The Local Food Report: Easter egg hunt

Quick! Put your muck boots on, and your anorak, and just in case, grab a hat. Turn off the lights, load up the woodstove, and let's go. It's egg hunting time.

We'll start at my niece Arabella's, out back in the chicken coop. She's got Buff Orpingtons and Golden-Laced Wyandottes and California Whites, and they lay regular sized, regular looking eggs: tannish, brownish, and whitish, respectively. (The blue one's from an Araucana down the road.

Now hop in the car—watch out for Goodie! (he's the rooster)—and buckle your seat belts. Our next stop is in Harwich, at Heidi Howell's house.

Heidi says we'll know her house by all the birds in the yard—she keeps turkeys, ducks, and geese. Her geese are a rare breed called Sebastopols, with white, long, curly feathers that wave around behind them when they run. They aren't very good layers—her female has only produced one egg, ever. That's it. The turkeys and ducks, on the other hand, are prolific. Here! I found an egg from each. That's the turkey one on the left, all pointed, and the duck's is the greenish one on the right. I picked up the chicken egg for size comparison.

Okay. One more stop. We're going back to Wellfleet, to Victoria Pecoraro's. She says she has a bird that might interest us. It's called the Americana, and it's a hybrid breed derived from the Araucana and something else she can't remember. It's nickname? The Easter Egger! Apparently, it lays eggs in pastel shades from white to pink to blue to green.

I think I even see a lavender in there:

Those dark brown ones are from a chicken called the Welsummer. Don't they look kind of chocolate-y? Victoria says she likes to think of them as not 70% cacao, but just over the milk chocolate line. Sounds better than Cadbury to me.

Phew! Now what are we going to do with all these eggs? Hard-boil them, for one, then make creamed eggs on toast and pickled beet deviled eggs. And I don't know about you, but I'd really like to save one each of the blue, green, pink, chocolate, and lavender colored eggs. How about we poke a needle through the tops and bottoms and blow out the insides? Then we could eat the eggs for brunch. I'm thinking an onion frittata might be nice, and these scrambled egg/avocado/salmon toasts look divine. If we counted ahead, we could even make this dried cherry popover or Big Puffy Pancake, always a favorite in my family.

Okay, time to start my egg dying. We're using beets for red, red cabbage for blue, and turmeric for yellow. I'll let you know how it turns out.

We in the fog

Hi! I hope you can hear me through the fog. From where I'm sitting, I can only see about twenty feet out the window. I'm up at Alex's parents' kitchen counter in Truro, and normally, I can see a deck and a thicket of beach plums and then the big, wide arc of Cape Cod Bay. But this morning, when Fisher and I woke up to make tea, we couldn't even see the beach. I tried to let him out, but he took one sniff, turned around, and came back inside to lie down. It's that kind of a day.

We've decided that rather than fight it, we're going to make a batch of butternut squash brownies and chicken noodle soup. Oh! and chicken salad. There's a lot of leftover roast chicken in that fridge.

I don't know if you make your own chicken stock, but I never did until I was shamed into it. In a recipe I wrote a few years back for my column in Maine, I called for for canned chicken stock, and Lee Johnson of Arrowsic was not impressed.

"CANNED??? chicken broth?!" she wrote. "Canned chicken broth costs money and is either very high in sodium or tasteless and it is certainly not local."

She had a point. And so, following her directions, I learned to make stock—strip the carcass, add water, an onion, a bay leaf, and heat. Boil for an hour, maybe two, then cool the broth and drain it. Throw out the bones and put the broth away, then let the fat rise to the top, gel, and skim it off if you like when you go to grab your breakfast milk. (I usually do, but since we buy our chickens from a farmer I trust—my friend Drew—and he raises his birds on pasture, I don't throw it out. I save it for sautéing veggies instead.) Sometimes I freeze it, and on days like today I use it fresh for chicken noodle soup.

As for chicken salad, I like mine simple: something crunchy, something nutty, mayo, and some sort of fruit. Today we're doing a Waldorf sort of variation—you know, like the apple salad with walnuts, celery, and yogurt. Except there's chicken, and mayo gets swapped in for the yogurt. It's good.

What do you do with your chickens? Special stocks? Chicken salads? Soups? We in the fog bank would love to hear.

