Governor's Island birthday trip

Oliver turned 2 on Thursday!! To celebrate, we took a rare family excursion to Governor's Island today, a process that involved travel by 1) foot, 2) shuttle bus, 3) subway, 4) bus, and 5) ferry. We would have employed the services of a family cart-cycle thing (what are they called??) on the island except that they were in short supply. The weather was not exactly ideal, but we preferred it to one of these all-too-recent scorching hot days, and a good time was had by all.

I prepared quite a spread for our picnic lunch. A bit much perhaps? (we did leave one of these watermelon containers at home)


We enjoyed local pastured chicken breast "nuggets" in cashew flour crust (fried in lard of course, served with honey and honey-mustard dipping sauces), local watermelon, "sun" cheese and summer sausage from Raindance Organic Farm (untouched until we got home), local cucumbers with lime juice and Mexican chili powder, homemade lacto-fermented pickles, homemade lacto-fermented ginger ale, homemade raw milk kefir in Oliver's bottle (for naptime), and local pastured beef sticks (jerky-like). It actually proved to be too much food, oddly enough (perhaps the strain of carrying this heavy load depleted Hugo's appetite...).

The chicken was especially delicious. I started with a whole bird which I cut up, then pounded the breasts thin, sliced them into nugget-like shapes, rolled them in beaten egg, then dredged in fresh cashew flour (cashews from Wilderness Family Naturals ground in the food processor, mixed with salt & pepper, dried thyme, and some garlic powder), then fried in pastured-pork lard. Wonderful served with raw honey! Also very good with my impromptu honey-mustard sauce (more or less equal amounts of raw honey and Dijon mixed together -- surprisingly like the "real" honey-mustard from a package.)

Here are a couple of cute pictures from our picnic time. At first Oliver got right into the spirit of it and did a lot of lying around, taking up most of the picnic blanket. After eating it turned into a gymnastic session with Hugo.



Oh yes, and my homemade pickles? Nothing but a Mason jar stuffed with whole kirbies (small pickle-sized cucumbers), with a bunch of coriander seeds and mustard seeds shaken in, 1 tbsp. unrefined sea salt (I use Celtic sea salt or Eden brand), a handful of fresh dill (couldn't find the kind going to seed, so just used what they had at the store), plus a small amount of whey from dripping yogurt (1/4 cup I think). I let them ferment for 3 days at room temperature. They are not bad at all -- quite pickly and tasty! Next time I will use some garlic and ferment them a little less time.

Curry-apple-chicken salad

A perfect use for leftover roast chicken: curry-apple-chicken salad!

The hardest part is removing all the meat from the bones and patiently separating the edibles from the inedibles -- I'm very picky about this as I do not like any type of cartilage, skin, or other unappetizing parts in my chicken salad. Be sure to save the bones, skin, and everything you don't eat for making stock (a.k.a. bone broth).

Chop the meat into small pieces, and mix with plenty of chopped apple (try half an apple to start), homemade mayonnaise, curry powder (I use muchi curry), salt, and black pepper. Serve on toasted, buttered whole wheat sourdough bread topped with mustard greens, kale, or your choice of seasonal greens. This is a perfect lunch box meal, provided you have an insulated bag (like these from BuiltNY) and freezer pack.


The version of this that I made last spring, which featured fresh arugula, made for a prettier picture.

Here is a special tip on roasting chicken: If you were smart and saved all the juice and fat after roasting the chicken (assuming you didn't make gravy with it), you can refrigerate the juice/fat in a gravy boat, and when it solidifies simply remove the fat from the top and save it for frying potatoes or making chopped liver (recipe coming soon!). This fat is also known as schmaltz. So now you know where that term came from. :)

Stock improves!

Many people in the responsible-omnivore movement highlight the importance of "eating the whole animal," not just chicken breasts or prime rib. This was an important practice of traditional people, who recognized the nutritional value to be found in all parts of the animal; it also made food go much further and meant that families could be satisfied with less meat because they were using other nutrient-dense animal parts that kept them going much longer than meat alone could ever do. Farm wives of the past would use everything from feathers, feet, and gizzards when slaughtering a valuable chicken (and all chickens were very valuable). Many people who live on farms today still follow these practices. The summer issue of Gastronomica had a fascinating article on a traditional dish of the Piedmont area of Italy that incorporates such unmentionable chicken parts as testicles and wattles -- and yes, people still eat this!


I am slowly incorporating more of these methods into our way of eating, and while I don't plan on eating rooster wattles or testicles any time soon, I finally got brave enough to try making stock with chicken feet. There was a bit of the grossness factor that I had to get over, so I just tried not to look at them as I slipped them into the big pot of water along with a chicken carcass, cut-up onions, celery, and carrots, and 1 tbsp. of vinegar. I simmered everything for at least 6 hours, adding sea salt along the way, then strained out all the solids, and let me tell you, the end result was like no stock I have ever tasted. It was absolutely divine: deep golden-brown, rich, flavorful, and (as a single sip told me instantly) just brimming with minerals. Turns out this stock was also incredibly gelatin-rich -- it gelled beautifully in the fridge, which is THE sign of a truly nutritious, properly-made stock. Many people are tempted to believe this "jelly" is just fat and therefore must be bad for them, but it is actually gelatin which improves digestion and absorption of nutrients, imparts valuable minerals to our bodies, and has many healing properties (thus the old adage that chicken soup is good for a cold). People in many traditional cultures have sayings to the effect that "broth will cure anything" or "a good broth will raise the dead."


