French Provincial Cooking (94 page)

Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the pot or saucepan, but don’t let it get to the sizzling stage. Put in the chicken on its side. Leave it 5 minutes over gentle heat. Turn it over on to the other side, so that both thigh and one side of the breast of the bird are in contact with the oil. Cover the pan and cook for 1
hours altogether, at a very low but steady pace, and turning the bird over twice more during the process, taking care not to damage the skin as you do so.

At the end of the cooking time the skin of the chicken is beautifully golden and crisp, and for once the legs will be cooked through as well as the breast. Remove it to the heated serving dish.

Have ready half a dozen medium-sized potatoes, boiled in their skins but kept slightly undercooked, peeled and cut into squares (or, when they are obtainable, whole small new potatoes). In the oil left from the cooking of the chicken and in the same pan, with the heat increased, brown the potatoes, turning them round and round with a fork; in 5 minutes at most they will be ready. Lift them out with a draining spoon, put them at one end of the dish with the chicken, sprinkle them with salt and parsley, and at the other end put a little bunch of watercress. The dish is ready. You have a complete and delicious main course —and only one pan to wash up.

I should add, perhaps, that the olive stuffing, although so good, is definitely rather odd. If the chicken is for guests with conventional tastes then it might be better to substitute a routine pork or herb stuffing.

Tarragon is a herb which has a quite remarkable affinity with chicken, and a
poulet à l’estragon,
made with fresh tarragon, is one of the great treats of the summer. There are any amount of different ways of cooking a tarragon-flavoured chicken dish: here is a particularly successful one.

For a plump roasting chicken weighing about 2 lb. when plucked and drawn, knead a good ounce of butter with a tablespoon of tarragon leaves, half a clove of garlic, salt and pepper. Put this inside the bird, which should be well coated with olive oil. Roast the bird lying on its side on a grid in a baking dish. Turn it over at half-time (45 minutes altogether in a pretty hot oven or an hour in a moderate oven should be sufficient; those who have a roomy grill might try grilling it, which takes about 20 minutes, and gives much more the impression of a spit-roasted bird, but it must be constantly watched and turned over very carefully, so that the legs are as well done as the breast).

When the bird is cooked, heat a small glass of brandy in a soup ladle, set light to it, pour it flaming over the chicken and rotate the dish so that the flames spread and continue to burn as long as possible. Return the bird to a low oven for 5 minutes, during which time the brandy sauce will mature and lose its raw flavour. At this moment you can, if you like, enrich the sauce with a few spoonfuls of thick cream and, at la Mère Michel’s Paris restaurant, from where the recipe originally came, they add Madeira to the sauce. Good though this is, it seems to me a needless complication.

For two people, buy a 1
to 2 lb. chicken split in two as for grilling. The success of all dishes in which the chicken is cut before cooking lies in having presentable portions. Nothing is more dismal than those
poulets sautés
and
fricassées de poulet,
in which all you get on your plate is an unidentifiable and bony little joint from which the dry flesh is detached only with great determination. Some skill is needed to joint a chicken into several pieces and, on the whole, it is more satisfactory to buy smaller chickens and simply split them, or have them split, in half.

Season the halves of chicken, rub them with lemon juice and insert a very small piece of garlic and a little sprig of thyme or basil under the skin of each piece. Dust with flour. In an ordinary heavy frying-pan heat a coffee-cup (after-dinner size) of olive oil. Make it fairly hot and put in the pieces of chicken skin side down. When they are golden on one side turn them over and, when both sides are seized, turn them over again, turn the heat low and cover the pan, removing the lid only from time to time to turn the chicken. After 20 minutes, transfer the chicken and nearly all the oil to a baking dish and put in a very low oven, covered, while the sauce is made.

For this have ready 4 large ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped; 2 anchovy fillets roughly pounded with 2 cloves of garlic; a sprig each of thyme, marjoram and basil, dried if no fresh is available; a small glass of wine, white for preference but red if it is easier; and 4 oz. of stoned black olives.

First pour in the wine, detaching any brown pieces and juices which may have adhered to the pan. Let it bubble and reduce. Add the anchovy and garlic mixture, stir well in, then add the tomatoes and the herbs. Simmer until the sauce is thick, add the olives, let them get hot and taste the sauce for seasoning.

Test the chicken by running a skewer through the thick part of the leg and, if the juices come out white, it is cooked. If still red, leave a little longer in the oven. For serving, arrange the chicken in a long dish
on top
of the very hot sauce.

A variation of this chicken dish is to cut all the flesh from a cooked bird (a boiling fowl could be used) into neat fillets, dip them in frying batter, fry them like fritters in very hot oil and serve them piled up in a dish with the same sauce made and served separately. This is called a
fritot de poulet.

This is the dish made famous by la Mère Fillioux of Lyon, whose restaurant is described on page 42. It is her own recipe and I quote it here because it is so beautifully simple. Even if such dishes cannot be made in England except at enormous expense, it is good to know how they were, and still are, cooked in the famous Lyon restaurants.

‘Choose a fine chicken, preferably from the Louhans district, plump and tender and weighing about 2 lb. Slip thin slices of truffle under the skin of the bird. Fold it in a fine cloth and tie it lightly round with string. Put it into a pot containing a broth made from shin of veal, with leeks and carrots. Boil it for 15 minutes; then leave it for 20 more minutes in the
bouillon
and serve it with a pinch of coarse salt.’

But the secret . . . the secret, they say, is to cook fifteen chickens at a time . . . at least.

Put a small but plump 2
lb. chicken, drawn and dressed weight, to roast in butter in the oven as described on page 394. While it is cooking, prepare a sauce from the following ingredients: 1
oz. butter, 2 level tablespoons of flour,
pint of stock made from the giblets of the bird and flavoured with herbs, onions, carrots and 4 tablespoons of white wine,
pint of thick fresh cream, 2 teaspoons of French mustard, a teaspoon of fresh or dried tarragon, 2 tablespoons of grated Gruyère cheese, salt and freshly-milled pepper.

Heat the butter in a thick pan, stir in the flour; when it is smooth add the hot strained stock; when this has amalgamated with the flour start adding the cream, a little at a time; when it has all been stirred in let it cook very gently for 5 minutes; now add seasonings, including plenty of pepper, the tarragon, the mustard and the cheese. Put the saucepan on a mat and leave on a very low flame, stirring from time to time, for 10 minutes, for the sauce to mature.

When the chicken is cooked, carve it into four pieces, put these in a gratin dish on top of a layer of the sauce, pour the rest on top, strew over a few fine breadcrumbs, add a little of the butter from the chicken and put on the top shelf of the hottest possible oven for 5 minutes. Finish under the grill for a minute or two and serve when the surface is golden and bubbling. Enough for two or four, according to what else is to be served:

Much of the success of the delicious sauce for this dish depends upon the mustard with which it is flavoured; Grey Poupon’s
moutarde forte au vin blanc,
a yellow and strongly aromatic mustard, is one of the best for this purpose.