The Local Food Report: backyard chickens

Hi everyone. Happy snowy morning! What happened to in like a lion, out like a lamb? Oh well. Let's talk about Sage instead.

Sage up there is five, and those are her two Plymouth Bard Rocks: Ciely and Kiely. Her family started keeping chickens last fall—six altogether—and she is now quite an expert in laying hens. She and her brother Skyler, age seven, help with the feeding, and water changing, and coop cleaning, and every morning, they go in to collect the eggs. Sage says there are usually six, sometimes five, and that when the hens are laying, they get kind of excited and noisy about the whole thing. She and Skyler have all sorts of games they play with the chickens: dust bath and soccer and swinging and even tag, and according to Sage's mother Rebecca, the hens are very affectionate.

A lot of other families we know with kids around this age have been getting chickens, too, and Sage's dad Michael says he can see why. Chickens are easy—low maintenance, not much daily trouble, a steady supply of fresh eggs, and excellent education and entertainment for the kids.

My nieces got chickens last year, and I can attest at least to the education and entertainment bit. They know all kinds of chicken facts—what they can eat, what they can't, what predators to watch out for, you name it—and they spend as much of their free time as possible either watching the chickens or letting them out of the coop and carrying them around and letting them go and then attempting to catch them. Between this and the backyard egg supply, I have to say, it seems to work out pretty well for everyone.

If you're interested, here are a few resources to get you started. There's a family in Osterville that writes a blog about keeping chickens—Tilly's Nest. NOFA also offered its first annual Backyard Poultry Workshop Day last July in Acushnet, and they haven't announced anything for this year yet, but to me, first annual implies that they'll be doing it again. There's quite a bit of information on backyardchickens.com, and Urban Chickens is another good site.

One note: before you build anything or make any solid plans, be sure to check with your town about zoning laws. In Brewster, you can keep up to ten hens without any sort of permit, but you need to go before the Board of Health to keep even one rooster.

Oh, and if you need a little more inspiration, here's a recipe for egg salad—as Rebecca says, the absolute best way to get rid of a dozen eggs.

CURRIED EGG SALAD

The trickiest part about egg salad is getting the timing right on the eggs. To hard boil the eggs, put them in a pot of water, bring it to a boil, and wait exactly 9 minutes. No less, no more. Then pull them out and drop them into an ice bath. Leave them to cool for about five minutes or so. This process should yield an egg that is easy to peel and has a soft, just cooked bright yellow yolk. It's all downhill from there.

1/2 cup chives, chopped fine

6 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 teaspoons whole grain Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons white vinegar or lemon juice

4 teaspoons cumin

salt and pepper

a dozen eggs, hardboiled

In a small mixing bowl, beat together the chives, mayo, mustard, lemon juice, and cumin with a whisk. Add the egg yolks and continue mixing until everything gets smooth and creamy. Taste for seasonings—you may want a little more lemon juice, or a bit of salt and pepper—and then set this aside.

Get out a cutting board and chop the egg whites into fairly small bits. (How small you go is a matter of taste; I tend not to go too fine.) Mix the whites in with the yolk mixture and boom!—you're done. This egg salad is excellent with leaves of butter lettuce on toasted whole wheat bread, and maybe a pickle on the side.

The Local Food Report: Community Green

Kristie Kapp believes in food. She believes in the honesty of it, the simplicity of it, the way it can bring people together into a roaring, celebratory crowd. She believes in growing it—not only for her own family, but also for those who might not have a yard to plant, a sunny balcony, a house.

Kristie works for the Housing Assistance Corporation of Cape Cod, as their agricultural program manager, and all these beliefs fit in with what they're doing just right. They own 45 acres in Sandwich, off Jan Sebastian Road, and one day, they're hoping to turn it into affordable housing centered around a working farm. Tenants could get agricultural job training and work, and the community could come to workshops and to buy food.

They're a few years out from that goal, but in the meantime, they've put in a community garden, and this summer, Kristie got a few plots, to start learning to work this land, see how it responds. The goal was to learn, but also to produce: each plot had a local sponsor, and each week Kristie brought three of the housing shelters the HAC runs two grocery bags each of fresh, homegrown produce.

