Category: Poultry

11th July 2017

Chicken legs with tarragon sauce

On Mondays, we go to the fresh market of Mirepoix where we have a number of trusted suppliers, like the refrigerated van of Guillemot for meat and the Zengarli family for vegetables. The Guillemot farm lies in the mountains beyond Foix and is run by a Dutchman, Hugo De Jonge Van Ellemeet, and his French partner Annie who visits the markets. They raise cows, lam […]

Beans Fruit Poultry

5th June 2017

Oven-roasted pigeon with broad beans and cherries

I recently found a website through which you can order fresh products from selected small producers. It works like a kind of market, you have a deadline by which you have to place your orders, the products get prepared and packaged and delivered at your doorstep. Even when you order at several producers, it arrives in one parcel. The website is called Tauziet and Co. […]

Main dish Poultry

13th February 2017

Rabbit with garlic and sherry

On Thursday’s there is an organic market in Mirepoix where environment conscious farmers peddle their wares to a small group of equally concerned buyers. I usually like the quality of their goods but am not always ready to pay the price. But when you buy direct from the producer, you end up not spending more than in the supermarket while the seller also makes a […]

Main dish Offal Poultry Vegetables

29th January 2017

Chicken livers and carrot, coriander, cumin – CLCCC with some sesame seeds

One Monday morning on our weekly farmers’ market in Mirepoix, the poultry lady had chicken livers. Not the soggy reddish things in a plastic container at the super market – which are more than decent – but, well, big livers. The point is that most “chicken” killed and sold are in fact still chicklets – boiler, broiler, pullet, roaster – that hardly reach one year […]

Main dish Poultry

1st January 2017

Festive capon with cider and apples

A capon is a poor animal as it is a castrated rooster that becomes a fatter bird than its reproductive brethren. It is larger than a normal chicken and is often used in France for the end-of-year meals. Stuffed, you can feed eight people with one bird. Here I am combining a poaching technique with roasting. This helps getting the entire bird cooked, not just […]

Main dish Poultry Rice

28th November 2016

Duck risotto

The southwest of France is known for duck. duck liver, duck confit, duck breast and duck pate. On the market you can find almost every part of duck to whole ducks without the liver – the prized part – that people are currently buying to prepare their Christmas dinner. I had some duck carcass left and turned it into a duck stock, with leek, onion, […]

Main dish Poultry

6th March 2016

‘Pigeon as a toad’ – spatchcocked pigeon from the grill

One of the joys of living in a small town like Saint-Germain-en-Laye is that the local shop and stall keepers know your reputation for being a cook and being interested in seasonal and good products. I discuss soups with the wife of the butcher or recipes for stuffed chicken breast with the cheese shop owner. So when I went to the open air town market […]

Main dish Poultry

7th November 2015

Stuffed chicken thighs and Japanese pearls

Sometimes I just make up a dish based on the ingredients I happen to have at hand. So it was here when I had planned to make a chicken broth of leftover bones and carcasses I had kept in the freezer. I had bought some chicken thighs to add to the stock but the broth went well enough without the fresh meat. In the fridge, […]

Main dish Poultry

17th July 2015

Chicken with lemon, onion and marjoram

My wife is growing herbs in a window box and she recently had a relatively large harvest of marjoram. I could have used it on a pizza dish but the dough and cheese would have been rather heavy, especially with the current heat. I stumbled on this recipe. The combination of lemon and chicken is a pleasant one and I used it in roast chicken. […]

Main dish Poultry

9th July 2015

Roast chicken with lemon

Sometimes the simplest recipes give extraordinary good results. Like this variation on the classic roast chicken from the oven. Lemon gives it a bit of peps, it makes it tangy and fresh, it also helps preventing the chicken meat from getting dry during the cooking. This you can also prevent through low temperature cooking or by putting the chicken in a plastic bag, but then […]