Dancing with chickens

Chef Christoph Zoller helps a young aspiring chef find the leg joint. The group prepared pan-seared scallops, roast chicken and strawberries Romanoff. [Photo/China Daily]

What better place to spend a Saturday afternoon than in a chef's restaurant kitchen, with a bottle of bubbly and some fresh-plucked birds? Mike Peters tucks in for a cooking class.

Agatha Christie's famous fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, was once asked why he wasn't busy looking for footprints and other clues at a murder scene.

That, he explained, was a job that the police were perfectly competent to do.

"Why have a dog and bark yourself?" he asked.

That funny quote came to me recently as I stood in the gleaming restaurant kitchen of The Cut, with one hand around the neck of a raw chicken. Was I really standing in the fancy Fairmont Beijing hotel's restaurant, making my own lunch?

Of course, that was my own choice－as it was for the 19 others huddled around as chef Christoph Zoller explains why he'd always buy a whole chicken.

"They will be fresher," he says, inviting us to stick our noses close for a smell test. "You don't really know about packaged parts until you get home. The whole bird is better value, too－cheaper pound for pound."

"Plus, you can use EVERYTHING," he says, as he quickly whacks away the head and feet and wings with a very sharp chef's knife. "This all goes into the soup for tomorrow."