The produce was a hit at all of them, but at one house in particular—Carriage House in Falmouth—Kristie felt like it did the most good. Once a week Lynn Voccola, an HAC employee who's training to be a chef, volunteered to cook, and helped the families learn what to do with the produce. In the process, she put out some pretty wonderful food. Kristie remembers hearing quite a bit about the ratatouille they made with eggplants and tomatoes and peppers from the garden, and there was another meal, a chicken, fennel, and leek gratin, that had everyone pretty pleased.

It's a small start, she says, but one that fits with all of her beliefs. Next year, she's hoping to do it again, harvesting the strawberries and raspberries and asparagus she planted this year. Eventually, of course, she's hoping they'll be growing so much on the farm there will be plenty to send over to keep the shelters in produce each week. The first tenants move in to the first affordable housing unit in December—so who knows, it could be sooner than we think.

CHICKEN, FENNEL, AND LEEK GRATIN

Lynn was kind enough to share her recipe. She says she made it this summer as an experiment because of an over-abundance of fennel from the garden, and it turned out to be a real hit. So here it is, in her words:

1 bulb fennel
2 leeks
1 medium white onion
2 cloves garlic
8 ounces mushrooms, optional
1 tablespoon olive oil
7 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups chicken broth, heated
2 cups half and half, heated
2 and 1/2 cups shredded cheese (Lynn says she has used various combinations of mozzarella, Parmesan, Asiago, Greyere, and Swiss with equal success)
3-4 cups cooked chicken, diced
1 pound penne pasta, cooked al dente
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
nutmeg to taste
1/2 cup bread crumbs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 13 by 9 inch casserole dish.

Wash, trim, and slice the fennel into 1/2 inch pieces. Trim off the dark green part of the leeks and slice in half lengthwise. Leeks can be filled with dirt and sand, so rinse thoroughly. Then cut the white part into about 1/2 inch pieces. Julienne slice the onions. Finely mince the garlic. Wipe the mushrooms clean and slice them.

Place the olive oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in a heated pan. Heat until the butter melts and begins to sizzle. Add the fennel, leeks, onions, garlic, and mushrooms. Cook together on medium heat until they soften and onions are nearly clear. Do not brown!

Add the remaining butter and stir until it melts and is hot. Add the flour to make a roux, mixing it thoroughly with butter and veggies. Allow the roux to cook for a few minutes, but do let let it brown. (This is to be a white roux.)

Slowly add the heated chicken broth, stirring constantly to completely mix it in. Then slowly add the half and half. Continue stirring to mix the sauce and veggies completely and to keep the sauce from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The sauce will thicken; then slowly add 2 cups of the cheese mixture, stirring to blend. Season with salt, white pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

Fold in the diced chicken and pasta. Taste for seasonings, and correct as needed. Place the mixture in the casserole dish. Top with remaining 1/2 cup cheese, then sprinkle the breadcrumbs over top. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Enjoy hot!

The Local Food Report: the chickens are in

Remember this picture?

I took it in January, and it was the beginning of a dream. A big dream—my friend Drew's dream—one that he came up with in his last semester at the Stockbridge Ag program in Amherst. He read a few books, watched a few documentaries, and made a decision. He was going to try to bring chickens back to his family's farm. Not just any chickens, but chickens raised right—on grass, outside, clucking and pecking and running around.

When I first talked to him, in January, there were still a lot of obstacles. He had to choose breeds and save up enough money to buy an electric fence and get a permit and order the hens and the feed they would need for the first few weeks. He had to make sure that he could use the Mobile Poultry Processing Unit and set up dates and make sure that his birds were ready when the time came. He had to build a customer base and get the word out and decide on a price.

He did all that, and fast. He picked two breeds: Red Bro, which is an heirloom bird, bred through generations to have plump, tasty meat, and the Cornish Rock Hen, a more modern breed created through gene splicing. He settled on June 23rd and 24th, July 14th and 15th, August 4th and 5th, and August 25th and 26th. And last week, he slaughtered over a hundred Truro-raised birds—the first birds at Hillside Farm in over 30 years.

We got two Red Bros raised on organic feed and pasture, and we ate both of them—I repeat, we have now eaten two chickens—in one week.

They were amazing—juicy and tender and tasty and absolutely fresh. We ate them roasted, stuffed with asparagus and peas and spring onions and garlic and rubbed down with rosemary and butter. We put a handful of baby carrots in the pan around the bird to soak up the juices as they cooked, and a cup of peas, too. We let it roast slowly, on low heat, and then cranked the oven up at the end to crisp the skin. We feasted and made chicken salad and chicken stock and then started all over and feasted again.

