Eating like peasants

I was reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle a while back about a food purist who had fallen on hard times. Her answer was to continue eating well, but injecting things with a sense of frugality unheard of since our parents’ generation. She would buy local free range chicken, but straight from the farmer, and feast on it for a week. You see, a whole chicken is quite useful. We’re so used to the sanitized pieces in the fluorescent-lit meat department that we’ve forgotten that chickens have things like feet and bones and livers and a heart that are actually valuable items in the kitchen. Six thighs? Who ever heard of a six-legged chicken? But two feet will give you a quart of stock fit for a king. Ask any Jewish grandmother.

The whole chicken that came over with friends for a joint Easter roasting was largely demolished in that one sitting: fresh air and the garlicky aroma wafting through the air had engendered hearty appetites indeed. But after we had bid our visitors good night, we turned to straightening up the kitchen. There were two pieces leftover, and a pan full of congealed yellow stuff. In true debauchery, we had not only fought over drumsticks (with the golden crunchy skin on them!), but had smothered our roast potatoes with gravy made from stock from the neck bone (with kidney giblets). The liver had also been in the stockpot to cook, and was fished out to make a quick pâté on crackers while the beast roasted. The tough heart went to the cat.

Of course, most people wouldn’t have had to face this apparent mess—their chicken would have been stripped of its skin and bones before it arrived in their house on a plastic tray, but I digress. Were I not my tightwad self, I would have unceremoniously chucked the greasy yellow gunk down the disposal and put the two odd pieces in the fridge to mold in a dark corner. I drained a bit of fat off the pan (into the food composting bin provided by the city), but the lion’s share went into a mason jar from the cupboard. I had to use a spatula to scrape the gelatinous glob from the bottom of the pan, but oh, what a treasure!

With both Darling Husband and myself still fighting our sinuses, we declared Monday leftover night: the leftover roast potatoes got fried up with some (duck) eggs and a bowl of rice and beans went into Number One Son. Little One and Darling Husband worked their way through savory loaf and rillettes and cheese, but I declared the chicken off limits. It is destined for chicken curry for rice night.

And that single cup of goop? Well, this morning I scraped the top layer of fat off the jar and used it to brown some onions. The demi-glace—for that is the French term for ze rich-tasting gelatin from the bottom of ze roasting pan—went into the pot with two quarts of water and some salt. Then I stole a corner of meat off of one piece and chopped it up, along with the last four market carrots. Two handfuls of barley, simmer for an hour, and eat piping hot. A king should have it so good.