French Classics Made Easy (24 page)

1 onion, chopped

3 shallots, chopped

5 cloves garlic, chopped

¼ cup Cognac

½ cup dry white wine

3 pounds tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced, or 3 cans (14.5 ounces each) diced tomatoes, drained

1 tablespoon chopped fresh or dried tarragon (see Note)

¼ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 to 4 pinches of cayenne pepper, to taste (see Note)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 tablespoons butter

Chopped parsley, for garnish

1.
In a 12-inch skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over high heat until it is very hot (smoking). Add the lobster pieces and quickly cook until the shells turn red, about 2 minutes. With a slotted spoon, transfer the lobster to a bowl.

2.
Reduce the heat, add the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and the onion, and sauté until softened but not browned, about 3 minutes. Add the shallots and garlic and cook, stirring, for 15 seconds. Return the lobster to the pan, remove from the heat, add the Cognac, and flame. (See “How to Flambé,”
page 282
.)

3.
Add the wine, tomatoes, tarragon, salt, black pepper, and 2 pinches of the cayenne pepper. Boil gently, uncovered, until the lobster is thoroughly cooked, 10 to 15 minutes.

4.
With a slotted spoon, transfer the lobster to a warm serving dish. Add the tomato paste to the sauce in the skillet and boil rapidly to thicken, about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if necessary. Stir in the butter. Pour the sauce over the lobster and sprinkle with parsley.

NOTE

If you are not a tarragon lover, you can reduce the amount in the recipe. If you want to opt for the greater amount of cayenne, add the second 2 pinches of cayenne, but not until the lobster has cooked and the sauce is ready to serve.

SERVING SUGGESTION

Start with an artichoke vinaigrette. Serve the lobster with Rice Pilaf (
page 207
). For dessert, try Strawberries with Sabayon (
page 283
).

WINE

Serve a chilled white or rosé with the lobster.

POULTRY

In France, it is not at all uncommon for a home cook to prepare recipes for guinea hen, goose, pheasant, squab, quail, and partridge in addition to chicken, duck, and turkey. Chicken, however, is the clear favorite. There are more French recipes for chicken than any other bird—in fact, more than for any other food. Its delicate flavor lends itself to a host of sauces as well as numerous cooking methods. Chicken can be grilled, sautéed, oven-roasted, spit-roasted, fried, poached, and braised.

Duck, whose popularity in this country seems to go up and down, is a less versatile yet delicious dark-meat bird that stands up well to more assertively flavored sauces. In America, where the predominant breed of duck available (the White Pekin) has a layer of fat under its skin, roasting is really the best method of cooking.

When roasting duck, or indeed any poultry (under 7 pounds), I use the high-temperature method that is used in France to produce wonderful flavors in a short time. I also roast all birds on their sides instead of breast up. This places the joints, which take longer to cook, in the path of the most direct heat, and prevents overcooking the breast. I am less concerned about roasting the birds on their sides when using a convection oven.

The recipes in this chapter include light-meat fowl (chicken and pheasant) and dark-meat fowl (duck and squab). Among the white-meat poultry recipes is a recipe for rabbit, which is treated in much the same way as chicken and for which chicken can easily be substituted.

TRUFFLED ROAST CHICKEN

[POULARDE TRUFFÉE ET FARCIE]

Truffled turkey,
dindonneau truffé,
is a specialty in France for Christmas and New Year’s. When I was living in Paris in the late ’60s, I would see stacks of truffled turkeys in the windows of charcuterie shops a week to ten days before the holidays. (The shops, which were never heated, were as good as refrigerators in the winter.) Each turkey had slices of truffles placed under the skin, where they developed flavor while the turkeys gently aged. The flavor that the truffle adds to the roast bird is heady and earthy, and incomparable. Trying to describe a truffle to someone who hasn’t had one is impossible, like trying to describe the taste of a mushroom.

Sliced truffles are a superb flavoring for any and all roast poultry, but there is something particularly satisfying in using them to flavor chicken—it changes the ordinary into something extraordinary.

I roast chicken in a manner that most Americans will find unusual. First, I roast at 475°F. A bird of the same size cooked at the more usual, lower temperature of 350°F to 375°F could take up to 2 hours; my 4-pound chicken is done in 1 hour. I also roast the chicken on its side to expose the thickest parts of the bird, the joints, to the hottest part of the oven so they will cook in the same time the breast does. Cooking the chicken breast side up results in overcooked breast meat and undercooked joints.

The stuffing used in this recipe is my favorite. It is a good basic stuffing recipe (which can have other ingredients, such as dried fruit or chopped cooked chestnuts, added to it) and, like all the stuffings I use in roasted fowl, is fully cooked. Using a cooked stuffing eliminates the need for extra time in the oven. If you can’t get truffles, eliminate them. You will still have a delicious, stuffed roast chicken. If you like the stuffing, double or triple the recipe for your next turkey.

