Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (109 page)

The marinade

1 bottle of full-bodied, young, red wine (Mâcon, Côtes-du-Rhône, Mountain Red)

2 cups beef or veal stock, or beef bouillon

While casserole is in oven, pour the browning fat out of the frying pan, pour in the marinade, and boil down until liquid has almost evaporated. Pour in the wine, boil down to half its volume, then add the bouillon, bring to the boil, and set aside.

Remove casserole from oven and add the hot wine and bouillon mixture, stirring rabbit pieces, onions, and
lardons
so that all is well blended.

3)
Stewing the rabbit—about 1 hour

Bring contents of casserole to the simmer on top of the stove, cover and simmer slowly either on the stove or in a preheated 350-degree oven; regulate heat in either case so that stew bubbles slowly and regularly throughout the cooking, and baste rabbit pieces several times with the sauce. Rabbit should be done in about 1 hour, when the meat is tender if pierced with a knife. (While rabbit is stewing, prepare prunes in Step 4.)

4)
Sauce and serving

A hot, lightly buttered, serving platter

Stock or bouillon if needed

20 to 25 large, tenderized prunes, simmered 10 to 15 minutes in ¼ cup Cognac, ½ cup bouillon, and 2 Tb butter

The optional sautéed liver pieces from Step 2

Optional: 8 to 10
croûtons
or
fleurons
(triangles of white bread sautéed in clarified butter;
puff pastry crescents
)

Fresh parsley sprigs

When rabbit pieces are tender, arrange them on the serving platter, cover, and keep warm while finishing the sauce. Remove bay leaf, and skim surface fat off braising sauce. Bring to the simmer, skimming. You should have 1½ to 2 cups of sauce thick enough to coat a spoon nicely; thin out with stock or bouillon if too thick, or boil down rapidly if too thin. Then add the prunes with their liquid, and the optional liver; simmer 2 to 3 minutes, and carefully correct seasoning. Spoon the sauce and prunes over the rabbit, decorate with
croûtons
or
fleurons
and parsley sprigs, and serve.

(*)
AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE
: If you are not ready to serve, return rabbit to casserole, baste with sauce, and reheat later.

CHAPTER FOUR
Chickens, Poached and Sauced—and a Coq en Pâte

W
HEN BROILING AND FRYING CHICKENS
are among our most reasonably priced meats today, it is hard to realize that great-great-grandmother’s, or even great-grandmother’s, Sunday chicken was a luxurious treat, since chicken was expensive in those days. To have it so accessible now is a great boon to the cook, because you can prepare it in such a vast number of ways. Volume I takes up roasting, casserole roasting, sautés, fricassees,
coq au vin,
and chicken breasts, as well as details on chicken types and qualities, trussing directions, and timing charts. There is not a word, however, about one of the easiest and most delicious ways to cook chicken—poaching in white wine. The chicken practically cooks itself, produces its own sauce base, and can be served in numerous ways from very plain to extremely elegant.

We start out with chicken in pieces, taking it from the simple wine stew through a cheese casserole, an aspic, a
chaud-froid,
and finally a
bouillabaisse
and a
bourride.
For more formal chickens, there is a roaster or capon poached whole in white wine and aromatic vegetables, plus various stuffings and white-wine sauces; an illustrated guide to boning follows; and we conclude with a glamorous
coq en pâte
with the whimsical title
poularde en soutien-gorge.

CHICKEN IN PIECES

How fortunate we are to have chicken in pieces—those who like dark meat may feast upon thighs, white-meat-only people are welcome to breasts,
while wings at half price make lovely finger food when the budget is low.

PREPARING READY-CUT CHICKEN FOR COOKING

Rather than being disjointed, meaning that thighs are removed from backbones at the connecting ball joints and wings from shoulders in the same fashion, most supermarket ready-cut chicken is done with a meat saw which neatly halves or quarters the chicken in a matter of seconds. This saving of man-hours is passed on to us, of course, in reasonable prices for chicken but does leave us with some unwanted bones and bits. If these do not bother you, simply wash the chicken under cold running water, dry in paper towels, and proceed to the cooking. If you have time for surgery, however, you can make the chicken easier to cook, especially for sautés and fricassees but also for poaching, because the pieces will lie flatter and take up less room; in addition, they will be far easier to eat. You will also have some useful scraps for chicken stock. The
illustrated goose
will help you locate bones and joints because goose and chicken have the same bone structure; see also the
illustrated semiboned chicken
. Here, then, is how to trim the various pieces of chicken.

Drumsticks and second joints (legs and thighs)

When drumsticks and second joints come joined together, the thigh bone is usually attached to the hip, making a clumsy piece of chicken—the hip should be off. On the hip, however, at either side of its attachment to the ball joint of the thigh, are two nuggets of meat, the oysters, which should remain part of the second joint: scrape this meat from the hip bone up to and around the joint, leaving meat attached to joint. Then bend and cut joint free from the piece of hip: this is picky work because the hip bone is small, but it is really worth the trouble. Then, to make the second joint even more attractive, scrape meat away from this same ball joint, and whack off its bulbous end with your chopping knife. In French cooking, the drumstick is separated from the second joint: flex the two pieces to locate ball joint at knee, and cut through it to separate drumstick from second joint.

Breast-wing sections

The breast-wing sections (or wingless breasts) usually come already split so that you have one whole side in one piece, and another whole side as the other piece. On the bone-and-flesh side you may see the long ridge of the breastbone, if it was left in that half, running the length of the thick portion of the meat. Below it is the rest of the breastbone and below that the cross-hatch of ribs; attached to the ribs you may find a piece of the backbone. Again, this is a clumsy piece to cook as is, but easy to trim.

If the wing has been left on, you will be able to make 2 full servings out of the breast by cutting it in the French manner, meaning that the lower third of the breast meat remains attached to the wing as follows: Set the breast in front of you, skin-side up and top of breast (long side with thickest meat) away from you. We shall suppose that you have a left breast with the wing on the right. By wiggling the wing, locate with your finger where the ball joint of its upper arm attaches to the shoulder. Then make a semicircular cut through the skin and breast meat, starting at the lower left side of the long end facing you and ending at the shoulder joint. Scrape meat from rib bones the length of the cut (scraping toward you, not toward the thick side of the meat), separate wing at shoulder by cutting through ball joint, and free the wing with its strip of breast meat. With shears, cut the bony nubbin off the elbow of the wing; trim off rib bones from main part of breast along with backbone if it is attached. For a right-sided breast use the same system, but you may find it is easier to set the breast in front of you lengthwise, the wing end facing you and the thick part of the meat to your left.

Wingless breasts will be improved when you scrape the lower third of the flesh from the ribs at the long thin side, and cut off ribs at this point; the breast will then lie flatter.

Save all scraps for chicken stock

Even a small handful of scraps and bones are worth boiling up with a bit of onion, celery, carrot, a bay leaf, pinch of salt, and water to cover. Full directions for chicken stock are in Volume I, pages 236–7.

HOW MUCH TO BUY

We shall arbitrarily call for 2½ pounds of ready-cut frying chicken to serve 4 people in the following recipes, but you would normally buy by eye—the equivalent of 1 whole breast half with wing or 1 drumstick-second joint per serving is usually sufficient. The total weight will probably be between 2 and 2½ pounds, depending on the weight of the frying chicken and on what pieces you buy.

  
POULET POCHÉ AU VIN BLANC