Recipe: Peasant Chicken

Delicious, takes about 10 minutes to knock up, whether as meal for two or a large family – simply add more chickens and veg.  The first time I tried this recipe I used one on my Bantams.  To be honest there isn’t much meat on a bantam so I’m glad I was just feeding me, but it was delicious all the same!

This recipe is classed as a ‘peasant food’; throw all negative connotations about ‘peasants’ right now.  They knew how to cook, and they knew how to keep it simple so they could crack on doing other stuff.  They were also expert at making use of whatever was to hand, so you’ll find this recipe is infinitely adaptable.  No carrots?  Go ahead and chuck some parsnips in.  You will see that the recipe is a little light on exact instruction – its meant to be, use what you have to hand.

Enjoy.

Serves: 4
Prep time: 10mins
Cook Time: 2 and half hours

Ingredients: -

2.5kg Chicken
Onions, carrots, leeks and potatoes and/or seasonal veg to suit
Knob of butter
A couple of bay leaves
A sprig of rosemary
Salt and pepper
Wine

Method

Preheat your oven to 190C (Gas 5).  Cut your veg into chunks and put into a casserole dish.  Mix your salt and pepper in with the butter to give you what I like to call: salt and pepper butter (Genius), then smear the butter all over the breast of the bird.  Now, place the chicken on top of the veg and shuffle it around so you have some of the veg around the sides of the chicken - this will allow better airflow round the chicken when its in the oven, allowing it to cook more evenly. Put your herbs in on top of the chicken; add about a glass of wine and the same again of water.

Bung your bird in the oven and let it cook at 190C (Gas 5) for about an hour.  After an hour stir the veg around a bit, baste the chicken with the juices and turn the oven down to 140C (Gas 1) for another 90mins.  For the last 40mins of the cooking turn the chicken onto its back and give the veg another stir, put back in the oven with the lid off.

Serve carved up on a big plate with the veg placed around the meat and enjoy.

Getting started with chickens

It ‘s very rare to hear  a fully grown man squeal with delight - and this is probably the first time I had ever heard it.  No it wasn’t at and FA cup final, or at some stag do in Amsterdam.  The location was slightly more mundane – my allotment, and the ‘man’ was my mate who was helping me search for eggs that our new hens should be laying anytime now.  He had found the first, and you would think he had won the lottery.  That is, unless you have ever experienced the joy of keeping chickens yourself.

You see to most people and egg is an egg is an egg.  Yeah I know, we’ve had the likes of Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall banging on for years about how eggs taste better from well cared for hens.   But until you’ve gone through the process of taking delivery of your chickens, feeding them, getting to know them individually, you never quite experience what they are going on about.  It’s like how Simon Cowell off of X-Factor explains it: It’s about the Journey.

So, I’m down on my allotment, with my mate.  We have had these chickens for around 3 weeks now, but it’s still winter, and they haven’t laid yet.  And we’re beginning to think we’ve been sold a duff batch of chickens.  And then there it was nestled in a laying box, small and slightly odd shaped for and egg (this is normal for the first few eggs of young chickens apparently), its pale whiteness winking at us from the box like a pearl inside a clam.

But now we had a problem: two fully grown adults, one small, odd shaped egg. Who’s gonna eat it?  “well I found it” exclaimed my mate, “they’re my bloody hens!” I shouted.  “lets settle this like true blokes – paper, scissors or stone...”  Now remember it’s an egg, and not a very pretty egg either.  It’s the kind of egg only its mother could love – in fact even she had abandoned it in favour of devouring some over ripe avocado I found in a recess of my fridge.  But we were about to come to blows over it, so in the end we decided to hard boil it, shell it and have half each.

Hard boiling is my least favourite way of cooking eggs – but logistically for the purposes of this egg it was the best way (have you ever tried to slice a poached egg in two?)  So there I am eating my half a small, hard boiled, misshapen egg.  And I can tell you it was the best egg I have ever tasted in my life.  Mr Cowell, you’re god damned right it’s about the journey!  I was hooked!