Soul Food Chicken Porridge

Mary Jo Thoresen

2 Soul Food Farm roasted-chicken carcasses
1 1/2 cups japanese short-grain rice
12 cups water
Soy sauce, sesame oil, minced ginger, scallion, cilantro, hot bean paste, and salt to taste

1. Put the carcasses in a large pot, pour water in along with the rice, bring to a boil, then turn down very low for about an hour, stirring occasionally.
2. Fish out the carcasses and place on a plate to cool down a bit, while the rice continues to cook.
3. Pick off all the little meat bits you can find and put them back into the pot. Cook for another hour, stirring occasionally.
4. Taste and add salt to your liking. Then fill your bowl and add soy, sesame oil, minced ginger, scallion, cilantro and hot bean paste.

The Farm Fresh Feast celebrates the local, farm fresh bounty of Solano County and nearby areas. You’ll want to put this inaugural event on your calendar. It is a farm to table dinner featuring local, farm fresh ingredients, local wine, and entertainment. It will be an experience to remember!

San Francisco Executive Chef Lauren Kiino of Cane Rosso will prepare your gourmet, four-course meal using local ingredients. Enjoy live music from the popular Dirty Water Blues Band, carriage rides provided by Access Adventure, and hear from prominent local agriculture experts, including Paul Wenger, President of the California Farm Bureau Federation. There will be a raffle for some great prizes. Enjoy your outdoor dinner by candlelight, in a beautiful walnut orchard at Dixon Ridge Farms, near Winters, California. The farm is certified organic, and farm owner Russ Lester will give you a sneak peek into this 21st century green operation which generates much of its own power from solar and walnut shells. Don’t miss this chance to tour this unique operation. 4:30 pm to 8:00 pm. Directions available on our website.

Individual dinner seats: $95
Deadline for tickets is May 1st. Buy tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/98512

Solano Land Trust, 1001 Texas Street, Suite C, Fairfield, CA 94533 • (707) 432-0150 • www.solanolandtrust.org

with special guest speaker
C A R O L E   M O R I S O N

from the Academy Award Nominated Documentary
F  O O D ,   I N C.

Monday, April 19th at 6pm

The 4-course family-style feast will feature Soul Food Farms pastured chickens and eggs

• Endive salad with chicken liver toast and boiled egg
• Chicken and green garlic broth with giblet-cabbage bundle
• Grilled chicken breast and wood-oven roasted leg with asparagus, spinach and snap peas
• Strawberries with mint crème anglaise

Dinner is $60 per person including wine, not including tax (9.75%) or gratuity (18%)

Buy tickets for this event at camino-chicken-egg.eventbrite.com

To us, a Community Supported Agriculture program is a two-way street. Our subscribers support the farm directly, and to show our appreciation for our most loyal members, we’ve started a new Soul Food Farm Golden Chicken gratitude program. For every $500 members spend on the farm, or every 10 pickups they make — we know your time is money, too — we’ll slip a bottle of Terra Sole olive oil from the farm into your next order gratis and starting in the spring, when egg laying resumes at full strength, a dozen eggs.

We’ve already got five members of that elite little club to thank, starting this Wednesday. Cara E, Jennifer D., Mark H, Karen R., and Ingun S. — your support is much appreciated, and vital to the farm’s survival!

Patterson and Kinch to Team Up for Epic Bocuse d’Or Dinner

In December, the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation announced the 12 semi-finalists for the next team to rep America at the so-called Culinary Olympics. To help raise funds to support the cause, Daniel Patterson—who was invited by Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller to be on the Bocuse council—will be teaming up with fellow Michelin two-star chef David Kinch for a special one-night dinner engagement extravaganza at Coi. Epic? Yes. The pricetag is steep ($195) but then again, it could be the meal of a lifetime (or maybe an early Valentine’s Day treat). The dinner takes place on Monday, February 8, and reservations—which should go quickly—can be made via Coi at 415-393-9000.

The menu, which will have the two chefs alternating courses:

The chefs have some surprises in store, including several amuse bouches, an intermezzo course, and mignardises. Following are the main courses:Assorted Shellfish with Radish and Apple, Seawater (Kinch)

Beet and Goat Cheese Tart (broken, inverted) (Patterson)
rye, dill

Steelhead Trout with Onion and Marrow “Tears,” Chervil Cream (Kinch)

Winter, Pastoral (Patterson)
young carrots roasted on a bed of hay, radish powder, shaved pecorino

Crispy Chicken and Egg Confit, a Roasted Chicken “Dashi,” Black Truffles (Kinch)

Steamed Chicken Breast (Patterson)
wild mushroom porridge, brown butter, wood sorrel

It’s Almost It (Corbett)
chocolate, oatmeal, orange

To emphasize the Foundation’s commitment to sustainability and great American products, a different American heritage breed will be chosen each year. This year’s dinner series celebrates American heritage breed poultry. Patterson and Kinch’s menu will feature poultry from Soul Food Farm.

