Chicken confessions

I became a vegetarian at the ripe old age of eight.  Or should I say I became an ethical vegetarian then because, though my mother was very understanding, trying to provide a meat and meatless meal each night for her family was a bit much.  And an eight year old who can get that eating meat means killing animals can also get that it’s unfair to make your mother cook two meals every night.  So we settled on that Mum would cook vego a couple of nights a week, that I would eat meals with mince beef and chicken breasts, and that on other nights I would have an omellete.  I could handle the mince OK, I mean it’s so ground up it doesn’t really seem like meat, but the chicken breasts, oh the chicken breasts.  I forced them down week after week, year after year.  I smothered the chicken breast in sour cream, various sauces, mashed potato, whatever I could find and I gulped and gulped.

Now, many years later, I am no longer a practising or ethical vegetarian.  I have reconciled within myself that eating meat means killing animals.  Now I focus much more on eating meat where the animals had a good life and where hopefully their death was not too painful or prolonged.  But I have not been able to bring myself to eat chicken, even free range organic chicken. The thought of it takes me back to my childhood and my voluntarily force eating of it.

Then in early January I was thinking where I wanted to go food wise in 2012.  As you already know we don’t have access to as big a vegie garden this year so my thoughts drifted towards meat.  At the moment we eat mainly beef, fish and a bit of cured pork (like bacon, prosciutto).  I thought about how, one day, I plan to have chickens for eggs.  But if you have chickens for eggs, what do you do with the extra chickens?  I decided that I wanted to get over my “urgh” with eating chicken so that once we kept chickens I’d be able to eat them as well as their eggs.

Enter my size 19 free range organic chicken.  Purchased at my local farmer’s market.  It was a whopper, all the small sizes had been bought by people who were in the know: go to the chicken farmer first not last.  So I had an almost 2 kg bird and only two people to eat it.  I was going to overcome my chicken urghness with a bang.

The first night we had a roast, with the works.  We ate the drumsticks and wings.  I didn’t dry reach.  The chicken fat roasted potatoes were lovely.  The chicken, well even a free range organic chicken is pretty tasteless.  I don’t think I’m what you’d call a convert.

(Sorry, no pictures of the roast I was too concerned with the fact that I was actually eating chicken and not finding it too bad)

The second night I wanted to try something else so I striped the carcass and made a pie and man what a pie it was.  Mr Bee proclaimed it the “best chicken pie ever”.  If I eat chicken in future it’s going in a pie.  I have included the recipe at the end of this post.

And then, because I am an ethical meat-eater and I didn’t want to waste any of the bird, I made stock.  It’s now sitting in my freezer waiting for winter and some yummy soups.

So overall, the chicken, I’d call it a success. I decided that while I can eat chicken, I don’t think I’ll ever chose to eat chicken.  But once we have chickens at home I’ll be able to eat them as well as their eggs.

Chicken Pie

• Dash of olive oil and small knob of butter
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 2 celery sticks, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• left over cooked chicken, cut into edible size chunks
• 60 g plain flour
• 80 mL white wine
• 125 mL cream
• 250 mL water
• Dash of oyster sauce
• ½ tsp dried sage
• Your favorite savory short crust pastry, rolled out to fit the base of a pie dish and  also as a lid for your pie
• 1 egg yolk

1. Preheat oven to 180 °C (360 F)
2. Add oil and butter to a fry pan and sauté onion until soft
3. Add carrot, celery and garlic and sauté for a few minute
4. Coat chicken in flour (I find this is the easiest way to add the flour and not have it go lumpy) and add to vegetables, sauté for a minute or two.
5. Add wine and let it simmer until reduced by approximately half
6. Add cream, water, oyster sauce and sage, simmer for approximately 5 minutes
7. Turn off heat and let cool a bit while you prepare pastry in pie dish
8. Add filling (it will pile high).  Wash edges of pastry with egg and place pastry lid on top.  Crimp pastry edges with a fork to join top and bottom pieces.  Brush top of pie with egg.  Use fork to place some air holes in the pastry top
9. Bake in oven for about 30 minutes or until the crust is golden
10. Enjoy!

Simple pleasures in a tea cup

One small bunch of lemon balm  from the garden,  a mug, boiling water.

Lemon…yes, but also a slight sense of heat like in ginger.

