The Ross Cobb is a chicken genetically engineered to put on fat in factory farming settings. It grows from new born to a two-kilo bird in six weeks. Kept in poor conditions, these chickens suffer burns to their legs from the waste in which they sit. The meat they produce is without texture or taste and yet they are the provenance of over 90% of the chicken meat consumed in this country. In my childhood, the meat of treats, of Easter lunch and holiday suppers, was a good tasty chicken. Beef and lamb were relatively cheap. Now, we expect to pay next to nothing for a chicken and, if we do, a Ross Cobb is what we are likely to get. It really is worth paying the extra for something which has led a decent life and ends up providing a memorable meal.
An old Irish russet apple variety which is greyish green covered with thin brown russet through which the scarlet ground shows strongly. It has a distinctive fennel or anise flavour. Downing, the renowned American pomologist, regarded it as "one of the highest flavored and most delicious of all apples for dessert".
The rotund morel mushroom is a type of morel mushroom with a more rounded cap than other morels but still good for eating. (If gathering mushrooms you must be absolutely certain what you have before you eat them as many are very poisonous.)
The rough cockle has a thick shell with 18-22 bold ribs and almost squared off grooves running from hinge to lip. These ribs show on the inside as well as the outside. They can grow up to 9cm (31/2 “) in length on muddy sand and gravel, from the lower shore into the shallow sublittoral from the southern part of the North Sea only, ranging south to the Mediterranean and north-west Africa. They are off-white, yellow, or light brown, often in concentric bands of different shades. The inside is glossy white. The siphons are quite long, and the foot is long and cylindrical. As wth clams, cockles should be thoroughly soaked for a couple of hours before consumption to clean them.