We’re honored to be chosen for this dinner.

From the review:

Named after the chef’s grandmother, it is a family effort. Perello’s father helped her with the walls and the wood finishing. Her mother sewed the big-buttoned cushions that soften your seat, and worked on the aprons worn by the staff. They are made of a rough-hewn fabric that I mistook for burlap – it’s actually brushed silk.

Perello’s “modern California” cuisine is the same: sounds like burlap, tastes like silk. Chew on applewood-smoked bacon beignets to start, or chickpea fritters with Meyer lemon aioli. Then, for your appetiser, pick the unusual, eggy semolina gnocchi with duck confit. I used to think I hated gnocchi; now I realise that I just hated any gnocchi not made by Melissa Perello

For your main course you should order the beef. Alternatively, you could do what my companions did on both visits and order the Soul Food Farm chicken with savoury bread pudding. They practically licked their plates clean. Now we all understand how Perello earned a Michelin star for Fifth Floor, her previous restaurant.

I’ve eaten at Frances. It really is that good! We hope you’ll all go check it out too!

• Monday Jan 25: Chez Panisse is having a special Soul Food-themed dinner downstairs featuring the chicken and cured olives that Eric did just for this, plus an egg dish and maybe some of the wild bay leaves and lemons from Pleasants Valley Road. Make a reservation
• Saturday, Feb. 20: Alexis is doing a meet-the-farmer day at the Prather Meat Co. shop in the Ferry Building, to talk about the farm and whatever else people want to chat with a farmer about. Stop by and say hi! We’ll update this with the times as soon as we know them.
• Tuesday, Feb. 23: Special event at 18 Reasons on keeping chickens in an urban sitting. Special guests: a couple of live Soul Food Farm chickens. Ticketing not yet posted, but check http://www.18reasons.org/

Alexis had a terrific long interview air in December with KCBS Food Editor Narsai David. He talked to her about the fire, the dismal economics (but joyous rewards!) of raising pastured poultry, and much more. You can listen to it via the Pastured Polutry and Eggs link here or download the MP3.

For two weeks each December, bloggers from all over the world offer a delectable array of food-related items for this multi-blog charity raffle. Last year, organizers raised $62,806 to help the UN World Food Programme feed the hungry. This year, the raffle supports a new initiative at the WFP, called Purchase for Progress (P4P), which enables smallholder and low-income farmers to supply food to WFP’s global operation.

This year’s campaign runs December 14 to 25, and every $10 you donate earns you one virtual raffle ticket for the item of your choice. (To learn more, head over to Chez Pim to see the entire list of goodies and check out her Menu for Hope page.)

The Married …with dinner duo came up with the idea to offer the following item:

Bid Item UW02: Locavore Starter Kit
Many readers tell us that they’d love to eat more local foods, but they don’t know where to start. So we’re making it simple with a Locavore Starter Kit: A trial membership to the Soul Food Farm chicken-and-egg CSA (or another CSA of your choice* if you live outside the Bay Area) and a farmer’s market tour with breakfast and local treats.

1. Soul Food Farm and Married …with Dinner are offering a $100 CSA credit toward the winner’s choice of whole chickens, eggs, olive oil, and other farm-fresh goodies. Pick up your winnings all at once, or spread it over multiple pickups: It’s up to you how to spend your CSA credit (subject to the usual order terms).
2. Plus, Soul Food Farm farmer Alexis Koefoed offers a personal tour of Soul Food Farm for the winner and up to 3 guests at a mutually agreeable time in 2010.
3. Bloggers Anita & Cameron will also include a personalized tour of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, complete with breakfast or lunch for two, to help our winner find all the great foods they need to make the leap to la vida locavore.
4. And if that’s not enough, they’ll also bring along a bag full of local treats and homemade goodies for you to take home after your walk-around. The bag will include some of our own preserves, and an assortment of treats from local folks — including a bag of brown rice and a jar of almond butter from Massa Organics.

Visit Married …with dinner’s Menu for Hope page to see more details and learn how to bid on this package and dozens of other fabulous options.

And Anita & Cameron, thanks for being so awesome.