Category: Poultry

12th August 2013

Chicken legs with girolle mushrooms

The girolle is a yellow kind of small forest mushroom and belongs to the same family as the chanterelle. But while the chanterelle is usually light brown, the girolle is more yellowish, at least in my experience. It is one of the most harvested mushrooms in Europe, and certainly in France, and it grows during the summer, especially after rainy days have been followed by […]

6th August 2013

Spatchcock on the grill

The first time I read the name ‘spatchcock’ in a recipe book (perhaps in Ms. Beeton) I had to chuckle. Not because of the other meaning of ‘cock’ but probably because I thought I had read ‘splashcock’. I am not dyslectic but study at university and work as a real-time news agency journalist means I am always reading fast and need to restrain my reading […]

30th May 2013

Chicken with vegetables in a Dutch oven

I have often wondered about the name “Dutch oven”. I first encountered it during my maiden foreign posting in London, where we lived for several years. As a Dutchman, I had never encountered the name in the Netherlands. There we prepared slow-cooking food in either a “stoofpot” casserole or an oven dish. Just as Brussels sprouts are not called that way in Belgium, nobody takes […]

22nd May 2013

Grilled chicken breast, penne and fennel

I prefer to buy my ingredients straight from the producer even though in our modern supermarket world this is not very practical or economical. Most of the time I do my shopping at the local grocery store or on the outdoor market that is held three times a week in my town. But when I do encounter a producer, I fill up the freezer compartment. […]

25th April 2013

Duckling legs with prunes, beans and tomatoes

Duck is widely used in France, especially in the south-west where they also stuff ducks for the liver. Duck meat is often tough and needs long cooking. On the market in Dieppe, I found a farmer who sold ‘canetton’, ducklings. Not the small birds with a soft down, but larger, almost half-size, birds. This meat is tender and the portion is sufficient for one person. […]

17th April 2013

Chick with chilli, garlic and shallot sauce

Sometimes you can make a delicious dish without much trouble at all. Like this simple roasted chick. I bought the small bird because an entire chicken, especially a free-range chicken, is a bit much for just two persons. But if you are making a meal for four then a full-sized chicken will do, you just have to cook it for longer. Here I covered the […]

11th March 2013

Guinea fowl with carrots and cumin

When I was young, carrots were orange. Standardised orange. I  did not even imagine it could be different. But the wild carrots that grew in the area of Afghanistan, some five thousand years ago, had various colours. According to the carrot museum (yes, there is one, be it virtual only) it is due to Dutch growers (oh no, not again) that carrots became widely used in […]

21st February 2013

Roast chicken

Julia Child, the doyenne of American writers on French cuisine (Mastering the Art of French cooking, Albert A. Knopf, New York 1961), wrote; “You can always judge the quality of a cook or a restaurant by roast chicken” (revised 34d printing, 1991, page 240). She is right that the execution of simple dishes is a good base to test a cook with higher culinary ambitions. […]

13th February 2013

Duck fillet with orange and chicory

I had a leftover magret de canard in the fridge from our most recent trip to the south west, it is a fillet of duck with the skin attached. Usually you put in on a grill or in a pan and the fat of the skin will drip down. In a skillet you can use that fat to fry the duck. However, I wanted a […]