It was exciting, not just to eat a bird raised five miles down the road, but to eat a bird raised by a peer, and a friend. It was the kind of feeling that makes you happy to be alive, in this place, right now. I have a feeling that all summer we'll be doing it again, and again, and that on each slaughter date to come, we'll also freeze a bird.

There are other local poultry operations on the Cape—Miss Scarlett's and Paskamansett Farms and Ocean Song Farms and First Light Organic Farm even raises birds every now and again—and they're all excellent. Wherever you live, and whichever farmer you support, I think it's high time for a chicken roast with a fresh, Cape Cod bird.

ROASTED CHICKEN WITH EARLY SUMMER VEGETABLES

Roasting a chicken is one of the easiest ways to make a whole-meal feast. I made this stuffing up based on what we had in the fridge leftover from the markets last week, but it will change as the season progresses. Whatever you use, be sure to put some veggies around the chicken in the pan—they are a true treat.

one 4-5 pound chicken
4 sprigs rosemary
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
1 slice stale bread or a handful of crackers, crumbled
1 and 1/2 cups English peas, divided
1/2 pound asparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, peeled
4 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced
1/2 pound baby carrots, whole, with tops trimmed to leave 1/2-inch of greens

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees F.

Rinse the chicken, pat dry with a dishcloth, and arrange in a roasting dish. Working from the skin flap over the back of the bird, use your fingers to separate the skin from the meat. Slip the rosemary sprigs and butter under the skin, spreading out the herbs and rubbing the butter into the meat. Rub the outside skin of the bird generously all over with salt and pepper.

In a large bowl, toss together the crumbled bread, 1/2 cup of the peas, the asparagus, the garlic, and the scallions. Season lightly with salt and pepper and stuff as much of the mixture as you can into the cavity of the bird. Set any extra aside.

Tent the roasting pan with tinfoil and put the chicken in to bake. After two hours, pull the bird out of the oven and turn the heat up to 375 degrees F. Arrange the remaining stuffing, remaining peas, and baby carrots around the bird in the roasting pan. Rub the skin of the bird with more butter if it's dry, cover everything back up loosely with tinfoil, and return the roasting pan to the oven. Bake for 30 minutes; then take off the tinfoil and turn the oven to broil. In about 15 minutes, the bird's interior temperature should reach 160 degrees F and the skin will be golden brown and crispy; it's done.

Turn off the oven, take the roasting pan out, and let the bird rest for 15 minutes. Carve and serve with pan roasted veggies and stuffing, and maybe a nice green salad alongside.

The Local Food Report: a Perry Special

I'm sorry if I sounded a little out of sorts the other day. I didn't mean to, but I have a feeling that I might have, and so today I decided to bring you flowers. Tulips, to be specific, a little bit wilted, but from what I've heard it's the thought that counts.

It's just that sometimes, when I spend a little too much time listening to Living on Earth and Science Friday and reading books like Collapse, I get overwhelmed. I wonder what on earth we're supposed to do to get out of the mess we've gotten in, and even if we could figure it out, how we would convince everyone, all at once, to get on board with a colossal community solve. Luckily, this time, just before things got too deep, I ran into my friend Drew. Drew is one of those people who makes you feel like the world is definitely, without a doubt, going to be fine. Not even just fine, but really good, like in an all around a-okay rose bushes and tinted glasses sort of way.

Drew is twenty-one, and he grew up on his family's farm near Corn Hill Beach in Truro. His last name is Locke, but going back his grandfather's name is Perry, and the Perry farm, or Hillside Farms, is usually how people in Truro know the place. The Perrys are the ones that sell homegrown cucumbers and tomatoes and watermelons at their stand on Route 6 in the summertime, and a long time back, they had chicken and eggs and beef, too.

Drew's in school right now—at the Stockbridge Ag program up at UMass Amherst—the program that started the school, and the one his grandfather went to, too. He's all excited about things like pigs raised on restaurant scraps and the Buy Fresh Buy Local movement and Joel Salatin's systems for growing healthy chickens, the so-called "salad bar."

