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Poultry
Appears in
By Darina Allen
Published 1990
The starting point here is not first catch your chicken, as Mrs Beeton might have said, but first find yourself a good free-range chicken. As I’ve said before, the flavour is infinitely superior to intensively reared chickens. Fortunately, as more and more people discover the difference for themselves, free-range poultry is becoming more widely available. There are degrees of free-range, however, so do ask questions and keep looking until you find a good source.
The other thing you might like to seek out is an ‘old hen’, cheaper and even better suited to the Chicken Pilaff recipe than a chicken. Hens are undeservedly scorned nowadays. They have actually been rechristened ‘casserole roasters’ by the poultry trade to give them a new air of respectability! This is one recipe that proves how tasty they can be. It also proves that it is possible to feed a large crowd of people easily and economically. My mother-in-law, Myrtle Allen, used to cook this Chicken Pilaff recipe when her children were hungry teenagers, given to inviting other hungry teenagers home for impromptu parties.