Contaminated chicken

Here's just another reason to go local and organic.

"Most contaminated were Tyson and Foster Farms chickens. More than 80 percent tested positive for one or both pathogens."

Campylobacter and Salmonella are the pathogens in question.

80%.

The "cleanest" brand of chicken tested, Perdue. Only 56% contamination...Wow. Only half.

The cleanest chickens? Organic. Entirely free of salmonella but not of campylobacter. One assumes because the production numbers are lower, but no reason is cited.

Read it all at Consumer Reports.

What's for dinner? Er...leftover chicken-turned pilaff.

[Ed: amendment: due to arrival of superlative quince jelly from Ms Zachos via USPS, lamb is for dinner.]

All America Rose Selections

...chose this picture of the roses on the corner of Congress and Henry Street in Brooklyn, to illustrate the urban rose. They were nice enough to ask for permission to use it, and linked to 66 Square Feet in 'payment'. It's one of my favourite pictures, so I was happy share.

I often wait for a cab to pass in New York before taking a picture. It instantly 'certifies' it...

Now I'm sure the roses I photographed are David Austen's, and I see none on the site, rose.org, which is apparently run by a not for profit association of rose growers, and is not the official site of All America Selections. Bit confusing. Their selection for the Northeast runs to five roses, all rather dreary, unless that is blasphemous. I have New Dawn, indeed (below), and have used The Fairy in a garden, en masse, but I am a little confused by their criteria.

What makes a good rose for a region?

Where do you live, what are your favourite roses, and why?

Candied grapefruit peel

What possessed me?

I peeled two of the Chinatown pomelos and followed this recipe by Jacques Torres, later finding that Smitten Kitchen had done the same with poor results - she said they were inedibly bitter! [Torres on the Food Network and Smitten are 1 and 2 in Google search results for Candied Grapefruit Peel...]. Luckily I did not have the same problem. And I don't know what caused hers.

I was worried about the large proportion of pith on my peel, and decided to keep it, despite the bitter! alarm bells. I changed the water 4 times, as directed. While mine are not the prettiest crystallized peels ( I was busy with other things and let them stand in the dusting-sugar too long, so some jagged bits developed) they are delicious. A little bitter (which I like), but more a memory, and very succulant, with a crackly crust of sugar.

But they take a long time. I think it's worth it, though. What nice Christmas presents. If you really want to be silly, dip the ends in good dark chocolate.

Having succeeded with these, I feel I am on my way to making Aquagrill's peerless grapefruit dessert, and my favourite dessert, ever: pink segments topped with a confit of candied grapefruit skins, surrounding the lightest, ethereally pink grapefruit sorbet. It is crowned with a ridiculous, superfluous but artfully poised chocolate biscuit swirl (looking a lot like the hat the mother of the bride wore many moons ago in Cape Town, resembling rather closely an alien spaceship perched on her head, at a wedding I was apparently not welcome to attend, despite having been invited, while she asked belligerently and loudly whether I was actually staying for dinner. It all remains a mystery to me. I remain traumatized, she remains mad. Everytime I see that teetering swirl on the dessert I think of her. So I remove it carefully and don't eat it).

Above, draining the slices after they have cooked in several changes of water. Drying on racks, below, after having been submerged in sugar. I used organic sugar so it's a pale brown colour.

Bitten, the white, bitter pith has been transformed into soft, unctuous, citrus-redolent sponge under a crackle of sugar.

Somehow I feel that a nineteenth century physician may have prescribed these. For something. Relief of a lady's headache, associated with the umentionable time of the month?

Dickson's chickens

Poor thing. This was one of the two Dickson's* chickens, bought at the Chelsea Market, and which I deboned yesterday. This one took about 25 minutes, the next 17. Not that I was timing myself, or anything. It's a gory business, intimate, and requires a very sharp little knife. The Opinels performed admirably, doing a tagteam as one lost its edge...

The meat of the chicken was not pale pink. It was red. I've frozen the carcasses for stock.

I stuffed them with quite large pieces of chicken of the woods, first sauteed in butter (ran out of olive oil: the unthinkable!). To these I added sauteed shallots, breadcrumbs, lemon zest, dried summer savoury and a little of the leftover gnocchi mix of spinach and ricotta.

