.
Bonne Dimanche!
snowy & practical asparagus by Tim Clinch
Seed to Sausage- more than meat.
Seed-to-Sausage. I’ve used the phrase before to describe the ‘full circle’ farm of the Chapolard family- GAEC Baradieu of Mezin, France.
Never has the phrase resonated as soundly as last Saturday in the crowded teaching kitchen of the Art Institute campus in Portland Oregon at the 2010 IACP conference. The audience was an attentive group of international culinary professionals- writers, publishers, chefs, cooks, butchers, and bloggers as well as some of Portland’s own bright culinary stars- Vitaly Paley of Paley’s and Elias Cairo of Olympic Provisions.
Camas Davis, a 2009 student of the Gascon Kitchen who returned from France to found the Portland Meat Collective, presented Michael Ruhlman, co-author of ‘Charcuterie’, Adam Sappington- owner and chef/butcher of The Country Cat , and “Team Gascony”- my neighbor and good friend pork producer/butcher/charcutier Dominique Chapolard of GAEC Baradieu- and me in a demonstration of American and French butchery called “Meat Revival.”
The five of us shared the space with two halves of PIG- a well-reared animal provided by Sweet Briar Farm. The premise was to discuss and demonstrate the difference in approach between standard American Pork Cuts and traditional French Charcuterie cuts. Dominique and Adam approached their craft with as much respect for the carcass as they had shown for each other from the instant they met earlier in the week. Adam treated Dominique like a long lost French Brother, Dominique deferred to Adam as Chef (with a French accent on its true meaning as ‘boss’) and what began in a show and tell of meat craft, ended three hours later in a mutual celebration of the revival of one of civilized man’s most basic life skills. In a sweet post on his blog here http://blog.ruhlman.com/2010/04/the-saving-graces-of-pigs-and-charcuterie.html/comment-page-1#comment-58756 Michael Ruhlman writes, “Three hours of intense interaction with people who truly care about this world, the earth and the animals, who care about cooking, about serving people, who do it the hard way, the long way, these grounded wonderful, big big souls.”
I won’t talk about the reasons why this ‘meat revival’ is on everyone’s plates; why the best restaurants in town star house-cured charcuterie on their menus. Others can and do explain it better. Ruhlman remarks in ‘Charcuterie’- “the way the sunlight hit the fat of the dried meats, the way it glistened, the beauty of the meat” reveals his inner carnivore’s poet describing our attraction to the raw/cured meat as both forbidden and seductive. Jim Harrison says it over and over again in his classic tribute to hunting, cooking and savoring the good life- “The Raw and the Cooked.”
I can however talk to the French side of this meat equation as demonstrated by Dominique with the skill and understanding of the beast as only a pig farmer could have.
I can speak for the work, the care, and the understanding of the foundation of the Chapolard farm as they transform fertile fields that lay across the Gascon landscape in yearly rotations of wheat corn, barley, peas, beans, and sunflowers. Theirs is an edible patchwork stitched by hand on battered tractors and harvesters that run on sunflower oil. As award winning blogger Hank Shaw writes, “The first thing I learned was not so surprising — that it all starts with the hogs.” You can read more of Hank’s humble words at http://www.honest-food.net/blog1/2010/04/26/humbling-win-humbling-experience/
I can speak of the commitment to quality food that begins with breeding not fanciful named or decorative breeds but a healthy heritage stock that lends itself to Gascony’s climate, and food palette.
This commitment takes time. From spring seed to fall harvest is 6-8 months; from farrow to weaning to fattening to slaughter is 16 months; add a week in the butcher room and 4-8 weeks of curing; then 4 days a week at the markets until our ‘seed’ is ‘sausage’ and in the consumers hands. Add that up and it’s a 2 year and 9 month investment before they see any of the 8€ a kilo (or 3.63 euro a pound) they are paid for their artisanal products.