Back when his grandfather ran the farm, in the 50s and 60s, the land supported over 10,000 birds. Half were layers, half were broilers, and they all lived in a big, three story barn. In the winter, when the birds laid too many eggs to sell, Mr. Perry trucked the extras up to Boston. And in the summer, when all the visitors came down, he ran a delivery service around town. Eventually, though, government restrictions got tighter, and the number of birds he was allowed to have shrank down into the hundreds.

Then, in the 80s, there was an event known as the Perry Barbecue. I will spare you the gorey details, but suffice it to say that it involved a storm, and the chickens, and some lightening, and that it was not a very pretty sight. The Box Lunch even named a sandwich after the debacle—the Perry Special, with chicken and bbq sauce—which you can still order to this day. After that, the chicken operation went belly up.

Drew's goal for this summer is to bring at least a few hundred of those chickens back.

He's thought about it a lot. He's done a lot of number scratching and note taking and idea bouncing and regulation studying, and he thinks, he's pretty sure, it can be done. His grandfather is a little bit skeptical—Don't put $4 into a beet you can only sell for $2, he says—and Drew knows it's good advice. Only with a pasture-based system—one that relies on grass instead of purchased feed—he thinks he can make things work. He won't have to rebuild the huge old barn, either, because he plans to graze the chickens rotationally, moving them around the grass in bottomless cages to a new 12' by 12' plot every day. When slaughter time comes, he can hook into the state's new Mobile Poultry Processing Unit, the MPP pilot program, and save himself $30,000 on a slaughterhouse. Then on the business side of things, he'll replicate his grandfather's model—tapping into the market through the farm stand and deliveries. When he talks about it, he breaks into a huge, contagious grin. It's pretty great.

The part that gives me the most hope, though, is the way what Drew's been learning at Stockbridge has shaped what he wants to do. It's easy to wonder, sometimes, just how much of an effect writing something down during a lecture can have—whether or not anyone is really going to do anything with what's on that piece of paper or not. But I think, when I look at what kids I went to college with are doing, people who only graduated three years ago, and what Drew plans to do before he even finishes up, that knowledge is actually shaping our generations' dreams and jobs quite a bit. And that of course, in turn, is shaping what ends up in our kitchens, and on our dinner plates.

With any luck, before long, it will be one of Drew's organic, pastured, Truro-grown and Truro-processed chickens we're cooking up. I can hardly wait.

OVEN FRIED CHICKEN

My mother used to make this chicken, and my sister and I liked it so much we called it The Chicken. What you'll find below isn't so much of a recipe as an off-the-cuff outline, but the good news is you really can't go wrong. The dish comes from my grandmother, who says she has absolutely no idea when she started making it, or why, except that oven fried chicken was all the rage at one point. She says she used to make it in Youngstown, Ohio, when my mother was little, and when I tried to ask her about the details, she said that it's so simple that there really aren't any.

She can see herself making it in their old Youngstown kitchen, she said, turning on the oven and melting the butter in a big Pryrex casserole dish, putting a little bit of flour in a bag with some salt and pepper, and then shaking a few chicken thighs and drumsticks around until everything was properly coated. Then, according to the recipe she wrote out for my mother, she would drop the chicken in the butter, put the whole mess in the oven, and cook the chicken pieces for about a half hour on each side. My mother must have added the herbs at some point, and I have a sneaky feeling she changed the flour to whole-wheat, too. Don't be afraid to do your own improvising, and be sure to let us know how it goes.

4-6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
salt and pepper to taste
1 pound assorted chicken cuts—a mixture of thighs, wings, and drumsticks works well, because they cook more evenly when they're the same size, and also, thighs tend to be pretty cheap

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Put the butter in a 9" by 13" casserole dish, and stick it into the warming oven until it melts. Combine the flour, herbs, and salt and pepper in a quart-sized plastic bag and mix well. Add the chicken and shake until every piece is well coated with the flour mixture. Arrange the chicken pieces in the casserole dish in the melted butter so that none of the pieces are resting on top of each other. Bake for 25-30 minutes, turn the chicken pieces over, and bake them for another 25-30 minutes, or until crispy and golden, on the other side. Enjoy hot, maybe with a salad or biscuits if you are feeling especially indulgent.

