As my seventh decade looms out of the mist on my spectacles, I find myself more and more particular about what I eat. Maybe it is because I have more time.
But I think it is more than that. We are what we eat, are we not? And I do not want to eat fruit and vegetable that have been hosed with pesticides. Nor do I want to buy mass manufactured cheese cased in plastic from chiller cabinets. And I really, really do not like eating chicken whose mercifully brief, force fed life has been squeezed out in the cramped, miserable, bible black interior of an Ankara chicken farm. Social distancing? They should be so lucky.
But, sur l’autre main, free range, humanely reared chicken is harder to find round here than a Mohito in the local mosque. The nearest option is the Village Chicken (köy tavuğu in the impenetrable argot of our host community).
So a few weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought a köy tavuğu from the butcher next to BIM supermarket at the top of town.
You have to see this bad boy to believe it. There is, I promise you, more fat on an Saudi road runner who has just completed back to back marathons through the month of Ramazan than you will find on this rangy old Rooster. You can just feel a thin sliver of muscle before you hit the bone on77777777777774*srhgnm45r98u34 (the cat ran over the keyboard. Sorry!) Rooster Boy’s chest. So a long way different from the housebrick sized pink squabs that adorn your factory farmed, pumped and primed chemo-chick.
This mother has clucked and fucked his way through life, dragged a trillion worms screaming from their lairs, sprinted out of farms across mountain roads countless times a day, cheating Death under the wheels of the tractors and Tofaş that career up and down.
And if you were to ask it rhetorically why did it cross the road? Well you wouldn’t. Trust me!
This bird lived hard. When his time came, when his peasant farmer master finally came blade in hand, he died hard.
So it has sat in my freezer for seven weeks. Every week I open it up, take out the rigid corpse and decide “No. Not yet!”
But this Time of Corona has finally helped me confront the Bird and render it edible. So thanks to the Blessed Internet, the High Priest of Lockdown, I found a recipe for Coq Au Vın. The recipe starts by suggesting you try and source a tough old rooster if you want the authentic dish. Well I certainly can promise that.
First you start by soaking the scrawny looking corpse in brine overnight in the fridge. Battle has commenced.The recipe wisely recommends that you do not cook the bird on the day that you plan to eat it as you do not know how long this process will take. The golden rule of cooking a tough rooster is that it must cook until the meat falls off the bone. I am glad I read that or K and I would have been sitting down to dinner at two in the morning.
So Day 2 starts by rubbing the bird in olive oil, thyme and salt then blasting it in a hot oven for forty minutes. After which it comes out lovely and brown but a knife still bounces off it. Let the chicken cool and throw some chopped veg and thyme in to the pan to brown in the oven.
When the bird has cooled take an implement (an axe will do, a chainsaw is too dangerous) and hack it into four or five pieces (do not try this at home). We have a slow cooker so it went in there with a pint of wine and water.
Twelve hours later, after frequent checks, and just short of despair setting in it gave up the fight. The meat started to loosen up and part from the bone.
Let it cool. Stir in the nicely tanned veg that has been sitting patiently in the fridge for the day. Put the whole thing in the refrigerator overnight.
Day 3. VE Day as it happens. Very apposite. Remove the bones. Throw a couple of bay leaves in and put in the oven for an hour.
Serve up with some mash, crusty bread, a green salad and your best bottle of red. Delicious
Eat, drink and be merry.
Enjoy your weekend and if you are over 65, do not have a heart attack at the thought of your first four hour exeat on Sunday.
That would be tragic. Ironic but tragic