SERVES 6

1 chicken (4 to 5 pounds); neck, gizzard, and wing tips reserved

1 medium-large (1-inch) black truffle, cut into 10 thin slices

½ pound slab smoked bacon or ½ pound thick-sliced smoked bacon, diced

2 onions (see Note)

3 chicken livers, coarsely chopped

1 cup unseasoned dried bread crumbs

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon fresh or dried thyme leaves, or 4 fresh or dried sage leaves, chopped

½ cup Madeira

1 carrot, sliced ½ inch thick (see Note)

3 tablespoons butter, softened to room temperature

1 cup water

T
RUFFLING A
C
HICKEN

In preparing the chicken for truffling, it is necessary to separate the skin from the meat. This is done quite easily once the thin membrane connecting the two is broken. Pull the neck skin back over the breast and you will find the membrane. Holding the skin up, puncture the membrane with your fingernail and spread it apart with your fingers. Once under the skin, you will find that you can easily slide your hand along the surface of the meat. As you reach down toward the leg and second joint, you will find your way impeded by another membrane. Break this one and your hand will slide over the leg.

The truffles, which are very thinly sliced, are fragile and need to be protected as you move them to their resting place under the skin. I use my first two fingers like chopsticks to hold the truffle between the nail of one and the flesh of the other. Once I reach the spot where I want to deposit the truffle, I simply slide it off my nail and onto the meat with the upper finger.

Although the chicken will not develop the same flavor, other ingredients can be placed under the skin of the bird in a similar way. Some suggestions include wild mushrooms, prosciutto, or smoked ham.

1.
Starting at the neck, separate the skin from the body of the chicken by inserting your fingers underneath the skin and loosening any membranes you encounter (see “Truffling a Chicken,” this page). Place 3 truffle slices on each side of the breast and 2 on each leg. (This can be done 1 to 2 days in advance, and the chicken should be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated. Bring back to room temperature before proceeding.)

2.
Preheat the oven to 475°F.

3.
In a large skillet, sauté the bacon over medium-high heat until it is half cooked. Finely chop 1 onion, add it to the pan, and cook, with the bacon, over medium-high heat until the onion is softened, but not browned, 2 to 3 minutes.

4.
Add the livers and brown them quickly over high heat, about 30 seconds. Remove the mixture from the heat and add the bread crumbs, which will absorb the fat. Season with the salt, pepper, and thyme. If the stuffing is too dry, moisten it with 1 tablespoon of the Madeira. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. (The stuffing can be made several hours in advance of roasting, but should not be refrigerated.)

5.
Stuff and truss the chicken just before roasting (see “How to Truss a Bird,”
page 133
).

6.
Place the chicken on its side in a nonstick roasting pan or on a rack in a roasting pan. Quarter the remaining onion and arrange it, the carrot, and the reserved wing tips, neck, and gizzard around the chicken. Spread the butter over the chicken and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

7.
Roast the chicken for 30 minutes. Turn it onto its other side and roast another 30 minutes. Baste every 15 minutes. Turn the chicken breast up for the last 5 to 10 minutes, if necessary, for even browning. The chicken is done when, if poked at the leg joint with a fork, the juices run clear; or when an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 160°F to 165°F. Remove the chicken from the pan and allow it to stand 10 to 15 minutes before carving.

8.
To make a simple pan juice, deglaze the pan and its contents by adding the remaining Madeira and the water to the pan and stirring to loosen the caramelized bits from the pan, vegetables, and chicken parts. Over high heat, reduce by about half. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if necessary. Strain and remove the fat. Carve the chicken and serve with the pan juices.

NOTE

The quartered onion and carrot slices are added to the roasting pan to add flavor and color to the pan and ultimately to the sauce. But they are also there to keep the chicken fat that is rendered out during the roasting from burning. To do this, they must cover a good part of the pan bottom (without being so close together that they won’t cook). Therefore, if you have a very large roasting pan, and the quantity of onion and carrot called for here does not seem like enough, add more.

SERVING SUGGESTION

Start with a green salad. Serve Waterless Cooked Carrots (
page 178
) and Broccoli Purée (
page 180
) alongside this delicious chicken. End a memorable meal with Tarte Tatin (
page 219
).

WINE

A fine red Bordeaux from Médoc or Graves is equal to the elegance of this dish.

M
AIGRE
-G
RAS AND
F
AT
S
EPARATOR

A
maigre-gras
, a sauceboat used in France, has two spouts. One spout pours off the fat, the other the
jus
. One version of a fat separator looks like a small watering can. The
jus
or clear liquid can be poured out, leaving the fat in the separator.