Chicken

Do you know that:

Kentucky Fried Chicken (also KFC) – any of a group of US ‘fast food’ restaurants selling pieces of specially fried chicken and other dishes. Their food is advertised as being ‘finger likin’ good’ and its particular taste is the result of a secret mixture of 11 spices. Colonel Harland D. Sanders opened the first restaurant at the end of the 30’s and the KFC company, which is based in Luoisville, Kentucky, has now more than 11000 restaurants in the US and other countries and chicken is offered in 300 different versions.
KFC, like Mc Donald’s and Burger King is one of the restaurant chain that introduced the concept of ‘home meal replacement’ thus changing American cooking habits and standardized the concept of catering.

To play chicken means to play a game in which people do something dangerous for as long as they can to show how brave they are. The person who stops first has lost the game.

A chicken feed is an amount of money that is not large enough to be important. A Bad Egg is a worthless or unpleasant person

Cocks may crow but it's the hen that lays the egg is what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said at a private dinner party in 1987.

Idioms …..

Get up with the chickens - Get up early
Go to bed with the chickens - Go to bed early
Take eggs for money - To be put off with mere promises of payment
Tread upon eggs - Tread carefully in a delicate situation
A chicken-and-egg situation/problem is a situation in which it’s difficult to tell which one of the two things was the cause of the other.
To chicken out of something means not to do something because you are afraid.

…… and proverbs

Curses, like chickens, come home to roost - Past mistakes eventually cause present problems.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket - Don't risk all on one enterprise
Don't count your chickens before they're hatched - Don't take a future event for granted.
Don't Teach your grandmother to suck eggs - Caution not to offer advice to someone, older, wiser and more experienced than oneself on subjects which they might be expected to know anyway. Known since the 17th. century.
Never crack your eggs until you have your salt.
Turkey

A turkey is of two species: One commonly known as the Wild Turkey, is native to the forests of North America. The other, known as the Ocellated Turkey, is native to the forests of the Yucatán Peninsula.
When Europeans first encountered turkeys in the Americas they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guineafowl, also known as Turkey fowl (or Turkey hen and Turkey cock) from their importation to Central Europe through Turkey, and that name, shortened to just the name of the country, stuck as the name of the bird.
The domestic turkey is a descendant of the Wild Turkey and features prominently in the menu of the U.S. and Canadian holidays of Thanksgiving and that of Christmas in Great Britain and many other countries.

Do you know that:

Thanksgiving is a public holiday celebrated in the USA on the fourth Thursday in November. It is associated with the time when Europeans first came to North America in 1620. It was at the beginning of a very hard winter and they couldn’t find enough to eat, so many of them died. But in the following summer Native Americans showed them what food was safe to eat, so they could save food for the next winter. They held a big celebration to thank God and Native Americans for the  good harvest that allowed them to survive. Today the most important part of the celebration is a traditional dinner with food that come from the North America. The meal includes turkey, sweet potatoes (also called yams) and cranberries, which are made into a kind of sauce or jelly. The turkey is filled with stuffing or dressing, and many families have their own recipe. Dessert is a pumpkin made into a pie.

A turkey shoot is a battle or contest in which one side is much stronger than the other and able to win very easily

Traditional Stuffed Turkey

12 to 14 pound turkey with the giblets reserved
1 lemon, halved
salt and pepper
butter, melted

Meat Stuffing:
4 to 6 Tablespoons butter
2 onions, finely chopped
6 ounce lean ground lamb
reserved turkey heart and liver, finely chopped
1 pound fresh chestnuts
2 cups strained turkey broth
1/2 cup raw unprocessed rice
1 lamb liver, minced
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped

Take fresh chestnuts and slit the base of each shell crosswise, boiled for 5 minutes, peel and break into small pieces.

To make broth: simmering the reserved turkey neck and gizzard in 3 cups water for 45 minutes, then strain turkey broth.

Wash the turkey in cold water, pat it dry inside and out, and leave it for 30 minutes while you cook your stuffing.

For the stuffing, heat the butter in a skillet and fry the onions until they begin to change color, then add the ground lamb and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add the turkey heart and liver, the chestnuts, and pine nuts and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the broth and bring this to a boil. Add the rice and cook quickly for 10 minutes, then add the lamb liver, bread crumbs, and apples. Stir well.

To stuff the turkey, slit the skin at the back of the neck and cut off the neck down to the turkey's shoulders if the neck has not already been removed. Lightly fill the cavity, remembering that the stuffing always swells and too much swelling might cause the neck skin to burst. Sew or pin with a skewer the neck flap to the back of the turkey. Just as lightly, fill the body cavity, and sew or skewer this together.

Tie the legs to the tail and fix the wings snugly to the body. Do not bring the cord across the breast lest it mark the skin. Rub the turkey cut with lemon, salt, pepper and melted butter and place it in a large, shallow pan in a moderate oven (preheat to 350 degrees, then lower temperature to 325 degrees). Roast it according to its weight when stuffed, allowing 25 to 30 minutes per pound.

Extra stuffing can be roasted in a pan for 45 minutes or so and served with the turkey. Or it can be made into rissoles by shaping it into small balls, dipping then into beaten egg and bread crumbs, and then frying them in butter, to be served as a garnish.


Bibliografia

rivista Zafferano , anno 6, numero 16 Aprile 2004
Oxford Advance Learner's Dictionary
libro 'Cucina Veneta'

Sitografia

wikipedia English version.