The Chapolard pigs are slaughtered at 12 months and weigh around 160-180 kg (350-400 lbs)- the meat is deep in flavor, brightly colored pink to red and has the structure needed to produce excellent charcuterie. Jacques Chapolard, Dominique’s younger brother, tends the breeding program for GAEC Baradieu. Cradling a piglet in his arms, he explains that the unlike pork rushed to fit a industrial standard with the pig killed at 6-8 months, Baradieu’s 12 month old Large White (Yorkshire) pigs has fully developed skeleton, the structure to support the muscle meat we eat as chops, roasts, & bacon, are satisfying to the palate and tooth. The meat taste is fully developed, the texture supports a diversity of cooking techniques. This same pork destined for charcuterie, cured by salting, brining and air drying, also needs to be from mature animals. Imaging trying to dry age veal, rather than beef? or drinking an unaged cabernet? eating yogurt only instead of 18 month old cave-aged Roquefort. The technical discussions for this fully formed meat revolved around the natural acid present in mature pork. If the Chapolards could produce a quality charcuterie product in half the time, they would. What farmer wouldn’t?
I can also speak of the hunger for knowledge as evidence in the four sold out workshops- over a 100 eager chefs, students, and producers attended during our 2 week visit to the west coast. With so much myth and misconception concerning the ‘why’ behind the ‘how’, I was excited to see professionals as well as students looking for more information- the details, the finesse. More than the elegant technique of European butchery-the techniques used to define cuts of meats by following the natural connective tissue seams between muscles that Dominique demonstrated to his confreres and students, more than my expat quips or literal translations (Now, I’ll liberate the ham bone.), I think we got across what Dominique- the butcher and I- the Cook wanted you to understand. The passion that moved Michael Ruhlman is what fuels the Gascon Kitchen. It stands on a millennium of civilized market/farmer/consumer traditions that supports family as the center of artisan production. This passion for food, a cliché of French cuisine, is the foundation of our future here in America.
This was just an amuse bouche to the big feast yet to come.
The close to the earth gastronomy is as vital to teach as it is to produce and consume. As Dominique Chapolard taught everyone he met over the last 2 weeks,
Tout seul, tu meurs – work alone, you die.
GAEC Ferme Baradieu is unique for its commitment to this future education and artisan production but not alone.
We wait for you in Gascony.
Camas Davis at the Nerac Market – Summer 2009
For more information about the 2010-2011 “French PIG: Butcher & Cook” short workshops and Artisan Butchery & Charcuterie courses- click here.
photos by tim clinch
and
Fleur: french flowers. An Organic Cutting Garden
A new project, a new program for the Gascon Kitchen. Lisa Maiklem, our neighborhood fleuriste grows all her own organic flowers that she weaves into magical bouquets and airy celebration of color and scent. Running out of space to fill the growing demand for her jewel-toned and naturally eccentric blossoms, we hatched a plan to turn a little used strip of park by the petanque court into a Gascon Kitchen floral annex.
Beginning with seedlings that Lisa mothers in March and armed with a pitchfork, we are fencing out the hens and ducks, and creating a colorful and organic cutting garden that will welcome students and visitors to Camont’s productive park. A mowed lawn is slowly and thoughtfully becoming a living work of art.
Lisa Maiklem of le Frechou tends her ephemeral crops and weaves daring tapestries of posies.
Color against the stone gravel terrace at the Gascon Kitchen at Camont.
Tea cakes in Franco-Anglais style.
From green to a riot of color- a lot of hard work and planning. New programs are available for those interested in apprenticing with Lisa on how to create and maintain an organic cutting garden and business, program runs from March-October.
Green fields will give way to color this summer! Come join our new Organic French Cutting Garden program.
The bees at Camont are going to love it!
Tourteau Fromage de Chevre- a goat cheese treat!
Goats. Cheese. Cake.
Our day started on Goats, moved into Cheese- chèvre, of course, and then finished on Cake. Goat’s Cheese Cake.
I welcomed @SabinaCuisina into the Gascon Kitchen a short week ago, fresh from midterms at her culinary institute and ready for a Gascon Spring Break. (thanks to hubby TP!) Sabina was not the first person in the Gascon Kitchen that lives and breathes cheese- goats, sheep or cow! But she is the first person to come who actually tends and milks goats and makes chèvre working with Liz and Peter Mulholland at the lovely Valley View Farms in Topsfield MA. So I laid out a week for Sabina that was cheese based, with a few Gascon Kitchen extras thrown in. (P.S. check our program page for more info.) What we ended with was a wonderful experiment in making one of my favorite bought pastries and a successful first attempt at making a goat cheese cake called a tourteau.
