Springfield Locavore

Farmers Market Haul; Cooking Chicken & Potatoes

Farmers Market Haul, originally uploaded by Wally Hartshorn.

In addition to our CSA share, here's what we picked up from the farmers market on Saturday: Strawberries, sweet cherries, blueberries, eggs (from Bear Creek Farm and Ranch near Kincaid, 25 miles southeast of Springfield), and potatoes.

We ate some of the strawberries at a gathering with friends on Saturday. I ate the blueberries for dessert Sunday night. I had eggs for breakfast Monday morning. Monday evening, we had some of the potatoes with the local chicken that I purchased awhile back.

That's right, I actually cooked 2 dishes at the same time! I am awesome. :-) Okay, if you saw me scrambling around, you would quickly realize that I'm new to this. Actually, it all went pretty well.

I was using a different recipe, one from the 2008 season of America's Test Kitchen. I remembered to start the oven preheating before I put the chicken on the skillet this time. And I did a pretty good job of locating all of the utensils and ingredients before I started, so that I wouldn't have to search while something was starting to burn.

One thing I forgot to do was slice up the potatoes before I started, but I frantically called Dawn in to help with that, so that worked okay. I also made the mistake of leaving the chicken sitting on the skillet after I had turned off the burner, because I wasn't quite ready to put it in the oven. I should have put it in the baking dish to wait. As a result, there was a little bit of burning, but not too much.

So I've now cooked chicken twice and potatoes once!

The chicken tasted very good, and the potatoes were also good, although I think I should have left them on the skillet a bit longer to brown better. I'm going to have to try it all again!

The Chicken Didn't Suck!

And there was much rejoicing! (Well, okay, I was happy. My wife is a vegetarian, so she gave me and the chicken a wide berth.)

I will freely admit that it wasn't the world's greatest chicken (the cooking, I mean). However, given that it was my first time ever cooking it and it didn't suck, I'm quite happy.

I did make a few mistakes:

1. I started melting the butter in the skillet, then realized that I hadn't yet preheated the oven. Oops.
2. I had the flame too high and scorched the butter. Oops. At that point, I should have just rinsed out the skillet and started over, but I didn't. Double oops.
3. I picked 2 small pieces (a drumstick and a wing) and one very large piece (a breast). This meant that, after 30 minutes in the oven, the 2 smaller pieces were ready, but according to the meat thermometer the larger piece was not. It was another 20+ minutes before the larger piece was ready. Oops. However, I was just cooking for myself and had told Dawn from the beginning not to wait for my dinner to be ready, so that was okay.

All in all it went fairly well and now that I've tried it once, I will hopefully be better at it next time! I can say that my scrambled eggs have gotten better over the last few months, so there's reason for hope.

Am I Ruining the Chicken in the Oven?

My first ever attempt at cooking chicken is in the oven as I'm typing this. In about 30 minutes, I'll know whether I completely ruined 3 pieces of that wonderful cut-up fryer I got from the James Family Farm.

Why are so many cooking recipes so complicated? The recipe for crispy fried chicken that I found in an America's Test Kitchen book called for something like 20 ingredients! I'm sure it tastes delicious, but for my first attempt I wanted something that was extremely simple.

I went with a recipe from Dawn's old copy of The Joy of Cooking, but I'm not sure I did it right. Actually, I'm pretty sure I did it wrong. I scorched the butter in the skillet, for one thing. Then I think I had the flame too low while I was frying the chicken. Now I've got it in the oven. We'll see how it comes out.

I'll let you know in my next post!

Chicken from James Family Farm (12 miles + 137 miles)

Chicken (cut-up) from James Family Farm (12 miles + 137 miles), originally uploaded by Wally Hartshorn.

In addition to fresh eggs, you can also get chicken from the James Family Farm. You need to reserve it in advance, however.

Three times a year, they send a batch of chickens off to Arthur, Illinois, where they are processed by Central Illinois Poultry Processing. They then have 2 days when you can drop by to pick up your chicken(s). I reserved 2 birds, cut-up, for pickup on May 23-24. (The remaining pickup dates for 2008 are July 25-26 and September 26-27.)

Unfortunately, since the birds have to be processed at a USDA-approved facility, that means Arthur, Illinois, which adds 137 miles (round-trip) to the distance that the chicken travels. That's a bit more than the 100-mile radius that I would like to stick to, but I don't think there's any option, at least not if I don't want to give up chicken!

I've never cooked chicken before. (Did I mention already that I'd never been much of a cook in the past?) A quick check of the Internet turned up numerous ways to cook chicken -- grilled, baked, fried, poached, roasted, braised, sautéed, etc. I'm just going to have to pick one and give it a try!