Friday, December 30, 2011

The creature from the deep


I am very lucky in having a husband who cooks. Yesterday he cooked chicken soup for lunch. This is a thick hearty soup full of Dominican vegetables such as yuca, potatoes, guineo (normal bananas but unripe and green), yautia (root vegetable), yam and pumpkin.  It is flavoured with fresh coriander, celery and the essential Maggi stock cube or two and  liquid seasoning (orange stuff in a plastic pot full of salt and E numbers). The chicken is cut into pieces together with the bones, which aren't taken off before you eat it.

So there I am happily slurping my way through my chicken soup, when suddenly, from beneath the vegetables, a foot rises up from the broth, just like some sort of monster from the deep. A massive knobbly chicken's foot. I half expected it to jump out of the bowl and grab me round the neck.  I know that chicken have feet, but I would rather see them where they belong, on the end of the chickens' legs strutting around the streets in the barrio, than lying in wait for me under a pile of vegetables.

9 comments:

  1. Screamed and yelled an English four letter swear word!

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  2. Oh my, after macheting your furniture now the chicken foot. You seem to really love him. I would have thrown him out, with chicken foot and machete and all! :D

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  3. I'll post a pic of him on the blog in a week or so - then you will see why am still with him lol!

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  4. LOL! I hope he doesn't read your blog!!! But he seems to do something right that you put up with legs from hell in your soup...

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  5. I would have thought by now you would have gotten used to Dominican cooking and know that we don't take the heads or tail of the fish so yes you'll have some eyes staring at you while you eat the body and of course the chicken legs as well as the heart, liver, etc...I never liked the chicken legs but mostly due to the fact there's no meat on them.

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  6. Hi Puyaca. Yes i know about the fish and adore Dominican fish. My husband covers it with salt and oregano and leaves in the sun to bake for a while and it is delicious. I don't mind the head on the fish as you can see it all the time, it was just a shock when this foot leapt out as I had no idea it was there!

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  7. OK, I laughed. That was a funny photo, perhaps I can do that to my husband. Now, now, where can I get chicken feet here in the Eastern Boonies?

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  8. If there is a market there should be a chicken man there. If not any colmado will have them, usually in a washing up bowl under the counter lol.

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