FAREWELL MR MIDNIGHT - A PROPER COCK

Mr Midnight had been a much loved member of our feathered community for the past 14 months.  He had looked after the hens and jumped them on a regular basis with little or no dignity, facilitating the production of delicious eggs all year round. 

But following the clandestine hiding and hatching of eggs by his missus we added another rooster and a hen to the family.  When the rooster, George, became fully grown and starting jumping the hens, Mr M was most put out.  He became at least grumpy and at worst downright vicious toward George.  He stopped him from coming near the daily scraps I put out and kept him away from the hens.  George was nervous and excluded, not having a good life at all, and our feathered friends' happiness was of great importance to us.

Our Bolivian workers, all of whom kept chickens, advised us that two cockerels together was not a good idea.  They also suggested that as Mr M was getting past his prime, it might be a good idea to dispatch him and give George the responsibility as head of the coop.   Although I had been taught in Guatemala how to kill a chicken I was nervous of making a mess of it and causing Mr M suffering, so I asked Carmelo, our caretaker and his wife Lydia to do the deed.  We met at 7 am the following morning and in a couple of minutes Mr M was no more.  Lydia plucked and prepared him and I thanked her and Carmelo for their help, promising to share the planned dish I had in mind.

After hanging him in the dark storage room in our outbuildings for 36 hours I jointed Mr M with a machete - he was a tough old bird, but his flesh was a beautiful dark colour with bright yellow fat under his skin.

I put the joints in a container and poured a bottle of Bolivian red wine to cover.  The container was left in the fridge for 5 days.

Then, following Hugh Fearley-Wittingstall's coq au vin recipe in his marvellous Meat cookbook, and feeling slightly smug that I had a proper cock to cook when he had advised how difficult they were to come by, put Mr M in a very low oven.  Having dismissed Mr HFW's 3-odd hours of cooking time as being insufficient for high altitude cuisine, I started the cooking at 10.30 am and decided to leave the dish in the oven until it was cooked.  At 7.30 in the evening the meat was meltingly tender and Ed and I, after giving thanks to Mr Midnight for providing us with the main ingredient, sat down to one of the best meals of our life. 

The next day we gave some of the dish to Carmelo's family and the rest went into the freezer to await a suitably appreciative diner.  This came in the form of Vincent, our French friend from Sucre who, on eating it, proclaimed that it had taken him back to his childhood when his grandmother used to cook coq au vin with a proper coq.

Mr Midnight was a proper cock! RIP