Chicken & Apples in a Pot

The Sunday meal had to be Chicken & Apples in a Pot, you see, grandfather said, as he trussed the back legs of the fryer with the longest sprig of rosemary that he could find.  "There are things that you miss out on when you cook the chicken in pieces, only so many juices can be maintained."  To boil the harvest of the garden underneath the well-butchered chicken is, without doubt, the French peasant meal to end all others.

This was nothing more than one more lesson that had been imparted onto my memory.  I did not go to the culinary school proper, but I always wondered if that was quite necessary, surrounded, as we were, by the daily harvest of the growing seasons, the chickens, the cows, and the perennial attention of the 'growing' god itself, the sun.  Grandfather took few tasks lightly, but when addressing the "Old French Recipes," as he called them – often with a slight tear of sad joy in the corner of his eyes – he thought little and moved through the mechanics of a recipe as if he were the mother of an infant changing a diaper, wringing a cloth, or tending to a warming fire.

"You see," he said, "where we grew in Toulouse was a vineyard before that is what we called them.  We would hang our feathered chicken for a time over smoke in the smokehouse out back, the very same smoke that our ancestors used to infuse into the grapes of the wine itself, and let the extra drippings release for only a short amount of time.  Once you have the chicken inside into the kitchen, now we season it, like this, inside and out, cut up your two apples in fours then stuff the cavity with them, along with sprigs of rosemary and thyme.  Cut a head of garlic lengthwise and stuff that into the cavity as well.  Can you see the aroma?  Can you smell the sweetness and earth come together?

When you fill the cavity with the harvest, you understand that that will move its way up into the meat and into the skin.  The juices are more than the meat, but the vegetables as well."  The cavity had now been fully stuffed with the apples and the herbs.  "I want you to brown these pearl onions, then add the cut mushrooms and then the baby carrots.  We used to make sure parts of our patch of the garden with carrots were over seeded so that they would come up small.  Use these."  Outside the door of the kitchen the donkey brayed.  The herding dog came wagging up to the stoop of the entrance thirsty from a days work.  "Ahh, as I have said, hunger carries in the wind."  The full chicken was placed onto the vegetables then the chicken stock poured on the pot on the top of the stove until a boil came.  "I can see it steaming now.  Add a pinch of salt.  Some pepper.  Smell the thyme.  Now we will test the hunger of the farm by placing this into the oven for an hour and half.  Our test is to see which of the herbs we taste first."