These are the goats who make the milk,
that Sabine cares for,
that makes Phillipe uses to make the cheese,
that he sells at the Agen Market,
and we buy to bring home wrapped in pure white paper…
Oops, what that round black ball? Le Marquis Noir de Jahan?
Otherwise known as a Tourteau Fromagé.
The Tourteau Fromagé is a specialty cake of Poitou-Charente region of Southwest France. Found usually in cheese shops, I developed a weakness for the finely textured, barely sweet cake. Like an Angel Food Cake married to a N.Y. Cheesecake. After just one bite Sabina also fell for the sweet trap and we decided to test the recipe with some of the fresh goat cheese from Phillipe.
Local is as local does. And here in Gascony, you can tell that even our flour, that I buy in one kilo sacks at Pierre’s Boulangerie is a local product. Wearing the Musketeers habit, this is the classic ‘type 55′ all purpose flour used for most baking. EXTREME warning: The extraordinary eggs from my hens account for the extreme yellow color of the interior of the cake just as the extra-high temperature of the oven produces the traditional blackened crust. The contrast of soft tender cake and charcoaled top crust is part of the tourteaux charm. We produced three cakes from the following recipe that we made in small very deep mini-cassoles each holding about 12fl oz or 300ml. So inspired by the courage of the Cadets of Gascony- all for one and one tourteau for all!
Tourteau de Chèvre or a goat.cheese.cake
Preheat oven to 380’C or 530’F. Yes. HOT! Very HOT!
For the pastry I sued a simple butter short crust.
- 100 gr butter- unsalted
- 200 gr flour- all purpose unbleached
- Salt- pinch
- 1 egg
- Water- as needed
Cut butter into flour and salt with fingertips. Add egg and water. Gather pastry crust into ball. Divide into three. Roll out each third, place into deep rounded molds. Trim. Prick.
Batter:
- 250 gr fresh goats cheese (after draining)
- 175 gr white sugar (125gr for yolks- 50gr for whites)
- 50 ml milk (about a tablespoon)
- 6 eggs, separated
- 60 gr flour
- Splash of vanilla/rum/Armagnac
- Pass goat cheese through a food mill or ricer.
- Beat in 125 gr sugar, milk and flour. (I used a whisk.)
- Whisk egg whites with 50 gr sugar until stiff peaks. (we use a copper bowl and hand whisk in the Gascon Kitchen.)
- Fold in a large spoonful of whites into the cheese/yolk mixture. Stir well.
- Fold remaining whites into cheese/yolk batter.
- Pour into unbaked pastry shells.
- Place into HOT oven (280’C/530’F) for 10 minutes. The tops will puff up round and start to brown and blacken immediately. Don’t panic!
- Then turn oven down to 220′C or 425′F for 40 minutes. remove from oven and let cool.
I used 3 small cassoulet bowls holding about 300ml/12oz each. this is what they look like baking. The forward one we slid in 4 minutes after the first two, and it was indeed underdone. but delicious.
The tops popped up while baking but resettled once they were removed from the oven. The pastry adheres to the batter and shrinks away from the sides making it easy to remove from the glazed bowls. The finished cake has a light and rich texture, akin to a rich golden angel food cake, barely sweet and scented of fresh cheese. Although commercially made with fresh cow’s cheese, the goat’s cheese tang makes a delicious difference. When in France make sure to try one from a fromager or make your own version at home. I am making mini ones this weekend for a large Easter gathering. Another golden eggy wonder from the Gascon Kitchen’s healthy hens. Merci to Sabina, TP, Phillipe and sabine and her goats
How to butcher & cook a “French PIG” ?
Remember that old joke about the three-legged pig? There are a thousand variations on the location, characters and punchline. My own goes like this:
A Novice American Butcher was wandering through the bucolic landscapes of Southwest France looking for a Charcuterie Farm. He spots a Frenchman with a large suitcase and a cleaver in a field. Behind the beret-sporting Charcutier is a very Large White Pig with a Yorkshire accent with just three legs.
“Pardon monsieur,” the heavily tattooed NAB (Novice American Butcher) asked, ‘but why does your Cochon have only three legs?”
