Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Monday, 2/8/10 – Poultry

I think I’ve decided that, like most people, if the animal is lying in front of me in its “original packaging,” alive or not, I have a really hard time imagining it as food. I just think back on my time in the animal ER, in a land far far away, when we would be scrambling to get the crash cart to save the life of a dog that had been critically injured. OMG we once treated a Chihuahua with one eye that was literally hanging out of his head. He was looking around with his tongue out, and I could just hear him thinking “What’s everyone laughing about??” Kibble…my favorite thing! Toys…my favorite thing! Eyeballs…my favorite thing!

Moving on…the chicken and duck were a little easier to handle than, say, my lobster friend that my station mate cold-heartedly murdered last week. With the head and feathers removed, they basically looked like a lump of fat and bones, although we had a while to go before pulling out the pristine breasts you buy in the store, cracking bones and breaking through the fat to extract the legs and breasts. We used the guts and bones to fortify our chicken stock, essentially making it double the flavor, and for the duck made a nice orange glaze/sweet and sour sauce. We braised the legs and sautéed the breasts, laying them out on the plate with orange supremes and draped with the beautiful orangey brown sauce. For the chicken, we made a chasseur sauce, which has a similar theory as a cacciatore (shout out to all my dagos), a rich and chunky country sauce. Chasseur has earthy mushrooms and shallots, flambéed in brandy, lots of fresh herbs and some tomato fondue. Like the duck, it is made with the fortified stock and reduced with the chicken juices. I finally remembered to bring my Tupperware to take home the goodies, and reheated the duck for dinner last night. I say, I simply cannot fathom one more night of braised duck for dinner!……

RANDOM TIP OF THE DAY

As a recovering EVOO cooker, I can now say with certainty that you should never sauté or cook at high heat with extra virgin olive oil! It has a very low smoke point (250˚F), and will actually burn and change the flavor of your food. Also, with such a distinct olive flavor, you should always be conscious of how you’re using it. Virgin olive oil and pure olive oil have higher smoke points (410˚F) and are less olivey, but it’s really best to cook with a very neutral and lean oil, such as canola or corn oil. Actually, it’s really best to cook your meat with the fat of the animal from which it came, but let’s be realistic, not everyone has suet hanging around, and if you did cook with it every day the suet would be hanging around your waistline (ha ha ha). Sorry.

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