P.S. Up-Cape, there are already a few places to buy locally raised birds. There's Ocean Song Farm in Cummaquid, and also Miss Scarlett's Blue Ribbon Farm in Yarmouth Port (508.420.9748). Just over the bridge, I've gotten very good chicken from Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth.

From your rooftop

Some recipes make you want to run up, copy in hand, and shout them from your rooftop. Of course I have all of about three neighbors, so this metaphor is a bit of a stretch in this case. It'd probably work better in say, New York City, but you know what I mean. There are some recipes everyone should know about.

That's how I've been feeling lately about chicken liver paté.

I know, I know. Liver. Yech! It's slimy and bloody and nobody wants to deal with it. But friends, trust me when I tell you chicken liver paté is worth pulling out your coping skills for. Believe me, I wouldn't ask if it weren't a matter of absolute necessity, because I know how often they come in handy for other things, like taking out very old compost, or finding hairy pudding in the fridge.

The thing is, if you can get past the livers themselves, the process is really actually delightfully easy. And if you've ever been an absolute mess over say, a good foie gras or paté de campagne or even a spread of liverwurst, you're going to find you spend an awful lot of time admiring this paté. It's a genuine masterpiece.

I may be slightly biased by the fact that for several years of my childhood, I ate a liverwurst sandwich as many days a week as I possibly could. This can develop quite a paté hankering in a kid, one that lasts for life. And while I've chosen to blame this affliction on my grandfather, who did the same thing to my father, only much worse, because he did it to him in France, that doesn't really solve the problem. In fact, I think it makes it much harder to escape, sort of like an inherited disease. You see where I'm going with this.

The good news is that even if I turn out to be terribly biased, I went ahead and tested this recipe on a good deal of friends, all of whom loved it, and none of whom admitted to any upbringing so persuasive as this.

As for the cooking, it's easy really. (Just make sure you have plenty of butter on hand.) You simply sauté an onion in butter, set that aside, and cook up the livers in some more butter. Then you add the onions back in with some thyme, and then some sherry, and call it good. The whole mess goes into the food processor, where it gets whirled to creamy perfection, and then you work in another stick of butter, just for good measure.

The most important thing to remember when you're thinking about serving it is that you should have some good, crusty bread or thin crackers on hand, and definitely some pickled things. Beets and bread n' butter cucumbers both work very well, I think. Cheese, in my opinion, is sort of overkill, but I'll leave that up to you. I can't wait to hear how it goes.

CHICKEN LIVER PATE

adapted from “A New Bistro on the Block” by Jonathan Levitt in Port City Life September 2008

I misread this recipe the first time I made it and used 8 tablespoons of butter rather than 8 ounces (meaning I put in 1 stick rather than 2). The funny thing is, until I went to type it up, I never even realized anything was amiss, and even my father heartily approved. You can add a bit more butter if you’d like, but there’s certainly no need to double the amount. An extra 4 tablespoons, I think, would be more than enough.

3 tablespoons butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 pound chicken livers*
3 tablespoons dry sherry
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
salt and black pepper to taste

In a large heavy-bottomed skillet, heat up 1 tablespoon of the butter and sauté the onion until translucent and soft. Remove onion and set aside, then in the same pan heat up 2 tablespoons of the butter and cook the chicken livers. They will take about 10 minutes to brown through, and it’s a good idea to stir or flip them occasionally.

When they’re done, return the onions to the pan and add 1 tablespoon of the sherry and the thyme. Bring everything to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and continue cooking for several minutes. Turn off the heat and add the remaining sherry. Transfer the liver mixture to the bowl of a food processor with a metal blade and process it until it’s smooth.

At this point, spoon the liver mixture out into a medium-size bowl and add the butter and salt and pepper. Work the livers and butter with a spatula until the two substances are well-combined. Pack the paté into several small containers or 1 pint container. (The paté will freeze well so long as it’s tightly covered, so if you divvy it between smaller containers, you can spread out the enjoyment a bit.) Serve as a spread on toast or crackers, preferably with pickles.

*I got 3 pounds of livers from Pat's Pastured, a Rhode Island operation, when I went down to the winter farmers' market last month. If you can't find any near you, next time you buy whole chickens from your farmer, make sure you get the livers set aside. He/she might even be willing to give you more from other birds, so long as you ask. If all else fails, I'd call Northeast Family Farms. They have all sorts of goodies, sourced from farms across New England and hand slaughtered at their meat house.

