Today we made chicken stock. My partner and I added too much water and the stock was not as flavourful as it should’ve been. Other groups made the same mistake as us. The chef’s demo stock tasted better. But I couldn’t help wondering how you can ever have the most flavourful stock without the healthiest, happiest chickens. I already have a bias opinion. No matter how many fancy dishes we make with just the right combination of ingredients and with just the right knife cuts, nothing will taste better than farm food.
They say that a stock, or more appropriately the base is the foundation of almost every dish you make. The word base in French is ‘fond’ which means foundation. I would go a step further and call the chicken the foundation. Or the grain, insects, grass and water that chicken eats. What sunshine it sees, the flower beds it destroys, or the field it runs in. It all belongs in a circle. So the food we make comes from the food the chicken eats. So what came first? The chicken or the egg?