“People tend to hold overly favorable
views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains… This
overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains
suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and
make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive
ability to realize it.”
- Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and
Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence
Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” (Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. ] 121-1134, Copyright
1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc., 0022-3514/99/S3.00 Cornell
University)
Yeah, so? Look,
I’ve been busy, ok? We finally
moved into our newly remodeled bedroom and love it. This move emptied out our former bedroom thus making way for
a sewing room. No more sewing on the dinning room table and trying to keep
track of thread, fabrics et. al. by tucking them between wine glasses in the
china cabinet. This means I’ve been sewing and it’s like my sewing machine is
as happy as I that it has a new permanent home. On it’s own table. On top of a
plastic measuring/cutting grid that fits the table exactly. It’s like I know
what I’m doing. My kitty (who will definitely NOT kill me) also approves of
the move. That's her head peeking out of a fold in the quilt.
But the big news is I made some killer chicken stock. My
journey began at the farmers market, when I asked the chicken lady for chicken
feet. She’d tipped me off some time back that the feet add the gel that makes
the stock nice and syrupy, and she’s right. So last week when I went to get
some chicken feet, she asked if I’d also like some heads. She explained how her
grown son – the only family member who apparently has no gag reflex – takes all
the unwanted chicken heads and feet and cooks them down in a huge vat. She
explained that what you do is, you first blanch the heads and feet, then you
skin them, or at least slit the skin so, presumably, the insides can leak
through into the broth.
I’m going to label the dozen 8 oz. jars Chicken Skull
Stock. At some point during the
day while refilling my wine glass and stirring the chicken parts, I counted
four heads, and we formed a special bond. I named them John Doe, Manny, Moe,
and Jack Doe. The problem was that I didn’t know if I was cooking their feet or
some other Does' feet. I decided to forgo attempts to name the feet because,
you know, without a specific provenance or way of recognizing which feet
roll to the top of the pot at any given moment it would be crazy to name the
feet. And I’m not crazy; although it did occur to me late in the process that I
might get some DNA and try to match them up. Fun fact, some of the feet have a dark
brown pad in the middle that feels like the paw of a cat. While I didn’t make
an exact count, I’d say maybe 2 sets out of 6. I theorize that these belonged
to the drone hens that had to walk guard duty at night to protect their
sleeping coop-mates. Or maybe they’re roosters?
Now, even if you take it on faith that chicken skulls make
good broth, nobody wants to open a jar of chicken stick and find a head, or
even a foot. When I had the stock
at a consistency I liked, I poured it into a clean pot and let the parts drain
in a sieve lined with cheesecloth. It was at that point, I realized I had not
four, but five heads. Being remorseful by then that I’d named the other four as
guys, I named the last one Carmen. Her blind white eyes gazed at me
reproachfully as she and the boys and their feet drained. You’re supposed to
pour it back into the pot, let it cool, skim the fat, re-boil and then can it, but I didn’t do any of that prior to canning. The stock came out clean and gloopy
and without foam or much fat to skim.
In order to can the broth - because it’s technically meat
– you’ve got to use a pressure canner, not a simple water bath. The Blue Book
says give them 20 minutes at 25 lbs psi. The big pressure canner has a pressure
gauge that reads out in increments of 5 from 5 to 20 and above that there’s
just a red line that says “caution”. A bit daunting: neither the chicken skull
quintet nor I were confident of our ability to master this advanced level of
technology this late in the day. I had my huge pressure canner all set to go,
but fate intervened. It was at that point that I found I’d lost the damn weight
thingie that sits on the top and jiggles to let out steam. I had to use my
regular pressure cooker and it took me three batches to do all the jars.
I also made
pickles. We harvested the first major batch of pickle cucumbers from the Veggie
Garden this week. I took 22 of them and made pickles to share with the veggie
gardeners. I got a dozen 8 oz. jars of what I’m calling Garlic Dill Lemongrass Pickles. I adapted a recipe
from Preserving Summer’s Bounty (Rodale) for Kosher Dills. I substituted a
blade of lemongrass for horseradish root because, well, because I have some
semblance of good taste. The
ingredients included a bit of sweet Maui onion also harvested yesterday. In
addition, I used my own home grown dill weed and seeds, and used mostly black
mustard seeds instead of boring white. The garlic cloves are from a lovely
“rose” garlic we also grew.
There really is something good for the soul to spend a day
in the kitchen amid yummy smells and among chicken head friends. I expect the
wine didn’t hurt either, but then again, that might just be a failure of my
metacognitive abilities to realize how yucky chicken skull soup actually is.
1 comment:
So tell us ~~~ How does Chicken Skull and Feet broth taste?????
gumpt!
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