January in my (wee little) garden

Hello everyone,

As I’ve said previously, we’ve moved house and my garden has become a much smaller affair that is mostly contained in pots.  But we’re doing pretty well out of those pots.

Lots and lots of herbs…

Daily pickings of cherry tomatoes…

Our blueberries are starting to look really good.  We had our first few little blueberries this year and hopefully next year we will be able to get a decent harvest

We were also self-sufficient in lettuce, rainbow chard and dill for a while.  But this is Australia in summer, it’s hot, they revolted and went to seed.  I have some more seedlings and so we should hopefully be eating them again in a few weeks (hot also equals lots of sunshine which means fast growing

Oh, and I have done some “found” gardening recently…blackberries.  They made a yummy jam…but that’s another post….

Bookish inspiration

I’m currently reading The Real Food Companion (at Fishpond and Amazon).  Yeah, it’s a recipe book, yep I’m reading it cover to cover.  It’s not just that I’m that sort of person who likes to read recipe books for relaxation, I do, but it’s also (trust me) a really good read.

If you’re an Australian foodie, organic, locavore, gardening, environmentally conscious, “dreams of one day having that little farm” type of person then you’ve almost definitely heard of Matthew Evans.  If you somehow missed him, or you’re from overseas, well he’s kind of Australia’s own Michael Pollan and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrapped into one.  But, um, much more attractive than either of them

The Real Food Companion was published to accompany Matthew’s first TV series.  Yes, it’s a recipe book and yes it has some yummy sounding recipes (I’m yet to cook one) but it’s the other stuff that I REALLY like.  The recipes are interspersed with case studies on farmers, food philosophy and all sorts of information about food. Like did you know that you should ask for pork from female pigs because it tastes sweeter? And that pork from male pigs should be made into salami and other strong-tasting foods to mask its potentially strong taste?  I didn’t and I’m currently too scared to ask my butcher or the pig farmers at the market about it – must get over that fear though.

I’ve read lots of locavore/environmental/organic food philosophy books and they are so rarely Australian.  I read far more about what’s happening in American and British agriculture than in Australian.  It is so wonderful to have one of these books written from an Australian perspective.  But if you’re not Australian, don’t worry.  The book has very obviously been written for an international audience.  There are lots of international examples and Matthew “translates”  words in brackets that American or other audiences might not be so familiar with.

So if, after all the giving that is Christmas, you have a little spare cash and want to spend it on yourself, I can highly recommend The Real Food Companion.

Happy New Year

Hello everyone,

Happy New Year! How have you been?

It’s been a long time between posts hasn’t it? Yeah, the 18th of March 2011 to be precise.  Life and work has just been really busy and I made the choice to spend what time I had doing Chez Bee type food activities rather than writing about them.  I am hoping that this year will be a bit better.  My aim is to post at least once or twice a fortnight.  Let’s see if I can manage that.  :-)

Because I do really like blogging and I love interacting with all of you.  I’ve been amazed at the number of people who keep dropping by my blog even when I’m not posting.  Seems like a few people like my pear and apple jam for starters.  I have a new favourite jam to share with you soon and some other good ones too.

We moved house in 2011 and I no longer have my vegie garden and fruit trees.  I’m all pot-based at the moment but squeezing quite a bit of veg and herbs out of my containers. And I’ve been eyeing  some plum trees on the nature strip in our neighbourhood, they’re almost ripe and I see a  harvesting trip coming soon.

During my busy-ness I gave up my yoghurt and bread making.  But I’m hoping to get back into them this year.  It did mean we discovered our local bakery.  The baker and his staff are so welcoming and fun, the bread is good and the prices about the same as the better supermarket breads.  We count ourselves as very lucky to have them just around the corner.

One of my priorities during  the year was to keep going to my local farmers’ markets. I find the trip itself so relaxing and enjoyable and we just can’t get fruit and veg that are as fresh or as good quality from anywhere else.  Plus, as you know, I’m all about supporting our farmers directly.  I did manage to keep going most of the time, however there were a number of months where I had to work some Saturdays and so could only make it once a month. I’ve managed to get out of the Saturday work days for 2012 so hopefully nothing will stand in my way of continuing my fortnightly pilgrimage.

