Chicken and Egg - Janice Cole [56]
This pie is best served on the day it is made. Store any leftovers in the refrigerator for up to 2 days
SERVES 8
CRUST
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup (1½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut up
1⁄3 cup ice water, plus 2 tablespoons
FILLING
1 ½ cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
2 cups chopped peeled peaches (about 3 peaches; see Note, Raspberry-Peach Upside-Down Cake)
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon sugar
CHAPTER SIX
Autumn Harvest
I had no idea how much like goats chickens are. Both creatures will eat anything, and they are always hungry. Some people use their chickens as waste disposal units. They scrape their dinner leftovers—liquids as well as solids—into the coop, along with vegetable peelings and other compost, and their chickens happily eat it. The results are healthy, happy, and I presume nicely plump birds. I, on the other hand, ended up raising spoiled fussy eaters. I blamed it on my job.
One of the benefits of creating recipes at home was the abundance of food in the house. My pantry was as well stocked as any upscale grocery store. If I needed Thai green curry paste to spice up a dish, I had it. If I wanted to add a pinch of fenugreek or finish a dish with farmstead cheese, no problem. However, as the bits of leftover ingredients accumulated in my fridge, I was too busy testing new recipes to use them up. Enter the chickens.
As the chickens grew and begged for treats, I started feeding them leftover food from my testing. My chickens began eating better than most people I know. They’d developed a fondness for the finely chopped rind of Parmigiano-Reggiano, crumbled Gorgonzola, and al dente pasta. They’d even eaten sushi rice and nori. Leftover souffléd eggs were consumed with gusto, and they casually munched sunflower seeds as if at a sports game.
What they didn’t care for were vegetable peels, unless they were finely chopped, and cauliflower and broccoli, unless they were cooked. Bell peppers and out-of-season tomatoes were looked at with disdain, and old lettuce, or for that matter any wilted greens, were left to decay unless nothing else was at hand. Yes, my chickens were and still are food snobs, but we benefited in the end. The flavor of the eggs and the color of their yolks were directly related to what they ate.
Early on, I decided to feed my girls a vegetarian diet under the mistaken assumption that chickens were herbivores. Because they happily ate grain and greens, I assumed they didn’t eat meat. I was wrong. I was also misled by the marketing of the “all-natural vegetarian-fed” chicken I was buying with “no animal by-products” in the feed. These “all-natural” chickens were obviously not allowed to run free and eat their natural diet. Luckily, my chicks ignored my arbitrary dietary directions and easily caught their quota of protein by way of bugs, slugs, moths, and worms. Roxanne was happy to get underfoot when anyone was digging in the garden. When I threw her a worm, she’d slurp it down like a six-year-old boy eating spaghetti. Cleo would shoot like lightning across the yard and swallow a moth in midrun.
Although I quickly learned that chickens are omnivores, it took me awhile before I intentionally fed my chickens meat protein. Their irregular egg laying finally prompted me to supplement their diet with mealworms, which they devoured instantly. I still haven’t given them meat yet, but who knows. I’m not ruling anything out—except chicken. Oh, chickens will eat anything, and that includes chicken. Sometimes it’s just better to not know some things.
* * *
A ramshackle chicken coop sits on the property of our family’s lake cottage. It’s been there since the 1940s, maybe longer. Chickens used to roam the property along with sheep and a goat. I’d love to reclaim the coop as a weekend home for the girls, but nature has taken first