” That’s a sad story! This Pig was a rock star in a previous life and fell off a Bar while having a glass of chilled Rosé. When he came to, the bar was snacking on jambon and the Iron Chef was singing ” A pig this good, you can’t eat all at once!”
Ok, I managed to get most of the old joke in there while exposing the new. In this week’s article on Rock Star Butchery at Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2010/03/11/rock_star_butcher_parties/index.html, two butchers duke it out about what’s trend versus progress and whether Bar Butchery is a joke like a three-legged pig.
I’ve finished rolling my eyes and washing off my crackerjack P.I.G. tattoos from my knuckles. I listen for the glimmer of hope at the end of the article when Ryann Farr of 4505 Meat in SFO says:
“I have the utmost respect for anything that I handle, be it a whole hog or a vegetable that came out of the ground, because I know the farmers and I know the ranchers,” Farr says. And to him, the parties fill a gap in the public’s relationship with meat — getting to know their butcher.”
So let me introduce you to my butchers- all 6 of them- collectively known as the Chapolards.
The Chapolard Family of Ferme Baradieu, Mezin, France
I don’t want to sound too preachy, but let me get on my high Gascon horse long enough to tell you that if you are serious about learning where your meat comes from, who butchers it, and who prepares it and if you would like to meet a French artisan butcher/pork producer who grows all the wheat, barley, corn and sunflower seeds that he feeds his pigs, then slaughters the animals in a cooperative run abbatoir, then butchers the carcasses, then makes the sausage, then cures the charcuterie, cooks the pates, hams and pate de tete and THEN sells it all to his loyal customers four times a week at local village farmers markets, year in and year out, rain & sun, winter cold & summer heat… then come join us in April as Dominique Chapolard, representing the whole Chapolard clan at the Ferme Baradieu, and I introduce you to the “French PIG- butcher & cook” in a series of Four very limited edition workshops in Northern California, Oregon and Washington.
Dominique Chapoalrd & one French PIG
WORKSHOPS
April 16-Friday. Napa, CA. Hosted by Artisan Food School at the Fatted Calf, Oxbow Public Market
- French Charcuterie Cuts and Seam Butchering- Evening Participatory Demonstration Workshop 6-10pm including an Artisan Pork Tasting and discussion with Carrie Oliver. $195
April 17- Saturday. Sonoma Valley, CA. Hosted by Kathleen Kelley of Kelley & Young Wines
- French Cuts & Seam Butchering & Authentic Charcuterie- Full Day Hands-on Workshop & Wine Dinner. including charcuterie lunch and PINK: Porc & Rosé Tasting Dinner with Carrie Oliver of the Artisan Beef Institute. $395
April 25- Sunday. Portland OR. Sponsored by the Portland Meat Collective at Robert Reynolds’ Chefs Studio.
- “Defining French Cuts for Charcuterie and the Kitchen” Half-day Hands-On Workshop $250
April 26- Monday. Woodinville, WA Hosted by The Herb Farm Restaurant
- French Cuts & Seam Butchering & Authentic Charcuterie- Full Day Hands-on Workshop including Lunch half day and full day possible- $150-$395 book here: http://theherbfarmfrenchpig.eventbrite.com/
For more information email: kitchen-at-camont (at) email (dot) com or leave a comment below. Spaces are limited and so are the pigs…
Photo credits to Mister Tim Clinch courtesy of a creative collaboration Clinch-Hill.com
Poule-au-Pot…a chicken in every pot.
Camont's Henri IV
Merci Henri IV*.
You started a culinary tradition that outlasts event he most political promises when you declared in the late 1500′s-
Si Dieu me prête vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon royaume qui n’ait les moyens d’avoir le dimanche une poule dans son pot!
If God spares me, I will ensure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday!
France's Henri IV
In Gascony, a Poule-au-Pot- or a Chicken-in-a-Pot has the mythic attributes that many cultures attribute to chicken soup- heart warming, restorative & familial. Plus it sports the royal seal of approval from the most mythic king of France- Good King Henry or le Vert Galant. Rather than sporting an ill pallor or being the envious sort, the Vert here refers to the vigorous, sharp or spicy adjective characteristics of being green– as in a sauce verte.**
Here at Camont, we have our own pecking order of royalty. Our Black Gascon rooster, Henri IV, shares more than a name with his royal predecessor. he shares the heroic and amorous reputation of being a true lady’s man. Henri of Navarre has the enviable reputation of being the Royal Lady’s Man with a hundred ladies-in-waiting at his beck and call, referred to as Catherine de Medici’s Escadron Volant or her famous flying squadron. Henri of Camont has his own ladies in waiting, laying at his beck and coco-ri-co or dashing about the le Parc de Basse-Cour or our Barnyard Park.