Wishing you all a scrummy, seasonal and healthy food-filled 2012,

Bee

Whats been going down at Chez Bee?

So, you know, sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and of gardening, but not thankfully  in the way of harvesting or eating this time

A little photo journey of some of the things that have been happening at Chez Bee during my blogging absence

:: I’ve been harvesting veg like crazy.  The beans are coming almost too fast to eat.  The zucchinis were amazing until Mr Bee, um, that’s a story for another post.

 

:: Our neighbours went to Kangaroo Island (lucky things!) and brought back some very special Ligurian Honey.  Have you heard about it?  They are the only remaining pure strain of these originally Italian bees.  They are renowned for their lack of aggression and are sought after around the world.  Cool hey?  I’ve wanted to try some for ages and now that I have three little jars it seems too special to eat.  Crazy!

:: To use up our zucchini hauls we have been trying all sorts of dishes.  The favourite so far is Chocolate Zucchini cake.  It’s yummy, rich, moist and not at all zucchini-y.  The recipe comes from who else, but the famous food blogger Chocolate and Zucchini

:: We had self-sown potatoes coming up EVERYWHERE in spring.  I guess they originated from our compost?  I pulled most of them out because there wasn’t space amongst the various other vegie goodness growing in the garden.  But I left a few and harvested the first plant last week.  300 g of what look like Désirée potatoes.  Not bad for a plant that wasn’t watered at all and had to compete with a massive zucchini plant.  We’ll be eating them very soon.

 

The tomatoes are here!

It is most definitely summer here at Chez Bee.  And the tomatoes I planted back in November are producing copious amounts of fruit.  That is, the Rouge de Marmande  that I bought as seedlings, not my other seedlings that I grew from seed – they have little green fruit on them that are coming along nicely.  We’re producing more ripe tomatoes per day they we can eat – isn’t that part of the gloriousness of your own home garden? – the front 2/3 of the photo were all picked today.  Every day I seem to be picking them less and less ripe because we’re having problems with caterpillars making holes in the fruit which then turn to mush – you may notice a few holes in the fruits in the photo.  And the little green fruit is one I accidentally chopped off – hopefully it will redden up.

I’d love to make some tomato sauce (i.e. ketchup, but I don’t strain mine, so it’s somewhere between ketchup/sauce and relish).  Ever since I started making my own a few years ago we have forsaken does-it-actually-have-tomatoes-in-it-or-is-it-really-just-a-food-like-substance store-bought varieties of tomato sauce/ketchup.  And wouldn’t it be wonderful to this year be able to make it with my own homegrown tomatoes?  Alas, I’m rather busy and haven’t had the time to put aside a few hours to make sauce….

…But never fear, I have decided to innovate!  I am chopping up the tomatoes as they ripen into say 200 or 250 g lots and freezing them.  Then when I have the time, I’ll whip up a batch of tomato sauce and maybe some chutney too.  Has anyone ever tried this approach before with tomatoes or other fruit you wanted to preserve?  I never have, but I figure that freezing breaking down the cell structure shouldn’t matter seeing as I’m going to cook them to a gooey yummy mess anyway.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

In the aftermath of the floods

I think by now most, if not all, of you would have heard about the recent flooding and cyclone Yasi in Australia.  In particular, you probably heard about the floods in Brisbane and Queensland. At the time I didn’t say anything.  I used to live in Brisbane.  I still have family there.  I know people who lost everything.  I felt so close to it and so far away from it.  And everything already seemed to have been said on numerous posts around the blogosphere.  So I said nothing.

And now people are moving onto the next world event, riots in Egypt and a number of other countries.  Riots that are partly fueled by increasing food prices.  Increasing food prices that have partly occurred because Australia is one of the major food bowl countries of the world and over a decade of drought then torrential flooding results in increased food prices, not just in Australia, but around the world.  And moving onto the next world event is normal.  And riots in Egypt are a very major event that we should all be paying attention to.

But now, for this post, I just wanted to bring you back to Australia and the aftermath of the floods. What I want to talk about is the effect of the flooding and the cyclone on food because that is what this blog is about.  You see, our floods made the world media because they occurred in one of our major cities, Brisbane.  But great swathes of our most productive land was flooded too; stretching from the north of the country right down to the south.  Wheat crops were destroyed just weeks before harvest.  The banana and pineapple crops were decimated by flooding and then a record-breaking cyclone.  Stone fruit rotted on the trees.  Vegetables rotted in the ground.

