French Provincial Cooking (97 page)

For a special occasion, a plump and tender roasting chicken weighing about 3 lb. or a little more when plucked, drawn and dressed can be cooked in the same way but will need only an hour’s gentle simmering at the most; so, to enrich the flavour of the resulting stock for the sauce, it is an improvement to add, when possible, about 4 tablespoons of a not too dry white wine or even of white vermouth. This should be put in right at the beginning of the cooking.

Now I know that many people find it difficult to get these cream and egg sauces to the right consistency. If they are cooked too fast they curdle, and the stirring of the sauce over a pan of hot water requires very great patience. A good solution is as follows: first, remember that the more thoroughly beaten the egg yolks, the less chance there is of their curdling. So, having attended to this matter, start your sauce off straight over the flame, but a gentle one of course. When it shows signs of starting to thicken, put your saucepan in another one, very much larger, containing hot water, barely at simmering point. You can now safely leave your sauce, giving it an occasional stir, for as long as half an hour, while it almost imperceptibly thickens; by this method the flavour is improved, too, for the sauce matures, as it were, and having heat all round it instead of merely under it, it thickens evenly and smoothly. And remember also that, for a cold dish, the sauce need not, and should not, be so thick as for a hot one, for like a custard it thickens as it cools.

This is an excellent dish to make from left-over cooked chicken or turkey. Ingredients for a dish for three or four people are about
lb. of cooked chicken weighed when it has been taken from the bone and, for the sauce, 1
oz. of butter, 2 heaped tablespoons of flour,
pint of milk, 4 tablespoons each of stock from the bird and cream or, if there is no stock, 8 tablespoons of cream. Seasonings include nutmeg as well as salt and freshly-milled pepper and 3 tablespoons of grated Parmesan or Gruyère plus a little extra, with breadcrumbs, for the final cooking of the dish.

Melt the butter in a thick saucepan, put in the flour, stir it round, off the fire, until it forms a smooth paste; add a little of the warmed milk. Return to the fire and stir while you add the rest of the milk. When the sauce is smooth and thick add the stock, cream and seasonings; there should be a good measure of pepper and nutmeg but only a very little salt until after the cheese has been added. It may then be necessary to add more. At this stage put the saucepan into another large one containing water and let it cook in this
bain-marie,
stirring frequently, for a good 20 minutes. Now add the cheese and stir again until it has amalgamated with the sauce. Remove all skin and sinew from the chicken; cut it into thin strips, as much of a size as possible.

Cover the bottom of a shallow gratin dish with a thin layer of the sauce. Put in the chicken. Cover it completely with the rest of the sauce. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and grated cheese and cook for about 15 minutes in a moderate oven; and then transfer it to the grill for a minute or two, and serve it when the top is just beginning to blister into golden bubbles.

This is made and garnished in the same way as the fish mayonnaise described on page 288.

When made in quantity with a chicken boiled especially for the purpose, a mayonnaise made with 2 or 3 egg yolks and
pint of olive oil will be needed. Preferably, the chicken should be sliced from the bones, skinned and mixed while still warm with half the mayonnaise. Pile it up into a pyramid in a shallow dish and leave the garnishing and the covering of the chicken with the remainder of the mayonnaise until just before serving.

The
sauce provençale
described on page 123 makes a good alternative to a straightforward mayonnaise. This is also a good way of using up left-over boiled or roast chicken, but to be really good there should be a fair proportion of both breast and leg meat.

Prepare a dish of
riz au gras
in the way described for
poule au riz
, page 404, using about
lb. of rice.

Slice
lb. of very carefully cleaned chicken livers into two or three pieces each. Season them and dust them with flour. Cook them gently a minute or two in foaming butter with an ounce or two of chopped cooked ham. Pour in 2 or 3 tablespoons of white wine or Madeira or white vermouth. Let it bubble and reduce. Add 3 tablespoons of the same stock which has been used for the rice. Cook another couple of minutes.

Turn out the rice on to a heated serving dish, and put the chicken livers in a mound on the top. Sprinkle with a little parsley. Enough for four as a first course.

French cooks nearly always add pork or sausage meat to the chestnut stuffing for turkey. It helps lubricate the bird and improves the flat taste of chestnuts. In this northern French recipe apples are also added.

For an average turkey of about 12 lb. the proportions are 2 lb. of chestnuts, 1 lb. of sweet apples, 6 oz. of salted or fresh belly of pork,
pint of milk, 2 shallots, parsley, an egg.

Make a crosswise incision across the rounded part of the chestnuts and roast them for 10 to 15 minutes in a moderate oven. Take out a few at a time and shell and skin them while still hot. Stew them in the milk, to which is added
pint of water, until they are soft. This will take about half an hour. Cut the pork into small dice, and cook for 10 minutes in a little water. Peel and core the apples; stew them in a very little water until reduced to a purée. Mix with the pork and the drained and roughly broken-up chestnuts. Season with salt and pepper and the finely-chopped shallot and parsley, and bind with a beaten egg.

The stuffed turkey, liberally rubbed with butter, is roasted on its side, if possible, in a slow oven, covered with buttered paper or, nowadays, aluminium foil.