Poulet de Bresse

Ok...one final tidbit from our vacation in Provence. Along the way there/back we passed through the area of Bresse - the chicken capital of the universe.

The French have a reputation for being serious about their food and that reputation surely well deserved. I had always thought that French cooking was all about the complexity of the recipes and the preparation. Quite the opposite. It is all about simplicity. In French cooking, good food is as simple as finding the best ingredients. And the best ingredients usually result from a combination of local climate and soil from a specific locale. The French government tries to help it's citizens by providing an exclusive name, or "appelation", to the place where the best stuff comes from. The best sparkling wine in the world comes from "Champagne". The best blue cheese in the world comes from "Roquefort".

Well, now I know that the best chicken in the world comes from Bresse.

The Bresse website, www.pouletbresse.com, is the most complicated website I have ever seen for a chicken. It is all in French, but check it out and you will love the effort that they'be put into this website. Just keep pointing and clicking. Or you can go to the simplified English site Poulet de Bresse (the chicken of Bresse).

The intro photo is the sculpture at the highway rest stop in Bresse.

Man, they do love their chicken. Anybody that traces the history of their chicken from 3200 BC must be taking things very seriously.