Shooting Stars of Thought |

So, I missed last week’s OLS posting (I did manage a quick local meal–and that post is to come). But this week, I finally had the time to do my local foodshed justice.

About six months ago, I learned of Curtis Womach, and the pastured chicken farm he and a partner started out in Julian (about an hour’s drive from San Diego).  Until then, I had not found a reliable source of local poultry, nor, can I say, had I ever had such delicious chicken. Curtis’s chickens are pasture-raised, in a method inspired by Joel Salatin’s mobile chicken coop (which Curtis read about in Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma). (A fantastic article about Curtis and his operation ran in the Spring 09 issue of Edible San Diego.) Curtis himself drives to the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market each Sunday, and I’d been meaning to swing by and pick up a chicken for weeks.

I’d also been meaning to harvest some overgrown pole beans and an increasingly massive beet. So it was pretty easy to decide what to make for my local meal this week. We had:

• Lemon herb chicken breasts
• Roasted smashed potatoes
• Homegrown Chioggia beets with mint
• Homebrewed IPA-braised carrots and chard

Here’s the bounty:

As with before, I had way more food than I needed for one meal. I quartered the chicken–the backbone went into the freezer for future chicken stock (along with the giblets and feet), and the thighs and legs are waiting to be turned into a future meal. (The breasts were enormous–there was plenty of meat for four).

Here’s a close up of the Womach Ranch label:

…and of the massive beet from our yard:

Here’s the candy-cane cross-section:

And the monsterous pole beans:

This meal’s flavor came from the yard! There’s lemons, mint, oregano, rosemary, and thyme:

And, of course, there was good deal of flavor from the grill!

Here’s the smashed potatoes along with the braised greens and carrots:

And the homegrown beet, bean, and mint salad

And finally, I rooted around the wine stash and found the last bottle of Grenache rose from a trip to Baja last May.

Everything turned out great!

I’ll try to post recipes a little later… the entire meal was a cinch to make!

Tags: one local summer, womach chicken