Killing Chickens

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Matt had helped out slaughtering chickens on Katie and Greg's farm, and I think he'd like to post about the experience.  So you may find out about that in about seven months, after he's collected his thoughts and arranged and rearranged the words into the precise order he'd like them.

He's making this face right now as he reads that:

So you'll have to wait a little for Matt's thoughts on the act of killing something you intend to eat.  In the meantime, though, I can tell you the second half of the story...

In the interests of perfect honesty, Matt didn't kill this particular bird.  But it did spend its years on Katie and Greg's farm, enjoying the chickeny good life.  Katie doesn't eat "unhappy" meat, so you'd better believe that anyone she's involved in raising is living a humane, comfortable, natural life.

And I can assure you, first-hand, that a humane, comfortable, natural life translates into a pretty incredible meal.

Matt tweaked our favorite roast chicken recipe a little, stuffing this guy with a whole head of garlic and a lemon, surrounding it with chopped zucchini, carrots, and red onions.  He also poured a lemony beer over the top (Leinenkugel's "Summer Shandy") for added moisture and richness.

We then simply baked it, as per usual, at 350.  This one was a little bigger than our usual, so I think we left it in for almost two hours while we prepped everything else.  And when it came out, OH HOLY GOD:

Did you want another photo of that?  Maybe from another angle?

One more?

I know.  That's how we all felt.

Mom had also made a cheesy casserole with some green vegetable that I can't remember off the top of my head (asparagus?  more zucchini?) that came in her CSA bag.  We heated a loaf of take-n-bake that contains just flour, yeast, water, salt. And after the red wine you see above, we popped a celebratory bottle of Summers Vineyard un-oaked chardonnay.

(No relation that we know of.  But the wine is great! )

The bird was, needless to say, flawless.  The meat fell off the bone, to the point that Matt had to give up on trying to carve it; it was simply too juicy and tender to hold up in large slices.  Each bite -- even the white meat, usually too dry for me -- was dripping with lemony, garlicky, fatty, chickeny goodness.  I've had some happy birds before who were a little too tough and stringy (often animals raised the right way are leaner than their feedlot-stuffed counterparts), but this was absolutely perfect.  Exactly what a chicken ought to be.

The vegetables that roasted with the chicken were phenomenal: perfectly tender and completely infused with the lemon, garlic, and chicken jus that filled the bottom of the pan as the chicken cooked.

Our friend Karen had come over for the feast, and Matt said a grace he'd composed for the occasion.  I can't completely remember, but it called on us to be thoughtful about and grateful for the food on our plates, and the way it reached our table.  As we ate, I think we were very aware of every piece of the meal, where it came from, and how eating it tied us into that chain.

Better yet, eating it together tied us to one another.  Every time you share a meal, I think you're making connections with your fellow diners in a fundamentally human way.  With friends and family around a table spread with thoughtfully raised and prepared food, we were engaging in a daily ritual that people have enjoyed, and which has set us apart from other animals, for centuries.

The following photo is a terrible one of everyone involved, but I like it because you can see how happy we are to be enjoying each other's company:

Slash how happy we are that Karen brought a pie.

Strawberry rhubarb (rhubarb from her garden, I think): the perfect end to the perfect meal.

I don't think I'm thoughtful enough about my food on a daily basis as I would like to be, and meals like this one provide a terrific reminder of all I have to be grateful for.

Saag Gosht and Stuffed Dates

Sunday dinner was Indian night again at the apartment, and fresh from meeting Crystal, we were stocked again with juicy lamb stew meat.  While I studied, Matt set it simmering in a subtly-spiced spinach curry:

Cumin, coriander, chili, and lemon dominated, mellowed by the soft, earthy spinach and rich lamb.  Matt has a lighter hand with the cayenne than I do, so this was more of a comfort food than last week's rogan josh.

My favorite part, though, was his appetizer: medjool dates stuffed with prosciutto and marcona almonds, then baked until warm.

I've had the date/bacon combination before, but these were fantastic.  Medjools are so soft and sweet, and when warm, melt like brown sugar in your mouth.  Laced with the salty, tangy prosciutto, and given texture with the crunch of the almond, the only fault I could find was that I wanted to eat too many of them...

Cafe Summers-Couch

Since the life-changing advent of the espresso machine into our little home, Matt and I have been making noises about baking our own croissants.  This Saturday, we allocated the morning to finally making good on this big dream ... only to discover that a morning does not contain nearly enough hours to successfully make croissants. One week from exams, I spent fourteen hours making French pastries instead of studying:

 At 9:00 AM, we printed off the recipe from Epicurious, pulled out the big bowl and hand-mixer, and industriously whipped together some flour, yeast, and whole milk.

