Can a Chicken Feel Loss?

Generally I consider myself to be a rather competent cook; I can follow a recipe, and can even occasionally employ my own extrapolations, and modifications to successful ends. Yet, the prospect of cooking an entire animal (sans its head, fur/skin/pelt, and its inedible guts) makes me a little nervous. I wouldn’t say that I’m crushed by an overpowering, disabling dread, but the threat of possible kitchen disasters (or food-poisoning induced bazooka-barfing) sets me all in a dither. Here I am with a stomach burble, swooning out of my chair, like some suffocating, corseted lady. Frankly, I don’t have the equipment (neither a wire rack nor a meat thermometer) or patience to cook a turkey. This predicament led me to Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking (1997 Edition). I wanted a little creative guidance. Who says Thanksgiving has to be about a freaking Turkey anyhow? Poultry’s poultry… or so thought.

I’ve never taken issue to handling raw meat, there just isn’t any sort of repulsion or aversion there; I think the strange side of things comes in the form of an untapped, underlying psychotic urge to be covered in blood, and to wield a knife that can easily cut through bone. Sure, I’ve had my share of “I’m a butcher in small town America, circa 1950” daydreams. There usually isn’t anything fundamentally weird about these musings. My conceptions are based in authors’ depictions of the period, and profession. The butcher is the sad bastard in town who spends days getting grimy, but his nights are filled with passion, making love with the local widows.

So what was I saying about fowl? Irma Rombauer is rather illuminating in her descriptions. As lead cook for our Thanksgiving Day celebration, I decided to take on the cooking of any non-turkey bird.

In my reading of the “Poultry” and “Game” chapters in JoC, I found some details to be rather interesting… “A capon is a castrated young male chicken. His loss (emphasis mine) causes him to swell to a weight of 8 to 10 pounds, enough for eight or more generous servings” (Rombauer 576). Sweet Jesus!

Needless to say, there I was at the grocery store, T-minus 15 hours and counting, handling two different frozen capon, and wondering if it would be morally reprehensible to buy a castrated, milk-fed and swollen chicken for Turkey Day. I decided to go with the 5 and ½ pound duckling, given the simple recipe listed in the JoC, and the somewhat less egregious implications of my purchase. The only required ingredient was a handful of salt. Onward and Upward!

Happy Turkey-Day,

Justin