French Provincial Cooking (96 page)

In a heavy frying-pan or large sauté pan melt 3 oz. of unsalted butter, and when it is foaming (but it must not turn colour) pour in
pint of thick cream. In a few seconds the cream and butter will have amalgamated, thickened and started coating the wooden spoon with which you have been stirring and lifting the sauce. Taste for seasoning, add the smallest dusting of very finely chopped parsley and pour over the chicken. The process of thickening the cream takes hardly more than a minute, so long as a
wide
pan is used.

This is just one version of this celebrated method of cooking a good fat boiling chicken. A large deep saucepan or earthenware pot is essential, so that there is plenty of room for a variety of vegetables and a good covering of water, or the broth will boil away and its goodness be lost.

The chicken is stuffed with a mixture of the pounded liver of the bird, a good handful of breadcrumbs soaked in milk and squeezed dry and
lb. of chopped fresh pork or sausage meat, and parsley and seasoning, into which you stir an egg or two. Brown the chicken all over in good dripping or butter, add carrots, a couple of turnips, an onion, a sliced leek, a piece of celery and salt and pepper. Pour in boiling water to cover the bird and the vegetables, and when the water comes to the boil again remove any scum which has risen to the top. Cover the pan and simmer very slowly for about 3 hours: 40 minutes or so before serving, the vegetables, which have been cooking in the pot and which, by now, are rather sodden and tasteless, can be removed and fresh ones added.

Serve the chicken with the vegetables all round and a
sauce vinaigrette à l’œuf
as described on page 122. The broth can either be served as a first course, or kept for another meal. In either case, a little rice can be boiled in it to give it body.

There are several ways of preparing this mild and soothing dish, which requires careful cooking and a well-made creamy sauce if it is to be presented at its best.

Supposing it is to be made with a boiling chicken weighing 4 to 5 lb., the other ingredients are
lb. of fat unsmoked bacon or salt breast of pork, 2 onions, 3 or 4 carrots, a bouquet of herbs and garlic; if possible, approximately 4 pints of stock made from the giblets and a piece of knuckle of veal; and
lb. of very good quality rice. And for the sauce, butter, flour, stock from the chicken, 8 oz. of cream, 2 egg yolks, lemon, with finely chopped parsley and tarragon to finish.

Line the bottom of a heavy oval pan with the bacon or salt pork cut in very thin slices. On top put the chicken, with its own fat or a piece of butter rolled in salt and pepper inside, and rubbed with lemon on the outside. Surround it with the sliced onions and carrots. Set it off on a moderate fire and let it cook gently about 10 to 15 minutes until the fat is running and a faint smell of frying comes from the pan; pour in the heated stock, of which there should be enough to cover completely the legs of the bird but not the breast; if there is not sufficient, make it up with water. (If you already have stock from a previously cooked chicken instead of having to make it specially, so much the better.) Put in a big bouquet of fresh parsley, bayleaves, a crushed clove of garlic and some sprigs of thyme or marjoram. Let the stock come to simmering point; add just a little salt. Cover the pot with buttered paper and a close-fitting lid. Transfer to a moderate oven, Gas No. 4, 355 deg. F., and allow about half an hour to the pound.

About 45 minutes before serving time, start on the rice, which is to be what the French call
riz au gras,
moist rather than fluffy, but still with all the grains separate. Having weighed out
lb., measure it in a cup or glass and then calculate twice its volume in stock, which is to be taken from the pot in which the chicken is cooking. Put your rice into a big pan of boiling salted water and cook it about 7 minutes, boiling fairly fast. Drain it; hold the colander under the cold tap until the water which runs out is quite clear. Put the rice in a pot or pan which will go in the oven. Extract the required amount of stock from the chicken (at this moment turn the bird over in its liquid) and pour it over the rice. Bring to simmering point on top of the stove. Put a folded cloth on top, cover with the lid and put in the oven to finish cooking. It will be perfectly cooked, all the liquid absorbed, in about 25 minutes, but a little longer will do no harm.

For the sauce, melt 1 oz. of butter in a heavy saucepan, stir in 2 tablespoons of flour and about
pint of hot stock, which can have been taken from the chicken at the same time as that for the rice. Stir until you have a smooth, thickish sauce. Add your cream (single cream will be all right) and leave very gently cooking, stirring from time to time to prevent a skin forming. Season if necessary with salt; beat the egg yolks with a little lemon juice and stir them into the sauce. Keep another minute or two over the fire, add the chopped parsley and tarragon, dried when no fresh is available, and then put the saucepan into another one containing hot water, so that it does not boil again.

To serve, carve the bird, pour the sauce over the pieces, and serve the rice either separately or arranged all round the chicken. There will be ample rice and sauce for four people and probably enough chicken left over to make an
émincé
(see page 406) or other dish next day.

A young roasting chicken can be prepared in exactly the same way, except that it will need a good deal less cooking—not more than 15 minutes to the pound. The dish then becomes a
poularde,
instead of a
poule au riz.

Tarragon, as I have already noted, is one of those flavours which, in western cooking, combine the most perfectly with chicken; and an old bird can be turned to very good account in the following way:

A boiling hen weighing 3 to 4 lb., onion, carrots, bouquet of herbs, butter, lemon. For the sauce,
pint thick cream, the yolks of 4 large or 6 small eggs, chopped tarragon, if possible a little Madeira or white wine.

Put a lump of butter worked with pepper, salt and a few tarragon leaves inside the bird. Rub it all over with lemon. Put it in a saucepan with 3 carrots, an onion, a bouquet of bayleaf and parsley, a tablespoon of salt. Just barely cover with water or a light veal stock should it be available; bring very gently to simmering point and cook very slowly with the cover on the pan for approximately 35 minutes per pound from the time the water comes to simmering point.

Remove the bird from the liquid and, when cool enough to handle carve into nice large pieces; each side of the breast into two fillets, the legs divided in two, and the wings. Remove all skin, because on an old fowl it is thick and tough.

Measure 1 pint of the broth; mix with the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and the cream; cook very gently, stirring all the time, as for a custard, until the mixture is as thick as thick cream. Taste for seasoning, adding a little lemon juice and, if you like, a dessertspoon of Madeira or white wine. Stir in about a tablespoon of finely-chopped tarragon. Go on stirring the sauce until it has cooled a little. Pour it over the pieces of chicken arranged in a dish just deep enough for the sauce to cover the chicken completely. Arrange a little line of whole tarragon leaves, moistened with stock, along the centre of the dish, and serve cold. With it can be served the rice salad described on page 151.