Poached Chicken and Rice

poached-chicken-and-riceI just realized our kitchen calendar was still on August and flipped it over, revealing the stereotypical picture of golden hued oak trees and a dilapidated barn that always accompanies September. Ugh… Here on the Westcoast September would be more accurately represented by a grey sheet of rain.

Yep, autumn has come just like it always does; like a switch is flipped, the sun just surrenders and the rains begin like the final act of Seven Samurai… And as usual most of my friends, family and co-workers are getting sick.

So the calendar goes back up on the wall, I fire up a big pot on the stove and pull one of my secret weapons against autumn depression from the freezer: Master Stock! I know it sounds like Master Chief’s little brother or a particularly corny GI Joe villain, but it’s not. It’s a broth made from simmering a whole chicken with Asian aromatics and then, over the course of many uses and multiple chickens it condenses into a powerful, gelatinous flavour bomb for use in soups, stews and sauces.

Read More

Chicken In A Pot

Chicken in A Pot 1A very special chicken deserves very special care, and I can think of no better technique to accentuate all the wild, bug-fed chickeny goodness of a farm chicken than en cocotte.

I got turned on to this old-school French method of cooking chicken from an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated, which touted it as one of the “Discoveries that will change the way I cook”! Well, it wasn’t quite as revolutionary as all that, but it is a great way to cook chicken.

Read More

Full Circle : Thoughts From A Chicken Slaughter

Full Circle 1It’s been months since that fateful morning of flat tires, generosity and surprises at the Disco Thistle Farm, but Robyn, bless her buttons, wasn’t finished with me.

On that fateful day, I was flushed with the pioneering spirit projected by her and her husband Shane. I may have said something like: “If you ever need someone to help out…”

A couple months later they needed someone to help out.

Read More

Synchronicity: Flat Tires and Disco Thistles

Disco ThistleI think I’m starting to believe in fate.

It’s been a crazy couple of months on Quadra, filled with adventures and mis-adventures, happenstance and straight-up, no-joke synchronicity. Every day it seems I’m stumbling blindly, yet gladly into another chance meeting, nutball conversation and potential life-changing experience. Take, for example the morning I got off the ferry and found that my rear bike tire was flat… Read More