An endocrinologist I used to see (hurrah! no more need for that!) told me once in horror about the oxtail soup her mother made for her after her difficult labor and delivery with her first child. She was eating it gleefully for days, but then one day when she was finally up and around again she looked in the fridge for something to eat and discovered a big pot of what looked like pale-brown jelly. She was horrified when her mother told her that this was the oxtail soup she had been eating! The wise Western medical doctor, believing this to be pure saturated fat, gave her silly traditional Venezuelan mother a good scolding and promptly threw away the soup -- along with its amazing store of nutrients and healing gelatin. I had no idea at the time she told me this tale that the jellied soup had actually been gelatin rather than fat, though I suspected that something was amiss in her beliefs about it (as many of us know, saturated fat would be solid after refrigeration, like butter). Of course, her mother couldn't explain why it was so good for her, but definitely knew that she needed to feed it to her recovering daughter! Alas, how sad that we now think we know better than our ancestors what it takes to be healthy and well.

A bag of chicken feet from our buyers' club cost me $1.75. Since I can only order this from them once per month (the other farmer I order from doesn't offer them), I picked up a bag for $5 at the Union Square Greenmarket last Friday (from Flying Pigs Farm) and will be making stock with it sometime this coming weekend. At either price, chicken feet are now an indispensable part of chicken stock in our house. Here is the yield from this stock-making episode (a little less than 3 quarts, a typical amount from our large pot). I've included the carrots in the picture as these are the pieces I saved to feed Oliver:

How to roast a perfect chicken (and make delicious gravy, too!)

Last night Hugo roasted his first chicken! And it was a great success!

(Of course, by following my 5 easy instructions it is pretty much impossible NOT to roast a perfect chicken, but we won't tell him that.)

The 5 easy instructions are as follows:

1) BUY A REALLY GOOD CHICKEN. This is the hardest step, BUT once you have found a source of good pasture-raised chicken you will be amazed at the results, and you can always go back for more chickens in the future! Try to find the biggest, best local farmers' market you have, then go there on the most popular day (for example, here in NYC, the Union Square Greenmarket is quite big Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but it is HUGE on Saturdays. Going on a Saturday will ensure you have your pick of chickens.) Chicken is usually available year-round as it is kept frozen. We actually get our chickens (almost always frozen) through the buyers' club that I have mentioned many times. We usually get chicken for $3 a lb. or a little more, so a 4-lb. bird is about $12-17. Of course, it's quite a bit more expensive than a battery-raised $5 pre-roasted chicken from your local grocery or big box store, but really do you want your kids eating all the misery that went into raising that pathetic creature? (lots of antibiotics, genetically-modified pesticide-laden chicken feed, brutal living conditions, inhumane treatment, disgusting processing conditions, and horrible overbreeding that causes chickens to grow breasts so large their legs snap from the weight) Enough said. Buy a good chicken and enjoy the delicious flavor, the health benefits, and do your local farm economy a service. (I should warn you also not to be fooled by labels that trumpet the words "No Hormones!" It is illegal to give poultry artificial hormones in the first place. Just because the label says this does not mean it's at all a naturally-raised chicken.)

2) THAW THE CHICKEN. Leave it on a big plate in its plastic wrapping for 24 hours in the fridge. Of course, you can also thaw it longer.

3) RINSE & PAT DRY. Also remove any lurking chicken parts from the interior. You can save the organs if you like (I recommend doing this). Then place in an oven-proof dish, preferably glass or ceramic.

4) SLATHER WITH BUTTER! This is important. Do NOT use margarine. Do NOT use olive oil. Do NOT use some soybean oil crap on this. Treat your chicken right. Then sprinkle all over generously with sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper.

5) COOK THE CHICKEN. For a 4-lb. chicken you will want to roast it for about an hour and 20 minutes or so at 375 degrees (400 degrees if not using glass or ceramic). You don't need to wrap the chicken in anything and you don't need to baste it. All you have to do is stick it in the oven and check on it occasionally if you enjoy watching the magic happen. The chicken is done when it is a uniform crispy golden brown all over, and there is about an inch of delicious chicken fat sizzling in the bottom of the pan.

The chicken should cool for a few minutes before you serve it. Just take it out of the pan and set it on a platter. At this point I usually indulge in quite a lot of delicious liquid chicken fat, which is a little salty and absolutely divine. (Do I need to tell you it's also superlatively nourishing? This is not like taking a mouthful of vitamins to be healthy. This is the way eating healthy is supposed to be.)

You can make an easy gravy with just 5 ingredients: chicken stock or broth, the liquid chicken fat in the pan, 2 heaping tablespoons of flour (whole wheat pastry flour or unbleached white flour), seasoning (sea salt & pepper), and some form of cream (sour cream, creme fraiche, or even the cream at the top of your bottle of raw milk). You want to keep the pan kind of warm for this, so I recommend putting it back in the oven with the rack sticking out and bend over it while you stir (the oven can be off, though).

Add 2 cups broth to the pan, then dump in the flour and begin stirring. If you want to get all fancy and sift it into the pan this will save a lot of stirring time, but it's not necessary. Just begin stirring and smoothing out the lumps. Just as you despair that the gravy will never thicken and reach for the flour, the thickening will occur. It happens quickly when it starts! At this point you can add your seasonings. If too thick, you can always add more broth. If too thin, you can always add a little more flour. When the desired thickness and flavor is reached, remove the pan from the oven and fold in about 1/4-1/2 cup of the cream of your choice (more if you prefer). If your chicken produced a skimpy amount of fat, you can augment it with butter! This makes a gravy everyone will love, and is equally great on mashed potatoes, whole grain rice, biscuits, or anything else you want to serve.

*Note: you can do exactly the same gravy after pan-frying a steak. Simply use the steak drippings, add some extra butter, and use beef broth in place of chicken stock.

See my entry on pasture-raised and truly free-range eggs for more on proper ways to raise a chicken.

Bon appetit!