Tomatopalooza

We love tomato season. All things are great during the season of red ripe, mellow yellow and orange blossom heirl00m tomatoes. This week we had company for dinner and all I had to do is reference our newsletter for recipes, throw two of our organic free range broilers on the grill, open a bottle of wine and get to work.

The arugula/heirloom tomato salad with dijon vinaigrette was fantastic. The arugula is extremely strong in the hot weather, but the mustard, red wine vinegar, salt and big slice of cherokee purple heirloom tomato mellowed out the intensity of the arugula.

Roasted baby squash with a parsley, caper, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice gremolata (is that how gremolata is used, who knows, I call it sauce) tossed on after roasting is the BEST. The squash is cut in quarter sized pieces, tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted on 475 for 30 minutes and then tossed in the gremolata!

Our chickens are delicious on the grill. We preheat the grill by turning all four burners on high and getting it as hot as possible, then put the whole chicken in the middle of the grill, turn off the two middle burners, close the lid and let it cook for 90 minutes. There is something about the skin of the chickens that makes the grilling experience so wonderful. Our chickens are killed and put in bags to be frozen. There is absolutely nothing added.

In commercial poultry processing, phosphates are added to the meat to break down the muscle fibers, with the goal of making the meat more tender. A commercially processed chicken is horrid on the grill. The skin tears very easily, leaking juice on the grill flame and totally drying out the chicken. Our chickens have a strong skin so when we put them on the grill and sear the skin, it holds all the juice inside, which you can actually see bubbling as the chicken is grilling. We love our chickens!

Another batch of chicks is coming mid-August so we can have enough for our Field to Fork dinner on September 18 plus have enough for our family for the winter. We can rip through about 75 whole chickens in a year! This year we are raising a holstein steer and broilers for our freezer.