Rhode Island Reds (Chickens, That Is) from Green Meadows Farm, Hamilton

365 Days

Rhode Island Reds (Chickens, That Is) from Green Meadows Farm, Hamilton

Posted 04/20/2008 at 11:32 AM by Cathy

Rhode Island Reds

Andrew Rodgers is the closest I’ve ever come to meeting a real-life farmer. He’s young and personable (and handsome, not that I noticed), and he was about to sell us two laying hens to raise at home for their eggs.

“Let’s watch Andrew catch some chickens for us,” I said to our children from behind the fence as Andrew opened the gate to the coop.

“Let’s watch Andrew make a fool of himself,” Andrew said back as he walked with a large box toward a small flock of birds in one corner of the yard. Catching chickens is tricky business – they can run surprisingly fast when they want to and you’ve got to get under them and grab them by their legs – but he snagged the first bird, a Rhode Island Red with light brown feathers, without much trouble at all. We decided to call her Colette.

“Can I vote for the black and white one?” I called to Andrew when he asked which one I wanted for our second bird. That chicken’s black and white stripes were unusual among the flock of otherwise mostly-brown birds and I had already thought of what we’d name her – Jailbird – so she soon joined Colette in the large box we then put in our car.

After some brief, sage advice from Andrew we were on our way. The coop was ready at home, complete with food and water, and within just a few hours we already had our first very, very fresh egg.

Which brings me to the question: what wine goes with eggs?

That depends, of course, on the preparation of the eggs. An egg-based sauce like Hollandaise calls for a white wine. A strata would welcome an American Pinot Noir or even a Beaujolais. Custards can pair exceptionally well with a white Burgundy. Zabaglione is a natural match with a late-harvest wine from either Germany or the U.S.

A lot has to do with the preparation, and a lot has to do with the non-egg ingredients in the recipe. Does your strata include cheddar cheese and red bell pepper? Is your zabaglione being served with anise biscotti? Is your custard laced with coconut, or orange, or vanilla?

The possibilities are as infinite as my desire to experiment. Fortunately so is my natural source for eggs: Andrew thinks Jailbird and Colette will produce about 10 eggs per week on average. Okay, that’s not infinite, exactly, but it’s plenty sufficient to get me through a summer’s worth of zagablione (with a late-harvest German Riesling), and then some.

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.