Farmyard's Tasty Christmas Chickens
MONTREVEL-EN-BRESSE, France, Dec 19 (AFP) - It is not just the baby Jesus who comes wrapped in swaddling clothes at Christmas time in the Bresse region of eastern France. The chickens do too.
Pre-dawn on a bitterly cold December morning, and hundreds of birds -- fattened hens known as poulardes, capons, turkeys, ducks, geese and guinea fowl -- have been laid out on tables in a gymnasium in the farming town of Montrevel.
Feathered heads protrude from bundles of padded cloth, tightly sewn up like miniature sleeping bags. At a word of command, owners step forward and with scissors snip away the threads, revealing the carcasses -- plump, plucked and pink -- that lie within.
This is day two of what they call in the Bresse "the glorious four" -- a series of pre-Christmas competitions held since the middle of the 19th century to celebrate and promote what is now recognised as the world's best and most expensive poultry.
Top restaurateurs from across France vie with butchers, company reps, local gourmands and the occasional exporter to the US and Japan to snap up the coveted festive fare, which can sell for as much as 150 dollars (or euros) a piece for the prize-winners.
"This is the Rolls-Royce of chickens," says world-renowned chef Paul Bocuse who arrives in a chauffeur-driven car from his restaurant in Lyon 70 kilometres (45 miles) to the south. "In the world of poultry, the 'poulet de Bresse' sets the standard."
Bresse birds owe their fame to the fact that since 1957 they have been the only chickens in France -- and by extension in the world -- to be recognised with a "label of controlled origin," or in French "appellation d'origine controllee" (AOC).
As with wines and cheeses, this is a guarantee of a chicken's quality because only birds from the Bresse breed, raised in a 4,000-square-kilometre area of the Ain, Saone-et-Loire and Jura departments according to very strict rules, can wear the metal tag that is a certificate of their origin.
"The birds must seek out for themselves the proteins they need, scratching away at out marshy soil which is rich in animal life. They are given all the time they need to take form and their flesh gains in richness and savour," says breeder Joel Billet, who takes top prize in the single capon category.
Free-range farmers around the world might feel aggrieved that their birds are treated just as generously but get no similar premium when it comes to the market, but according to its champions Bresse is different.
For a start there is the breed, also known as Red Gallic because it has the distinctly French characteristics of a red crest, white feathers and blue legs.
And then there is the "terroir" -- the peculiarly French notion of a piece of land and the qualities attaching to it without which there would be no "appellations." Experts say the Bresse soil is low in calcium, so while Bresse birds' bones are weak, the goodness all goes to the flesh.
Christmas is the high point of the Bresse breeders' year because this is when they show off their "pieces de resistance" -- the poulardes and capons reared for the occasion, and now exhibited in their strange wrappings of cloth.
Capons are cocks which are castrated at an early age -- an operation that involves the insertion of a spike under the wing and detaching the bird's internal testicles -- and then allowed to grow for as much as ten months without the enervating distraction of sex.
After slaughter they are bound in their wrappings and then "rolled" repeatedly over a wooden board so that when unveiled the carcass is like a smooth cylinder. The idea is that the fat is this way spread evenly across all the meat, which lends an extra "je ne sais quoi" in the cooking.
At on average 80 euros (dollars) for four kilograms of bird, a Bresse capon is not the cheapest of Christmas dinners -- you can buy a supermarket battery beast ten times as cheaply -- but the French like splashing out on quality for the special occasion.
As the 19th century gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of the "Physiology of Taste," put it: Bresse is the "queen of poultry, and the poultry of kings."