My Butcher........My Friend

Last year, the school my kids go to sold fresh turkey's for our American holiday celebration..Thanksgiving. We already had plans to go to London since we needed a change of scenery after arriving 3 months prior. So I froze our turkey in our american size refrig/freeze in our cave for another time.

Here we are a year later and it is time to do this turkey. So, I have my smoker and was going to throw it in and smoke up my 9kilo turkey and see what happened. As the day got closer, it got colder and my small smoker would be hard to keep warm. I didn't want to put it in my oven because I would really have to babysit it. Then a light dawned in my head (I felt like a lightbulb over my head just came on for all to see). My butcher has these massive rotisserie's.

So I had taken my turkey out 3 days prior but it was still frozen. I decided to take it to him anyway and see what he could do. I went down early on a sunday morning around 8:30 because I knew very few french people would be there and I could take my time with him. I get down there and Peter (a young man who speaks english at the butcher) and the man he calls "the boss" was there and both greeted me with a, "Bonjour John." I told Peter I needed to talk to him and the boss. I told him my dilemma and was wondering if he would truss up the turkey and put it on the rotisserie. I had written up my request on Google Translate, translated it to french and printed it out. As they both read it, they got this frown across their face and I knew what they were curious about. Once I had translated it to french, I had it translated back to english. Well, the translation for trussing up the turkey literally translated to "wire the bird to me." I explained that I wanted the bird tied up so that the legs and wings didn't flop everywhere and they both smiled and said, "d'accord." He then took the turkey out and found it to be frozen still and he was like, "merde." They talked and they said they could thaw on top of the rotisserie. Before I left, he asked if he could season the turkey and I said, he was the Chef du Cuisine and he could do what he wanted. He said I could come back at 1:30 and pick it up.

I returned after church feeling joyous for I knew that it had to be good because all of their food is good. I walked up to their booth at the market and saw my bird on the spit all alone (market starts closing around 2) but there was a crowd of french people with their kids just staring at it. The butcher came over and took it off the spit and brought it over to the table and was taking out the center spike holder. As he did, the french kids were just going on and on pointing to it and talking to their parents and the parents were jabbering away. It was causing quite a fuss as they had never seen anything that big before.

I stood there in awe of how beautiful it looked. As I saw him take off the bar that held it, I asked what he had done to it. Peter explained that to keep the breast moist, he covered the turkey in bacon, trussed it all up and put in on. Can I tell you how awesome that turkey was? I know just by the description and photo that you KNOW it was good. It is a technique that I will tuck away for when I return to the states and I am looking into commercial type rotisseries now. So as they packaged it up for me to take home, I asked, "combien je vous dois?" He said that I didn't owe him anything, that he was happy to do it for me because I was such a good and loyal customer. I told him that I feel I should pay him for his time, but he refused to take my money. I couldn't have been more proud of this frenchman because this is not the norm that I have run into. For the service he has provided, I will be forever grateful.

This is why the butcher is my friend, he produces great product and also has great service. I will miss him