Winter wonder land

Looking out the window this morning, it is a picture wonderland, as Mr Frost came by last night! So this morning at 7Am, whishing the sun would come out and help with picture taking quality!!!!! off I went with my camera to catch the ice crystals as they formed and still forming as the fog continues to drape over us. It does make January a little more bearable as I walk through very crisp snow and still knee high! The garden is definitely asleep and waiting patiently, even a bluebird join me for a while.

Back inside, built a fire, taken a farm raised chicken (about 6 #) out of the freezer

and some root vegetables out of the "food locker".

Looking at the picture you can identify starting from the left, yukon gold potato, turnip, carrot, parsnip, rutabaga (called yellow turnip) onions, and celery root (called celeriac)

This particular dish is called "La Poule au Pot" meaning a "hen in a pot". Like the name suggest done originally with an old hen.

This will result into 5 different preparations:

• a) chicken broth - b) chicken/vegetables with white sauce - c) chicken salad- d) vegetables soup - e)cream of vegetable soup

Procedure:

Always start with cold water, because you want to draw the flavors of the chicken into the broth which will give you a very flavorful broth.

Place the chicken in a large pot,with a bouquet garni, cover by 3 inches with cold water. Bring it to a boil, lower to a simmer, cook for about 3 hours. Do not allow to boil, this will, not only toughen the meat but will result in a very cloudy broth.

After 3 hours of cooking, while you were reading or working on another project, remove the chicken from the broth, strain, reserve the broth for other applications (freezes well). Place the chicken back in the pot with: peeled and cut 3 # of vegetables, bouquet garni, enough water to just cover the ingredients. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer cook for about 1 hour or until vegetables are tender. Remove all the ingredients from the liquid (reserve) and proceed to make:

- a white sauce with part of the liquid to serve with the prime pieces of meat and some vegetables as pictured here.

- pick the rest of the meat off the bones and make a chicken salad

The rest of the vegetables can be divided in 1/2 and use

-one 1/2 for: a vegetable soup and the other for pureeing with some of the left over white sauce to give you a cream of vegetable soup.

You may flavors your soup(s) and sauce(s) with additional flavoring(s) like: mustard, lemon, paprika, curry, tomato sauce, ginger and more......

This might be a dish and style of cooking that you are not use to, but it is very healthy and if you like the traditional "chicken a la king" it is pretty much a version of it except presented differently. One could very easily turn it into a chicken a la king with additional pie crust then baked.