French Classics Made Easy (26 page)

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Authors: Richard Grausman

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4.
Slice along the breast to remove the wing and a small piece of the breast.

5.
Run your knife down between the breast and the carcass and lift the breast away.

6.
Diagonally slice the breast into pieces.

skin it and pull the meat off the bones. Return the chicken to the pot along with the vegetables.

5.
To serve: Bring the soup to a simmer. Place the rice, noodles, or potatoes in a strainer or colander and dip into the soup to heat them. Place some of the vegetables, chicken, and rice (or noodles or potatoes) in each of four deep soup bowls. Ladle some of the soup over all and serve.

NOTE

Trim but do not remove the root ends of the onions before quartering in order to keep the onion layers together.

IN ADDITION

Besides producing a lovely and tender chicken dish, what
poule au pot
does, in essence, is make a double-strength chicken stock. The same basic ingredients that go into regular-strength chicken stock are here cooked in stock instead of water.

In France, the resulting soup would be served as a separate course (followed by the chicken and vegetables). But you can also save it and use it as the basis for Chicken Consommé (
page 17
), and serve the chicken and vegetables simply, with mustard and cornichons (small French gherkin pickles).

VARIATION

C
REAMY
P
OULE AU
P
OT

[POULE AU POT SAUCE SUPRÊME]

Prepare a Velouté (
page 315
) with the stock. Add ½ cup heavy cream to the sauce and simmer until the sauce thickens enough to coat a spoon, 10 to 15 minutes. Serve the chicken (skinned, but not pulled from the bones) and vegetables on a platter accompanied by Boiled White Rice (
page 206
) and the sauce.

COQ AU VIN

There are good coq au vin recipes and many that are mediocre. This is one that you and your guests will remember. Taking the extra time to cook the bacon, mushrooms, and onion separately from the main dish keeps the flavors vibrant. It makes all the difference.

Coq au vin was originally designed to make a tough rooster (
coq
) tender enough to eat. The earliest versions came from the Loire Valley, where the French kings lived, and the wines used in the dish were Bourgueil and Chinon, which come from the same area. These wines are available to us today, and using a plump, tender chicken in place of the firmer-fleshed rooster produces a succulent masterpiece.

When this dish was made with a rooster, its blood was saved, diluted with a little vinegar to prevent coagulation, and used
to thicken the sauce. For everyone’s convenience, I, along with most cooks, use flour to thicken the sauce in this more contemporary version.

Classic coq au vin recipes call for the chicken to be flamed with Cognac. I have omitted this step from the recipe, finding it adds little to the final flavor of this dish. In France, rendered pork fat or lard (called
saindoux
) is often used in place of the light vegetable oil that I use. If you have it handy, use it.

Chicken, veal, and fish are normally cooked in white wine (when wine is called for), but coq au vin requires a full-bodied red wine to produce its rich sauce. Sometimes a red wine of unusual quality and character is used; in these cases the dish takes on the name of the wine.
Coq au Chambertin
is an example of this. I have made this recipe with many red wines. French reds from the Loire, Mâcon, and Rhone regions have all produced memorable meals. Some California Zinfandels work extremely well with this recipe, as do many of the red wines of Spain, Argentina, and Australia.

This dish can be fully prepared one to two days in advance and reheated on top of the stove or in a 350°F oven for about 45 minutes before serving.

SERVES 4 TO 6

3 tablespoons light vegetable oil

1 chicken (3½ to 4 pounds), cut into

8 serving pieces

1 onion, diced

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 shallots, sliced

4 cloves garlic, sliced

2 cups full-bodied dry red wine, such as Pinot Noir, Côtes-du-Rhône, or Zinfandel

1½ cups beef stock, homemade or canned (see chart,
page 305
)

1 teaspoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon Meat Glaze (optional;
page 309
)

Bouquet Garni (
page 306
)

¼ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

20 pearl onions, peeled, root ends trimmed but left intact to hold the onions together

½ pound smoked slab bacon, cut into ½-inch rectangles

½ pound mushrooms, washed, dried, and halved or quartered, to match size of the onions

Salt and pepper, to taste

5 sprigs parsley, chopped, for garnish

1.
In a large flameproof casserole, heat the oil over high heat. Add the chicken and brown well on one side, about 3 to 4 minutes; turn and partially brown the other side, about 1 minute.

