Still chicken about buying chicken…

Market day today. In truth it’s market day everyday in this part of France in one local town or another. But my favourite market days are Castelnau Magnoac on a Saturday morning with a stop off at the lovely Memory Bar for coffee and a ‘pain au raisin’ picked up from the boulangerie en route; and Boulogne sur Gess on a Wednesday followed by quick coffee and a swim at the fantastic outdoor pool at the ‘parc nautique’.

The weather has returned to seasonal norm with lovely long hot days, so I’m fancying a summer roast chicken for tonight. Traditionally winter fare I think roasts also work well in the summer as you can put them in the oven for an hour and get outside to enjoy the sun, the trick is to lighten the flavours with something like lemon and rosemary and serve with seasonal vegetables.

The trouble is, while I like the idea of buying all my food fresh and local from the market, when it comes to chicken you never know quite what you are going to get, and as yet my French is still too rubbish to have a long conversation about its provenance.

First there is the choice of birds; as with their beef the French are specific about not just the cut but the gender of the animal it came from. With chicken it is the gender and the differences between what they are fed, how old they are and how they have been reared. They have awards for specific criteria, and a variety of names. Do I buy a Poulet, Capon, Poulette, Coq, Volaille…? And then you find that alongside on the slab are similar looking bird’s pintade – guinea fowl, dinde – turkey etc.

I don’t mind getting it home to find it still has a neck, or even that the gizzards are packed in the cavity (the dogs love them and they are great for stock making) but sometimes from the market you open up the paper wrapping to find its still pretty much whole… the neck and head, complete with beak, are tucked neatly underneath. Now I’m not in any way squeamish and I am happy to know where my meat comes from; I am the sort of carnivore that has no problem making the direct connection between the animal/bird and the food on my plate. But there is something about a plucked chicken looking up at me that gives me pause! Perhaps it’s just too much a reminder of our laying hens, ‘the girls’, who are often in the kitchen pecking up crumbs and are pretty much part of the family.

'the girls'

So I ‘chicken’ out! Buy my shallots for pickling, some salad and bread from the market and beat a path to the local Intermarche for a chicken I can trust. The meat counter at the supermarket in Castelnau is great (as is the fish counter and the cheese counter – it’s only a tiny supermarket) the butcher knows his stuff, has great meat much of it sourced locally. The ‘jaune’ chicken from the Sud Ouest, has the fermier (free range) status, was corn fed and given a decently long life. It has a lovely flavour and I know that when I get it home it won’t wink at me.

Jo’s Summer Roast Chicken

1 small to medium chicken - I usually get one about 3lb or 1.350kg in weight (ample for two, plus sandwiches following lunch time and some over for my favourite leftover dish, a chicken and leek risotto)
½ an unwaxed lemon cut into wedges
1 small or ½ a large onion cut into wedges
3 large juicy garlic cloves, squashed and peeled
Sprigs of rosemary

Ensure the bird is clean and dry both inside and out and stuff the cavity with the wedges of onion, and lemon (give the lemon wedges a squeeze as you put them in), the garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary. These will give the bird flavour and help to keep the flesh moist as it roasts.

Place the bird in a roasting pan and baste with a generous amount of olive oil. Grind some black pepper over the bird and put into a pre heated oven at 180ºC, roast for 20 minutes to the 1lb / 450g. I test it after this time; baste it with the pan juices and depending on how it’s going put it back in for a further 10 or 20 minutes. It’s cooked when a skewer comes out clean and the leg separates easily from the body when tugged.

Leave the chicken to rest for 15 minutes somewhere warm before carving. For a summer roast there is no need for gravy but the juices from the bird mixed with the olive oil, lemon juice, and flavoured with the onion and rosemary during cooking are delicious. Slice some breast meat and pull off a leg to serve drizzled with a little of the pan juices.

I think the best accompaniment is some crushed or whole new potatoes and green beans or a leafy salad.

Tomorrow I’ll strip the carcass and put it in a deep saucepan along with the lemon, onion, rosemary and garlic from inside the chicken, cover with water and simmer for two hours which will make about 2 pints of delicious stock which I keep in the fridge for making sauces and risotto. It will be perfect for Chicken & Leek Risotto for supper tomorrow night.

2lbs of blackberries, 2 eggs, and a tomato

My haul from the garden today. I’m still surprised that blackberries - a fruit so associated with autumn back home – are ready for picking in August, its still the middle of summer here. (Although I have to admit the last few evenings have started to get a little chilly and made me think that ‘cardy’ season is not too far away.)