The Local Food Report: mushroom soup

I have two recipes for you today. Both are from Ruth Reichl, and both are very simple. For those of you who don't know, Reichl is Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet, and former restaurant critic for the New York Times. I had the privilege of speaking with her in November, and the first of two interviews came out on the radio today.

Reichl has claimed in several interviews to be a cook, not a chef, and says that's why she keeps her recipes easy. Regardless of why, they are truly very simple to make. She may not be a chef, but she is a wonderful cook. Happy New Year to all of you, and enjoy.

MUSHROOM SOUP*

from Comfort me with Apples, by Ruth Reichl

Serves 4

1/2 pound mushrooms

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

1 small onion, diced

4 tablespoons flour

1 cup beef broth

2 cups half-and-half

salt, pepper

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 bay leaf

Thinly slice the mushrooms.

Melt the butter in a heavy sauté pan. When the foam subsides, add the onion and sauté until golden. Add the mushrooms and sauté until brown.

Stir in the flour, and then slowly add the broth, stirring constantly.

Heat the half-and-half in a suacepan or in the microwave. Add it to the mushrooms, along with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and bay leaf. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes; do not boil.

Remove the bay leaf and serve.

*I used dried black trumpets from Oyster Creek Mushroom Co. in Maine, pictured above, which I rehydrated for use in the soup.

ROAST CHICKEN

from Garlic and Sapphires, by Ruth Reichl

Serves 4

1 farm raised chicken, about 3 and 1/2 pounds

1 lemon

Olive oil

3 or 4 smallish Yukon potatoes (or any other variety except russet), each peeled and cut into 8 pieces

1 large onion, cut into 6 pieces

3 or 4 cloves garlic, unpeeled

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Wash the chicken under running water and pat it dry. Remove and reserve the extra fat from the inside of the chicken. Very gently run your fingers between the breast and the skin, beginning from the neck end, loosening the skin from the breast on both sides. Being careful not to puncture the skin, place the excess fat beneath the skin (the chicken will then baste itself).

Puncture the lemon a few times with a fork, and place it inside the chicken.

Pour enough olive oil into a roasting pan to make a thin film over the bottom. Toss the potatoes, onion, and garlic into the pan and turn until they are covered with olive oil.

If you have a rack, put the chicken on it, breast side up, and place it in the roasting pan (you may have to jiggle things a little to fit it over the potatoes and onions). If you don't, just put the chicken right into the pan. Pour a little olive oil over the chicken, and salt and pepper everything in the pan.

Roast for about 1 hour, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into a thigh reads 170 degrees F. Remove the pan from the oven and let the chicken rest for 10 minutes.

Carve the chicken into serving pieces, surround them with the potatoes, onions, and garlic, and squeeze the lemon over the top.

Sunday supper

The clocks skipped back today, shifting the season for good. Afternoon light faded as I worked my hands into the chilly cavity of a chicken, and we prepared the oven for a roast.

It was the perfect evening for the bird. We'd picked it up from Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth several weeks before, frozen solid beside its two sister birds.

When a turkey arrived from the same fields this morning, there was squawking in the freezer. Packed solid, it showed something had to go. With Sunday evening looming and no dinner in sight, the carefully packed chicken got the first ticket out.

It didn't help the bird's cause that a rotisserie sat, unused, in our beloved new oven, just itching to be used. I left the meat to thaw and returned hours later to find it ready to dress. Rubbing the meat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh cut rosemary, I allowed it to sit while I rummaged around for twine. Rope offered the next best option, and so around the bird it wound.

With the oven hot, we stuck the bird between the hungry jaws of the spit and watched it begin to spin. Slowly, with excruciating appeal, it began to turn. Dripping fat and sizzling skin filled the oven, and we settled in to wait.

An hour or so passed; potatoes were mashed, salad whipped up, a jar of beach plum-cranberry chutney pulled from the pantry. Red wine was poured, gravy made, and stuffing pulled from the oven. Finally, brilliantly, the bird emerged from the oven. It was mouthwatering in its perfection, perfectly cooked on all sides, and wonderfully browned. The smell filled the dining room and we dug in to enjoy an old-fashioned Sunday supper.

