Cooking Chicken

Bequians ate a lot of chicken.  It would arrive from the mainland by ferry in semi-thawed blocks, then be thawed some more so the pieces could be separated and weighed.  You never knew how many times those imported chicken pieces had been thawed and re-frozen between their point of origin and St. Vincent, I’m sure it would have given health inspectors in North America the heebie jeebs!

At the grocery store, one could buy frozen (again!) chicken legs, wings or backs, always encrusted with blood from having been thawed and re-frozen.  If you went to a restaurant and ordered chicken it was always a leg, if you had pelau (chicken and rice) it would be wings and backs.  You never EVER saw a whole chicken (unless it was running around in a yard) or a chicken breast, and as I preferred white meat I found this a sad state of affairs.

You can therefore imagine my joy when I saw fresh chickens being sold over on the mainland.  I was passing a small shop close to the Grenadines wharf when I spotted fresh birds being unloaded from a wooden cart.  Wow, whole chickens for sale, what a treat!  I promptly bought one and ran to catch the Friendship Rose, clutching my fresh treasure as I hustled towards the jetty. The ferry always left smack on time – if you were late, you’d be spending the night at the Heron Hotel.

I walked home to Friendship with my prize, and when I saw Mac that evening I invited him for roast chicken the next night. Would I NEVER learn!!??  From the grin on his face I should have known better, but I had high hopes for the meal as I foraged for stuffing ingredients.

After school the following day I mixed bread, onions and sage and stuffed the bird.  It was by no means a plump chicken, but I would finally be eating some white meat!  I had watched my mother stuff and roast chickens, and figured it  was a no-brainer as I slipped it into the pre-heated oven.

Mac arrived on time (I had told him 5:00 so that he would arrive at my house by 6:00) and he once again laughed at my dinner offering.  Geez, it was like déjà vu,  the roast beef story all over again!  I was truly upset when I found that I couldn’t pierce the chicken with a fork or slice it with a knife.  Once again Mac had to salvage dinner by cutting up (with mighty whacks using a meat cleaver) and STEWING my beautiful whole chicken!  Once again dinner was very late, we had to wait until the bird was tender enough to chew and that was one tough bird.  I learned that day to refer to all whole chickens as yard fowl, and that unless you made stew chicken with them you were wasting your time……