And this is a tale of two supermarkets.  I’m only going to name one (in the photos), but two Australian supermarkets hold 80% of the market, so if you’re Australian you can guess which other supermarket I’m talking about.  This post is about decisions.  Decisions that two supermarket chains made in the aftermath of the floods.  And the decisions that you and I can make too.  While I’m talking about flooding in Australia, if you’re from another country and you’re interested in eating locally and sustainably, I’m sure that there will be similar situations in your own countries at some time or other.

Our two major supermarket chains have made two very different decisions on how they are handling the aftermath of the floods and cyclone.  One supermarket chain has decided that loyalty to farmers and Australia is very important to them.  They have little signs up throughout their fresh food section (and dotted through this post) that explain that they may not be able to get certain vegetables, that the prices may increase, that quality may not be as high as you’re used to but that they want to support Australian farmers and keep Australian produce in their shops and they hope  you want to support Australian farmers too.  And prices have increased.  At the summer glut time of year when prices are normally at their lowest the prices are now about double for tomatoes, bananas, grapes, capsicums, stone fruit and a host of other fruit and veg compared to a month ago.

In the fresh food section of the other major supermarket, the situation is markedly different.  Where before almost everything was Australian produce, there are now obvious signs above a number of fruit and veg that tell you the produce is a mix of Australian and imported product.  The fruit and veg here have fewer marks on them.  And the price differential is not so great compared to a month ago.

I know the decisions we make in these sorts of situations often come down to economics.  If we can’t afford to buy the more expensive product, then no matter where our ethics sit we end up buying the cheaper product.  I’m lucky, while I don’t like to waste my money, I can afford to put my money where my ethics are.  To me, right now, it’s a very important time to be supporting our farmers and helping them to get through so they can still farm next year.  Because producing so much of our own food locally is important.  For reducing food miles, for food security, for so many reasons.  So me, when I’m not shopping at my farmers’ market and I decide to shop at a supermarket, it’ll be the one that’s sticking by our farmers.

January in my garden: a wee bit late

January is when everything seemed to start happening in my vegie garden.  I took so many photos and then they sat locked in my computer for the last two weeks while it was getting fixed (I only back up my photos about once a month).  But now my computer is fixed and so I can share some of the yummy things we’ve been harvesting and waiting (not so) patiently to harvest.

:: An assortment of lettuce and other salad greens.  See the green with red Amaranth on the right?  My post on Amaranth is still definitely coming.

:: Nectarines from our tree.  We lost a lot to possums and rain, rain, rain that made the fruit rot before it was ripe.  But what we did manage to harvest were lovely and we enjoyed as fresh fruit (a little) but mostly poached fruit, jam and chutney

:: Our very first zucchini of the season

:: The first cucumber I’ve ever grown.  It tastes so cucumber-y.  Look at those spikes though!  They all easily brush off but next near I’m considering growing a less spiky variety.

:: Delicious multi-coloured carrots of various sizes.  We find it curious that it is the white ones that have the fullest carrot-y flavour

:: We’re also eating green, purple and green with purple flecks beans, rocket/arugula, the garlic I harvested late last year, spring onions and limes.  And an assortment of herbs including basil, chives, various mints, sage, rosemary, chillies and thyme.

:: And finally, the oh not so patient wait for the tomatoes to ripen.  At the “time of going to press” we had lost the first ripe tomato to the (damn) possums and the second tomato was picked yesterday at the orange stage (to beat the possums!) and is ripening on the counter.  But that is a sneak peek of “February in my garden”.  In January, all the tomatoes were still temptingly green….

The BEST summer pasta

Steaming freshly cooked pasta

Dollops of homemade pesto (mine was basil from the garden, almonds as the nut and a dash of lemon juice for extra pizzazz).

Liberally sprinkle with finely chopped tomato (cherry tomatoes are particularly nice), chopped hard-boiled egg (yeah it’s the secret weird but amazingly yummy ingredient) and finely chopped spring onions.

Serve it nicely arranged but mix it all through quickly so the streaming pasta melts everything just a little bit.

Mmmmm.  Yum!