It was a lovely way to spend an hour in the garden today, out in the sunshine and unusually not bothered by the wasps which are a current feature of any outside activity at the moment; particularly if it involves fruit of any kind, even the fermented kind that comes in a glass. But today the wasps seemed too busy on the other side of the garden getting drunk on the over ripe remnants of the plum crop, while I wandered along the other hedge gathering a big bowl of sweet black fruit.

The unruly and overgrown hedges I complained about so bitterly when we moved into the house in March are now loaded with blackberries at a variety of stages of ripeness, as well as elderberries and rosehips which will ripen much later in the year. This is my second gathering of blackberries this week, I collected about a pound of small sweet ones midweek when I first noticed they were ripening and just couldn’t wait. The same day I turned the lot into a jar of fantastic tasting, if somewhat runny, blackberry jam. And so delicious was the jam I had to make a batch of scones to go with it!

How glad am I that we have been too busy with the house to attack these hedges and hack them into shape. There is so much unripe fruit still on the hedge I think we will be feasting from them for weeks. There were so many for picking today I didn’t worry that the low hanging fruit was being systematically removed by my ‘nutty dog’ with a penchant for fruit.

About the ‘nutty dog’… he’s a full grown male chocolate Labrador with the brain of a three month old puppy. And he is HUGE. He is the clumsiest, stupidest hound ever; he came to us as a puppy, all huge paws and huge character and he grew… and he grew… the rest of him grew to fill those paws and match the character. He is so full of boundless enthusiasm and friendliness that he ‘bounces’ everyone he meets. Passers by, visitors, casual callers and long time friends are all welcomed with the scary sight of 50kg’s of muscle and teeth bounding up, intent on licking your face. But he’s harmless, apart from accidentally knocking you flying, as he has often done to me! We have tried every conceivable form of humane discipline to break him of this habit but with no luck. His saving graces are that he doesn’t do it to children and after 10 minutes in your company he will be the most adoring, loyal and quiet dog ever… unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, many people don’t wait around for 10 minutes to find out!!

He does however have this amazing talent; he is the most efficient fruit picker I have ever come across. As with all Labrador’s he is driven by his stomach and he loves fruit. Any fruit. All fruit. He puckers up those great slobbery lips and with the most delicate pout he removes the juiciest fruits from any tree or bush. Plums, greengages, raspberries, gooseberries… his favourite trick at our last house was to follow me every evening to the garden to test the ripeness of the gooseberry bush and just when I was happy that they had reached the perfect balance of tart and sweet, would strip the bush before I could gather them the next day. And to add insult not a scratch on him from those sharp spiny branches.

And today as I return to the house my hands and arms scratched and stinging, my fingers a pin cushion of thorns and spikes and red from the juice, there he is completely unscathed but a belly full of blackberries.

I am particularly pleased with myself for my impromptu branch tackler that meant I was able to get to the very tallest branches. I put to good use a small roller handle with a long arm meant for painting behind radiators. I think this is probably the first time it’s been used – my life really is too short to be painting behind radiators!

This batch of blackberries is destined for jelly. I have always been fascinated by the idea of making gorgeous jewel coloured pots of fruit jellies, delicious with cheese and cold cuts and a good accompaniment I have discovered for duck, a local speciality. This region is famous for its duck, magret, confit, smoked, dried, in pate and sausage, foie gras and all the other ‘bits’ served in a variety of unusual and interesting ways.

Magret or breast is my favourite way to eat duck, and whilst not cheap it’s more reasonably priced here than in the UK, it’s locally produced on fairly small scale farms and one large breast serves two easily. Pan fried till the skin is crisp, the fat rendered and the outside browned and finished in the oven for 10 minutes till pink in the middle, then very importantly left to rest. While the duck is resting I reduce a glass of local red wine in the pan juices and add some rosemary; or mushrooms and finish with cream; or finely shredded leeks and a grind of black pepper. This week I tried adding some rosemary leaves and a tablespoon full of the blackberry jam I’d just made. The flavour was lovely but the whole blackberries from the jam were annoying leaving pips in the teeth. Thus I am now making pip-less blackberry jelly, to serve with cheese and cold cuts, or cold chicken pie but also to add to duck sauces, and fancy it would be a pretty good flavour whisked into gravy to accompany most game.