ROTISSERIE CHICKEN with ROOT VEGETABLE GRATIN

Serves 4-6

Wash a 5-8 pound chicken with cold water. Drizzle with olive oil, and rub with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Tie wings in close to body; spear onto rotisserie. In a large Pyrex pan (big enough to fit beneath the bird and catch drippings) toss 1 large beet, peeled and diced, 1 apple, diced, and 1 lb. winter squash, peeled and diced, and 1 cup torn bread with salt, pepper, rosemary, and olive oil to taste. Place pan beneath chicken on floor of oven, and turn on rotisserie. Let cook 1 to 2 hours, or until meat and vegetables are cooked through and tender and bird skin is brown. Remove meat from oven, place on serving platter, and allow to rest 15 minutes before serving. Enjoy alongside vegetables.

Chicken roast

The bones are all that's left of the bird we roasted Saturday evening. It was my first chicken; my first attempt at transforming the cold, clammy flesh into something worthy of a warming fall celebration.

Our guests were bringing vegetables and dessert, and I'd kicked my roast-hungry sous chef out from the walls of the tiny kitchen, determined at last to learn this bird.

I'd picked it up in Dartmouth that morning—at Paskamansett Farms—packed it gently into a large white cooler to rest alongside two sister birds.

With the freezer already well stocked—there was a pig from the same farm, smoked into bacon and packed into sausage, a good supply of grass fed beef from a Foxboro farm, and assorted bundles of lamb from a Barnstable shepherder already in—the chicken and her sisters would round out the winter.

Confronting her in the sink, I rinsed and washed her body cavity with cold water, checking for an organ here or there and finally laying her down. I chopped onion and apple, carrot and butter, and threw a handful of breadcrumbs and cranberries into a bowl. With a spoonful of poultry rub and a good bit of salt and pepper, her stuffing was made.

With a few cloves of sliced garlic and a few sprigs of thyme in hand, I turned back to the bird. Slowly, carefully, I felt my way beneath her skin and began to spread the seasonings against her fat. The garlic rested heavy on her thighs and breast, and I rubbed her well with salt and pepper.

The oven heated up, and I began to stuff. I packed her full until finally her skin just stretched to conceal the bread, fruit, and fat, and sewed her up. I felt the heat begin to rise from the oven, and worked quickly to give her one last gift. Chopping quickly, I filled her pan with turnip, onion, and brilliant orange butternut squash.

It made for a magnificent send off—this ferry of herbs and color—wending its way towards the oven barrow. On the plate, it was equally splendid. Meat and root fell together, fruit crunched tart, and a savory gravy of herbs and fat filled out the meal. She didn't last long.

But today, meat gone and bones light, she's back to the soup pot for the final journey.

ROAST CHICKEN

Make stuffing. Chop and combine in a bowl: 1 good sized carrot, 1 firm apple, and 1/2 large white onion. Add 1 and 1/2 cups torn bread, 1 stick butter, cut up, and 1 cup cranberries. Season with poultry rub and salt and pepper to taste; set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Pick and have handy several sprigs thyme. In a finger bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Peel 1 head of garlic and cut each clove into thin slices. Rinse whole chicken inside and out in cold water; put in roasting pan or dutch oven with 4 tablespoons olive oil drizzled over bottom. Gently work fingers between bird's skin and flesh, and push in garlic and thyme, spreading evenly over thighs and breast. Pack bird with stuffing; stake or sew shut with twine.

Peel and chop 2 cups butternut squash, 2 cups turnip, 1/2 onion, and 1 apple. Throw around chicken in pan. Cover with tinfoil or put dutch oven lid on, and put in to bake for about 1 hour, or until skin is crisp and bird cooked through. Put stuffing and root vegetables into serving pans; baste bird with juices and let rest 15 minutes before serving. Save bones and meat scraps for soup.

Animal Kingdom

Caution! hungry horses.

Draft horses may be strong, but visually, they aren't the smartest creatures on the block. This sign left us laughing as we watched the horses pull sleds, plows, and people.







Just ducky.

We picked up a flyer on poultry as we browsed the cages. "Match your need to the right breed!" it encouraged. My mother decided on a classic black and white Bard chicken; I was leaning towards a duck. For eggs, the sheet recommends Khaki Campbell or Indian runners; for meat, White Pekin, Aylesubury, or Muscovy.