Last year for the first time I bought a share in a meat CSA offered by a farm in Vermont. My family is meat-eating, and having watched Food Inc., we decided if we were going to keep being meateating we needed to change our cheap-chicken habits. Thus, Meetingplace Pastures, in Cornwall, Vermont. (Here's the farm's unbelievably sweet website: http://www.meetingplacepastures.com/. The place looks like paradise.) I get a cooler full of different cuts of meat once a month for 9 months of the year, including everything from soup bones to prime rib to pork chops to whole chickens.
The chickens have started to be a problem, actually: they're small, and a little tough, and we've sometimes gotten 4 or 5 per month, which is way more than we go through. So this weekend I thawed two of them out, and for the first time in my life I butchered the whole birds into frying pieces. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I then marinated them in homemade yoghurt for several hours to help cut that toughness, and tossed them in a bag with 2 cups flour, 2 tsp. paprika, 2 tsp. salt, and about 1/2 tsp. ground pepper. I melted butter with canola oil in a lasagna pan, and ovenfried the whole mess for about 45 minutes. The paprika was a bit strong for the kids (I'll use less next time), but the meat was tender and had real flavor--which is a far cry from the giant D-cup-breasted chickens you get at the supermarkets. Overall, success!
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