At 10:00 AM, we pounded three sticks of butter between the folds of a dishtowel into a thin slab half an inch thick, then chilled both dough and butter slab.

At 11:00 AM, we rolled out the dough and placed the butter on it, folding like you would a piece of paper you want to stuff in an envelope, rolling out again, folding again into envelope shape, before putting the whole thing back in the fridge to chill.

At 12:00 PM, we did this again.

At 1:00 PM, again.

By 2:00 PM, the butter slab had started to roll into the dough, starting to look kind of flaky (like a croissant!) so after a final roll-out and envelope fold, we could put it away to chill for ABSOLUTELY NO LESS THAN eight hours and ABSOLUTELY NO MORE THAN eighteen.

Eight hours from 2:00 PM is 10:00 PM.  Eighteen hours from 2:00 PM is 8:00 AM.  Neither is ideal, when you have friends coming over for the evening and an intent to drink a few beers on a Saturday night.

This is why you should always read through instructions all the way through before beginning a project.

In the end, we'd just worked too hard all day not to have the flaky, buttery reward at the end, so we pulled the dough out a little early (oh nooo) and started in on the next (no less complicated) steps:

We measured and cut half the dough into six rectangles, then measured and cut those rectangles into twelve triangles, then rolled those triangles into little crescent shapes on a baking sheet.  The other half the dough we measured and cut into eight rectangles, rolling each of those around an ounce of bittersweet chocolate, placing on another baking sheet.

We then placed these baking sheets into two trashbags, propping the trashbags up with glasses:

Twenty Six Candles

... Or just two candles that spell out "26".

I turn 26 on Wednesday, and since he'll be in Champaign for the week, Matt surprised me last night with some beautiful new serving dishes.  I was pounding out a motion for Pretrial as he cooked, and when he suggested I come in to see how everything had turned out, I got so distracted by A) the candles and B) how amazingly delicious the mashed potatoes looked that it took me a full five minutes to realize I didn't previously own any of the dishes on which everything was plated.

I've been talking all year about wanting more plain white dishes, because food looks so much better on white.  Matt took notes, and picked this stuff up at Bed Bath & Beyond.  I love how spare it is.

And am I right or am I right about food looking delicious on white? See, e.g.:

He also got me some legit beer glasses, so we can stop drinking beer out of my wine stemware:

That's a Scottish stout which smelled and tasted like (imagine this!) Scotch, because the brewery barrels the beer in whiskey casks.

As for the dinner itself, we had chicken pinwheels with brown sugar-glazed carrots and buttermilk whipped potatoes.  The chicken was really remarkably easy: we hammered two breasts flat, then spread each with some thawed frozen spinach, a goat cheese already mixed with sundried tomatoes and basil, and some chopped Greek olives.

Roll each breast up, and bake in a pan with sides for approximately 45 minutes to an hour.  Voila:

The potatoes were inspired by a meal we had at Province Restaurant this weekend while our TFA friend Kim Clinite was in town.  Matt mashed about five red potatoes with three tablespoons of butter and a half cup of buttermilk.  I love really rich mashed potatoes, filled with butter and heavy cream, but these were so much lighter and with all the flavor; the tang of the buttermilk gave them a great zing, and they came out really fluffy.

We (read: I) ate them all.

Finally, I have no idea what he did with the carrots except that it involved brown sugar and butter and was very tasty.  He later claimed to have only cooked the carrots so as to "have something long" for the presentation on the serving dishes.

Law school got in the way -- as it too often does -- from fully relaxing over this incredible dinner with more than one beer, but as always, the food was great and the company the best I could possibly ask for.  Being more than a quarter-century old is fine by me, if this is my life at 26...

Buy Me Some Peanuts

This week, I took my exception meal on Sunday, using up my quota of processed foods for the week at the White Sox game:

God only knows what was in that hot dog.  But it was coated in grilled onion and pepper, ketchup and mustard, and tasted like heaven.

Also, we should discuss this:

Around the seventh inning, nachos sounded really appealing, and I wanted to make the most of my exception meal for the week.  I have to tell you, though, that these were not nearly so good as the hot dogs.  I'd forgotten that rubbery texture processed cheese has, and how it hardens ever so slightly as it cools, eerily reminiscent of the Gak I played with in my youth.

No, I'll take a quarter pound of ground pork stuffed in intestine lining and topped with sugary tomato paste instead...