I don’t normally go into butchers unless I am looking for bones for my dogs but recently I have starting visiting this one. I was vegetarian from age 14 until I started eating fish in Cornwall and since coming to Catalunya I have opened up to the occasional chicken dish and sometimes, out of food desperation, eaten the lentil stews that come with bits of ham included. So, I am a novice at meat buying and in Cornwall I usually bought it nicely packaged in the supermarket and only if it promised it was local, organic and free range.
Here the supermarkets have mass produced and intensively farmed meats. I have never seen free range eggs in a supermarket either – for that you must go to a health shop or know someone who has hens. So when I want to buy chicken breasts I go to Cal Treto and ask for ‘pit de pollastre de pagès’ and they usually have some waiting in trays under the counter.
Just before Christmas I went in and stumbled through my usual request – they are kind to me as I am a neighbour but it still doesn’t feel easy. They didn’t have any ‘already prepared’ and after asking how many breasts I wanted she dived down out of sight and reappeared with two enormous chickens, clearly reared especially for christmas and with everything intact except for their feathers.
I watched in horror as she ripped them apart, pulled out their innards, sliced off breasts as big as dinner plates and gradually accumulated a pile of ‘bits’ which she insisted I would want to take home  so that I could make a ‘caldo’.  I tried to explain that I had never made a ‘caldo’ and wouldn’t know where to begin even if I decided to have a go. I mumbled that I was a vegetarian. She ignored this as it was clearly not true.
She sliced and chopped and ripped and tussled with these two birds – weighed them and it looked as if I was going to pay 45 euros for four chicken breasts. I didn’t know how to stop it all – I felt an utter idiot for not being able to make the most basic dish – chicken stock and when you can’t explain yourself in words sometimes you just have to accept the general flow of events.  And I realised the idiocy of being a sort of vegetarian who would eat only the ‘nice’ bits and waste the rest of the body.

Thankfully she kept the legs for someone else to buy and I eventually left the shop with four breasts and a large bag of unidentified bits. If I couldn’t use them she insisted, my mother in law would.
Back in the kitchen I stared at the bag. I couldn’t throw it away.

I had to accept the challenge otherwise these chickens would have died in vain.
I turned to Delia for help and got my camera out so I could record the process.

First I laid out everything for identification. I put aside parts which I thought Duna would like, dogs can eat raw chicken vertebrae although cooked bones are dangerous.

Then I proceeded to make a ‘caldo’ and froze it in several pots, pretending to myself that one day I would actually do something with it.  Chicken stock is very useful and good for when you are recovering from flu, I told myself.  I pretended to be a Catalan housewife, doing the most normal and everyday thing in the world.
In the end, I felt proud that it was another fear faced up to – it was the most respectful thing I could do for the chickens and if I was prepared to eat the breasts then I knew I must be willing to deal with the liver and kidneys and stomach and spine and those beautiful red crests.