So when it came time ‘cull the flock’ and ‘harvest some meat’ , in other words remove a non-productive hen who had stopped laying (taking room & board away from the rest of the working girls), I turned to Henri IV of Navarre’s words and prepared a simple version of a traditional French Sunday dinner- la Poule-au-Pot.
First we killed the hen…
Now before I segue into a rant about a lot of ‘amateur’ urban farm killing taking place in back lots, or self-taught so-called-expert butchery (in the bad sense of the word) on small farms for enthusiastic but unwitting restaurants, let me make a positive appeal for working with the real experts. Experts are those men and women who have worked all their lives raising our food. They are trained in agricultural schools, on family farms, and as apprentices to others previous generations of experts.
Marie-Rose Blancuzzi, my go-to-neighbor and friend came by for a hands-on demonstration. Marie-Rose is a French housewife. She is also an expert chicken killer. Every year since she married the dashing Italian Franck Blancuzzi, nearly 50 years ago, she has raised, slaughtered and cooked hundreds of substantial farm chickens. I have killed a handful of chickens and ducks, fish, pigs over these Gascon years. But I like learning hand-to-hand, and I wanted Marie-Rose to show me some trucs or tricks. Mostly what she showed me was how simple and easy to make it while being sweet and gentle with the good hen who had laid 2 years worth of eggs- somewhere around eggs or so.
So we took the hen from the cage where I had rested her overnight with a sister hen away from the others, (in the end we didn’t kill the second the hen; she got a timely reprieve because she laid an egg in the cage). Marie-Rose cradled her under her arm like a furry black basketball, while Erika grabbed a knife, a pot of hot water and her camera.
I held the hen by her feet and wings while M-R held her head and beak closed. She then extended her neck, sliced the thin sharp knife just under the earlobe and through the main arteries. Holding the head over a pan in which to collect the blood, Marie-Rose encouraged the hen, “Va, va…” I held the body as her life left and the muscles relaxed, her comb and earlobes pale.
Now to pluck. A quick dunk of the feet first allowed us to peel off the tough outer skin of the feet. I would use the feet in the soup.
Then a few up and down dunks into the hot not boiling water ( approx. 140′F) before the two of us starting at the wings, began to pluck the soft feathers.
Within a few minutes, we were done and the feathers and warm water went into the compost pile. a Perfect way to jump start the pile. The hefty warm carcass sported plump breasts, meaty legs and well-developed bone structure. Back in the kitchen, M-R showed me a neat trick to eviscerate the carcass much like cleaning a foie gras duck.
She removed the mostly empty tripe (not feeding her the night before or early morning made for a cleaner removal of the intestines), the windpipe, crop, gizzard, heart and a surprisingly golden fatted liver. The excess amounts of fat in her cavity attest to how well-fed Camont’s free-range birds are and the liver, like a mini-foie gras was a tasty treat for cooks and helpers alike. We split the chicken in two, each of us taking a half of the hefty nearly 3 kilo bird. I’m not sure how Marie-Rose cooked her half yet, But I chose to make a very local, very Gascon, very easy version of Henri IV’s famous poule-au-pot.
Henri IV's Famous Poule-au-Pot
Cooking the laying hen for much longer than a commercially raised fryer, I used carrots, onions, thyme, bay, garlic, salt & pepper for the base as it stewed away for over two hours. The broth it made was/is heavenly and we ate the chicken, soup and all with some cardoon slices and made an eggy golden potato puree to serve as a sort of rough dumpling.
Happy I am to have a chicken every week in my pot. It doesn’t have to be Sunday. It doesn’t have to be a economic promise. But it does have to taste good! Merci Henri.
All fotos here by the Gascon Kitchen’s 2010 Photographer in Residence
*for more about Henri IV start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France
**for your “French-word-a-day”