2.
Add the diced onion and reduce the heat slightly. Sauté the onion until it begins to brown, 2 to 3 minutes.

3.
Sprinkle the chicken with the flour. Shake the casserole and turn the chicken so the flour mixes with the hot oil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the flour browns, about 3 minutes.

4.
Add the shallots, garlic, wine, stock, tomato paste, meat glaze, and bouquet garni. Stir well and season with the salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Skim to remove fat. (The recipe can be prepared to this point several days in advance. Let cool to room temperature, cover,
and refrigerate or freeze. Bring back to a simmer before continuing in step 9.)

5.
Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil and drop the pearl onions into it. Cook until tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain.

6.
Place the bacon in a medium-size saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Drain, rinse with cold water, and repeat this blanching process to extract the bacon’s excess saltiness. Drain on paper towels.

7.
In a 10- to 12-inch skillet, sauté the bacon over medium-high heat until crisp on the outside, yet still soft on the inside, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels.

8.
Remove all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from the pan, add the mushrooms, and sauté over high heat until browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper and remove the mushrooms to a bowl. Add the pearl onions to the pan and brown, stirring, 2 to 3 minutes, then add to the mushrooms.

9.
When the chicken is tender, remove it from the casserole and place it in an ovenproof serving dish or clean flameproof casserole. Discard the bouquet garni. Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve and remove any fat remaining on the surface. The sauce should have the consistency of heavy cream. If it is too thick, add a little water; if too thin, boil it to thicken.

10.
Add the bacon, mushrooms, and onions to the chicken, and pour the sauce over all evenly. Before serving, heat to a simmer and cook until warm, about 5 minutes. This can be done on top of the stove or in a 400°F oven, depending on the serving dish used. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve.

G
RADATIONS OF
G
ARLIC

The strength of garlic flavor varies with the way it is prepared and when it is added to a dish. The subtlest way of using it is to add it to a liquid, without sautéing it first, so that it blends with the other flavors and does not stand out, as in Coq au Vin (
page 115
) or for Glazed Garlic (
page 181
). For a more distinct garlic flavor, the garlic should be sautéed first before adding it to a liquid, as in Ratatouille (
page 193
). For the strongest flavor, garlic is added either raw (as in Aioli,
page 332
) or close to the end of the cooking (as in the sauce made for Shrimp à la Provençale,
page 102
).

SERVING SUGGESTION

As a first course I often serve artichokes, asparagus, or a vegetable soup. I usually serve warm French bread with the meal and a mixed green salad before serving dessert, my favorite being Tarte Tatin (
page 219
).

WINE

When selecting a wine to drink with a coq au vin, choose an excellent red from the same region as the wine you used in the dish.

SAUTEED CHICKEN A LA PORTUGAISE

[POULET SAUTÉ À LA PORTUGAISE]

The classic recipe for
poulet sauté à la portugaise
presents the chicken in a sauce with tomatoes and sliced mushrooms. The rendition that I have taught for many years adds both black and green olives. Also, the mushrooms are quartered (or left whole if small) so they are about the same size as the olives. Although I usually serve this colorful dish during the summer when tomatoes are best, I also prepare it in the winter using good-quality canned tomatoes.

To make things easier, I often cook the chicken in the sauce a day or two before I am going to serve it. I cook the mushroom, tomato, and olive accompaniment on the day of serving, add it to the chicken, and reheat everything together in a 300°F to 350°F oven for about 45 minutes. The thick sauce will thin to its proper consistency after the tomatoes are added.

SERVES 4 TO 6