#poultry
It’s fair time again. Here is our little chicken whisperer during her showmanship contest. She was so relaxed and so was her bird.
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#4h #monroecountyfair #poultry #chickenwhisperer (at Monroe County, Indiana)
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It’s been a whole year since I started this project, and seeing it grow to the size it is today is amazing - I never imagined that it would ever get this popular! So to celebrate, I decided to take a look at some roast duck - based on some Sumerian cuneiform fragments.
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients
2kg duck
ground cumin
ground coriander
salt
pepper
1 leek, chopped
1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic
750ml water (or stock)
butter
Method
1 - Prepare the Duck
To begin making this roast duck, we need to prepare our duck. I’m using a whole bird here, but you could just as easily cook this in pieces - it’s up to you! Start by scoring the breast with a knife a few times, to increase the seasoning surface area. The original fragment claims to be dealing with an unnamed bird, so I opted for duck - as wildfowl would have been a staple for Mesopotamia. But chicken or squab would have also been eaten around this time.
In any case, season your bird of choice using some salt, some freshly ground black pepper, some ground cumin, and some ground coriander. Rub this into the meat with your hands if you can handle it. Though I’m going to be dry-roasting this, it’s likely that the meat would have been boiled in a stew or soup broth for a while before being roasted in an oven.
2 - Roast the Duck
Place your seasoned bird breast-side down on a roasting rack. And then place this into the centre of an oven preheated to 200C / 400F for about two hours (based on a 2kg bird of course), flipping this over about 30 minutes before serving so the breast meat roasts perfectly. When you’ve flipped the bird, go and prepare your soup.
3 - Prepare the Soup
To pair with this, I made a quick and easy leek and herb soup. Start by chopping a leek into segments as thick as your thumb or so. Also chop an onion in half, and mince each half.
Toss some butter into a pot and put it onto a high heat. When the butter melts, toss in your leeks and onions. Return the pot to the heat, and let everything sauté away for a few minutes until the onion turns soft and translucent. At this point, toss in a few shakes of cumin and coriander, along with 750ml of water (or a soup stock of your choice). Into this, add some thyme and mint sprigs.
Let everything cook away for about 20 minutes, or until the leeks are practically falling apart.
Fish out your herb sprigs, and serve up alongside your duck!
The finished roast is super succulent, and very flavourful. The seasoning on the duck gave it a sharp zesty flavour, which paired very nicely with the herby, minty flavour of the soup. The meat itself has a lovely crisp skin, and tender flesh. This is a reconstruction of a fragmentary recipe from the Yale Cuneiform collection - others have postulated that it is separate to the pigeon stew recipe fragment, while others have claimed it to be a continuation of it. I chose to do a simple roast here, as ovens for cooking and baking would have been able to do this with little modification in antiquity (such as the use of a spit or shaft of metal or wood to cook the meat over a naked flame.
Roast chicken and green beans, decorated with flowers and herbs
ByNadineGreeff
Available to license exclusively at Stocksy
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Literary Recipes—Misselthwaite Manor’s Young Fowl with Bread Sauce
“They are eating next to nothing,” said the nurse. “They’ll die of starvation if they can’t be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet see how they look.”
“Look!” exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. “Eh! I’m moithered to death with them. They’re a pair of young Satans. Bursting their jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can tempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday — and the poor woman fair invented a pudding for them — and back it’s sent. She almost cried. She’s afraid she’ll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves.”
—The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Ingredients—
For The Chicken:
• 1 young chicken (approximately 4 lb.)
• 2 tbsp. butter, softened
• ½ tsp. thyme
• ½ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. pepper
For The Bread Sauce:
• 2¼ cups milk
• ¼ cup butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 6 whole cloves
• ¼ tsp. pepper
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp. thyme
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 6-8 tbsp. heavy cream
• a pinch of nutmeg
• salt and pepper, for seasoning
Directions—
• Preheat oven to 350°F. While waiting, prepare the chicken. Start by gently running your fingers under the skin, separating it from the meat (this will help it to crisp). Rub the butter all over the chicken (even into the little crevices) and rub in your seasonings as well. Be sure to get the seasoning under the skin where you can. Tuck the wings under the chicken and truss the legs.
• Place your chicken in a glass baking dish and bake for 50 minutes or until the juices run clear. Then bake for another 5 minutes at 375°F (the extra 5 minutes on higher heat adds more colour and crispness to the skin).
• After your chicken has been cooking for about 20 minutes, start working on your bread sauce. Combine your milk, butter, onion, cloves, pepper, garlic, bay leaf, and thyme in a saucepan. Let it simmer for 20 minutes, stirring regularly to keep it from developing a film on top.
• After 20 minutes, strain the mix and return the liquid to the pan. Add the bread crumbs and stir continuously while it cooks for 3-4 minutes. You’ll wind up with a consistency like thick porridge.
• Turn off the heat and stir in the cream and nutmeg until you get a slightly thinner consistency and lighter colour. Season with salt and extra pepper to taste. Serve the chicken and bread sauce together; enjoy!
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hey look it’s me after any major holiday with food!
Just hatched button quails! (Dec 27th)