Behold the tiny kitchen, overflowing with crystalized pomelo zest, resting chickens and sunchoke soup.

Note to self: the mushrooms were so delicious that I will go back and get some more to eat just like that, sauteed with salt and pepper, perhaps on soft polenta.

* Jake from Dickson's emailed me about the birds, after I asked what breed they were:

The chickens we get are a breed called the red cockerel. We get all of our poultry from a live poultry market in queens called Madani Halal. They source the birds from a few amish farms in PA on our behalf. Birds come into the city live every morning and we just call over and request what we need for the shop and they slaughter for us so they are very very fresh.

Iceberg in December

A cold, bold rose.

Shopping and planning

We had fun at the Chelsea Market this evening, entering and leaving in soft flurries of sleet, yellow in the streetlights. Some of what we brought home was supper tonight, some will be supper tomorrow, and the rest will be small gifts. Supper tonight - pork sausages from Dickson's, now two month's old at the market. Dickson's, not the sausages...Another boutique butchery, with tourists standing in awe in front of the pristine meat case.

Dinner tomorrow night is shaping up to be:

Celery and sunchoke soup
Avocado, fennel and pomelo salad
Deboned heirloom (!) chickens stuffed with hen (!!) of the woods a.k.a. maitake mushrooms
Bay-leaf potatoes (subject to change)
Pineapple fluff (take two) and tropical fruit salad.

New York weekend

Late Saturday morning, rain on the skylights, better winter cold (it was 18'C/64'F Thursday) blowing through the little window in the bedroom. We can't stand an over-heated house. Earlier the drops turned slow and sluggish overhead, signaling a brief spell of promised sleet.

Breakfast in bed of panettone and good coffee, my book, The Fortune of War, reaching Nantucket in a driving sleet aboard the 'Constitution', as Jack Aubrey lies below, severely wounded in body and spirit. I am happy to have the whole O'Brian saga ahead of me again, another 15 volumes, these next few months. Once I start I cannot stop. I had not thought I would read them again, but it seems I can. Years ago, six, I read Moby Dick, another book of the seas, for the first time, at this end of year, finding in its thick prose a way to block out life, which had become too much, and a way to go on. Books can save you. They take the mind somewhere else and allow the body to keep doing what it must.

On the table lies the bounty from a walk through Chinatown last night: three massive pomelos: jumbo-sized grapefruit with skin half an inch thick. They spell winter in New York for me. Costing $3 a piece this year and yielding comparatively small fruit in their massive bulk, the inner segments are easily peeled, thick-celled and juicy, and perfect for the salad I'd like to make tomorrow night, with avocado and fennel, from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors.

Then, too, three fat pomegranates, bought from the shop on the east side of the Bowery below Grand, whose fruit costs less, for some reason, than in other Chinatown places, the pomegranates costing as much as in Wholefoods. But here they were 3 for $5 instead of $2.50 a piece. I don't know what I'll do with them, yet. Maybe a great tropical salad for winter.

Also a sackful of little yellow-skinned guavas from a sidewalk vendor. You never see them here, while they are a South African staple fruit, like passion fruit (grenadillas)...the ones at Wholefoods right now cost 1.99. EACH: the passion fruit, that is. Crazy.

In Cape Town they are piled in mountains in supermarkets or sold by the bag. They are delicious, and make the best fruit mousse.

Speaking of which.

Pineapple fluff. Next post.

Last night, before the pineapple fluff, I made gnocchi again, this time using 2 bunches of fresh spinach, cooked, squeezed hard to get the last drop of moisture out, and chopped. A more tender and delicious result.

We drank our now-favourite Prosecco and Grand Marnier cocktail, which debuted on Thanksgiving (it needs a name), and spent a companiable evening with the cat.

Now I must peel, slice and blanch the pomelos' skins. I want to crystallize them for after-dinner treats. We are feeding - and meeting for the first time - a blogging friend tomorrow, Melanie, owner of Halloween the black cat, a most entertaining commenter on Estorbo's blog.