The Chicken

Sitting by the pool one day (not our pool, remember, but the municipal one in the park), I promised the kids a real, roast chicken. All the cooking equipment had not yet arrived from the UK but I thought I could manage a chicken dinner without too much trouble. I had been down to the street market and bought some more kitchen stuff to do some real cooking.

I thought it would be a simple start although Peter and I have been drooling over Catalan cookbooks in the same way some couples get excited about sex manuals. Catalan food is renowned for being the best in Spain. Exquisite, innovative dishes inspired by the mountains, the sea and the wonderful ingredients available locally. More exciting fare, I decided, would be attempted later. Right now, it was too hot and I was too unfamiliar with the oven to spend a great deal of time in the kitchen (and, alright I admit it, I was feeling a bit lazy).

We like discovering supermarkets in other countries. We always visit them wherever we are. Some tourists head for museums and churches, others the beaches or the mountains but whatever else is on the agenda we do seem drawn to check out the supermarkets. How else to find out more about the people who live there? The sights, the smells, the interesting packing and even the people working there all give an indication of the eating habits and lifestyles. For instance, our local supermarket here in Girona has the most massive fresh fish counter and just a small aisle dedicated to the sale of meat and poultry. This is something you would not find in the UK where fresh fish counters are paid lip-service if at all. You can peruse shelves and shelves of different kinds of olives instead of whole rows of packaged, processed snacks and you can also choose from a wide variety of tomatoes, in tins, cartons, jars, plastic packets rather than a selection of 'cook-in' sauces.

Here, people shop at different times to what we are used to. You will jostle for space and wait in a long queue to pay at say, about 8.30 in the evening (they call that afternoon here) but can get around, in and out quickly on a saturday at lunchtime which is unheard of in the UK when this is one of the busiest times to shop. So far, there are no store loyalty cards, they do not accept cheques, nobody is available to help you pack your shopping and as far as long opening hours go, just forget it. Once that supermarket shuts at around 9pm you will not be able to purchase anything you need until it opens again at about nine the next opening day. So, if it is a sunday or a public holiday you will be out of luck and have to go without as there are no small, convenience stores open either. Some supermarkets even close for lunch! How do they expect to make a profit and shift their stock? Do they care? I just don't know!

We have been caught out when we didn't realise there was a public holiday and had nothing in the house - we learned our lesson. You just need to be stocked up and prepared or go out to eat which is a lot more accessible and cheaper here. It was a bit strange for us at first coming from a land of customer service and convenience. Perhaps in the tourist season on the coast it may be different but here it seems to be acceptable. There does not seem the need and people shop when it suits the stores not the other way around.

So, back to my story. Peter was dispatched to the supermarket to find the chicken and he returned with the styrofoam, cling-filmed wrapped raw chicken. It was plucked and packed just like one you would get from a UK supermarket so I felt confident that I could just prepare it and stick in the oven whilst I got on with the potatoes.

As I unwrapped the cling-film, leaving the bird on it's foam tray, I peeked up it's bottom and instead finding a little plastic bag of giblets inside, I realised that the innards were intact. I hesitated, this means that I would have to gut the thing but as this is a procedure I have never before performed, I was not sure where to start. OK, right, where do I go from here? I felt like an inexperienced surgeon suddenly left in charge of a major operation. Looked around the kitchen for an appropriate tool but all I could find was a dessert spoon and I wished I'd had some plastic gloves. Oh dear, do I abandon the plans for dinner tonight and cook something else? "No, come on Deb" I said, giving myself a good talking to "when in Rome, do as the Romans". Well, if this is how uncooked chickens come and everybody else copes with it here then I must get on with it. I faced my nemesis, armed with the spoon, I looked it straight in the back-side and thought "well, here goes". As I lifted the chicken from it's tray with my bare hands something really horrible happened. A wobbly head suddenly dangled out from underneath, it's scrawny neck, full beak and dead eyes releasing itself from where it had been tucked away and hiding but worst still, I was holding it! I screeched, dropped the carcass in surprise and Peter rushed into the kitchen to find out what was going on. This was a uncooked chicken but not as he knew it and so backed off not wanting to get too near. Wondering if I had a knife sharp enough to cut the head off, I quickly changed my mind when I realised I had no idea how. "I can't handle this, can't you do it?" I appealed to him. "Don't look at me, I don't know what to do with it" he said, looking worried. "Yeah, but your mother grew up on a farm in Poland, you must have seen her deal with dead chickens", I reasoned. "Well, not in the kitchen in London where we grew up, I didn't and even if she did, I wasn't paying attention". A long-shot I know, but it was worth a try but he wasn't having any of it and would not be coming to my rescue.

Perhaps I should consult a neighbour but I felt such an incapable twit. In my entire life of buying chicken from supermarkets have I never seen poultry sold in its more natural state (or perhaps I have, but averted my eyes). I have been so accustomed to food cleaned, prepared and presented in a benign, sterile form which is actually a million miles away from how it started off (before it found it's way to my fridge). How reassuring to know that there are processes that happen to take away the nasty bits and how pathetic I was when confronted with anything different from what I had only known. Anyway, I'd had enough and somehow we didn't fancy chicken for dinner anymore, "I think chicken is off" I informed the family and so we had a pizza instead.

Later on, I offered the chicken (after all it was still fresh) to my Catalan friend, Gisela, figuring that she would be able to use it but she turned her nose up disgustedly and said "no thanks". She has also never gutted a chicken or chopped off it's head and had no intention doing so now. Turns out that Peter had bought a 'pollo entero' which means an intact/entire chicken (although you couldn't see that when it was packed to be sold) and some people prefer to buy their chickens this way to use the less palatable parts for cooking other delicacies. Gisela advised me that we should go to the butcher just like everyone else does and ask for a cleaned chicken which means we will get one just like we did at home. Ah well, you live and learn!