More about poultry choices

Today the supermarket advertising flyers came in the mail. Here's a sample of some of the poultry on special.

ED (stands for EuropaDiscount), the "hard discount" grocery store, as a good price on Label Rouge chickens at the end of the week. I'll have to go pick up a couple of them. You can never have too much chicken, and we have a freezer. The price is 2.99 € per kilogram, and that's just 1.35 € per pound. You usually pay that much for industrially produced chickens.

I paid 5.11 €, or 3.80 €/kg (1.75 €/lb.) for the Label Rouge poulet blanc that I butterflied and broiled the other day, and that was already a very good price. More often it's 5 €, and prices range up to 6 or 7 €/kg — in other words, 2.25 to 3.25 €/lb. Most of these chickens weigh from 1.3 kg to 2 kg — 3 to 4½ lbs. Larger than that you get capons, coqs, and turkeys.

Label Rouge chickens at ED for a very low price

Meanwhile, Intermarché this week has a sale on everything to do with ducks — whole birds, parts, foie gras, gizzards, hearts, fat, rillettes... the whole nine yards. I already have plenty of duck fat in the fridge, and I even have a big tin of gésiers confits (gizzards) in the pantry. What I'm interested in is the whole duck, a canard gras, which I assume is a duck that was fattened for foie gras production. It's sold without the liver.

Whole duck on sale at Intermarché for a good price too

One of the things I've had on my cooking list for a while is Chinese-style canard laqué. I'm not even sure what we call that in English. Glazed duck? Peking duck? It looks simple to do. You just paint the whole raw duck in a mixture of soy sauce, plum sauce or honey, garlic, ginger, five-spice powder, and vinegar and leave it overnight in the fridge. Then you roast it, basting it with the pan juices, for two or three hours, including an hour or more where it is wrapped in foil so that it cooks through. At the end you uncover it, baste it, and brown it.

At 2.99 €/kg, the same price as the Label Rouge chicken, this is a good deal. Of course, I'll be paying for the head and that long neck, since the duck is sold entier. But that's OK. The neck, at least, will be good for making stock.

The duck breast or magret de canard costs more, of course.
It's cooked like good beefsteak — rare or medium, no more.

Finally, SuperU has Label Rouge pintades, or guinea hens, on special at 6.49 €/kg, or about 2.95 €/lb. I'm less tempted because of the higher price, and because we had guinea hen for lunch day before yesterday in Blois, where we were the guests of friends. It was delicious. I assume it was roasted, but it was brought to the table already cut into serving pieces that were literally swimming in a sauce or broth that had a lot of butter and some chestnuts in it.

Label Rouge guinea hens for sale at SuperU

The Joy of Cooking describes the flesh of the guinea hen as "very lean." Guinea fowl are raised commercially, obviously — SuperU sells them — but they are a little gamier than chicken. They're more like pheasant, which, along with the chicken, is a related species.

The Larousse Gastronomique says young guinea fowl can be cooked like pheasant or partridge (whatever way that is), and fatter guinea hens can be prepared and served just like chicken. In my experience, that's true. We've cooked them a few times (posts here and here) with good results.

Sunday at our friends' when the dinner was served, one person at the table said she liked pintade better than chicken because she thought it wasn't as dry as chicken meat. Another, her sister actually, said oh, do you really think so? I think it's drier than chicken. They let the matter drop at that point. But with that buttery broth, what we were eating wasn't dry at all. And it was really good.

In yesterday's post, I said that in France we can choose from yellow, white or black chickens. And we can also choose guinea fowl or duck, because both are available year-round in the outdoor markets and the supermarkets.

By the way, the euro is worth about $1.37 U.S. right now. That's down from $1.50 last November. If things were "normal" on the economic front, it would be worth about $1.20. That was the exchange rate when we moved here in 2003. The euro is still pretty strong compared to the limping dollar.