Poultry

When I was a boy growing up in Somerset a meal of chicken was a great treat. For a succulent roast and stuffed chicken a plump young bird was chosen from the dozen or so that scratched and clucked around the garden under the apple trees. For stews, soups or pies the oldest, toughest one was summoned to the pot. They had brown and white meat, the neck and giblets were used to make the gravy: they really tasted of something. Today, sadly, the great British free-range chicken is as easy to come by as a dodo steak larded with truffles, but if you take the trouble to seek out a supplier of the real thing and eschew the temptation to pick up a frozen white lump of water-injected, fish-meal fed, anaemic-looking ‘meat’ from the freezer chests of your local supermarket you will be doing yourself – and the diminishing band of butchers and farmers who care about the good things in life – a favour.