food basics

Once More for the French Chicken

Nibbles

I seem to be working on a theme, here, but it wasn’t intentional. Just one of those one-thing-led-to-another processes. This will, however, be the last dip into Escoffier for a bit. For me, the egg definitely came before the chicken breast, and now we’re tackling the whole bird; answering the important question:

Why did the chicken go into the oven?

Because there was a blanket of butter waiting for her, of course.

Roast chicken has been experiencing a bit of a revival among foodies. It seems that something so simple and satisfying still takes some sort of skill to pull off well. To that end, I submit Poêling (pronounced PWAWL-ing).

Poêling is roasting but it’s a particular type of roasting. Here’s what the chef, himself, has to say about the method:

Method for Poêling:

Place a layer of Matignon in a deep heavy pan just large enough to hold the piece of meat or poultry; well season, place the item on top of the vegetables and coast well with melted butter. Cover with the lid, place in a not too hot oven and allow to cook gently, basting frequently with the butter.

When cooked, remover the lid and allow the meat or poultry to become well coloured then remove it to a dish and keep covered until required.

Add sufficient clear well flavoured brown veal stock to the vegetables which should not have been allowed to burn, bring to the boil and allow to simmer very gently for 10 minutes. Strain, remove the fat carefully and send the gravy in a sauceboat with the meat which would normally be surrounded with a garnish.

So there’s the big secret: basting with butter.

Now, before anyone starts to talk about a certain Savannah food personality who will remain nameless, please note that I used less than 2 sticks of butter for this recipe and that the resulting gravy is de-fatted before serving. There is a difference between using just enough butter to get the job done and pouring the butterfat straight into ones arteries.

Let’s Poêle, Shall We?

Preheat our oven to 375° Fahrenheit and melt 7 oz of butter ( 1 3/4 sticks) and set aside.

Matignon igredients Prepare the Matignon. Combine your basic mirepoix (2 parts onion, 1 part carrot, 1 part celery) with ham, bay leaves and thyme and sweat together in butter until the ham begins to color a bit and the onions become translucent. 

I was, unfortunately, out of celery that evening so substituted a green bell pepper with no ill effects.
Matignon in the bottom of the casserole dish Add the prepared Matignon to the bottom of a roasting dish. My small clay baker was just a smidgen too snug and the turkey roaster overkill, so I went with a casserole dish deep enough to accommodate the bird, Matignon and the drippings and added a foil cover before placing in the oven.
The seasoned and butter-basted chicken ready for the oven. Rinse and pat dry your roasting hen (or whatever else you’d like to poêle). Tuck the wings behind the back (to prevent burning) and truss the legs closed. Season with salt and pepper (most of the flavor comes from the basting liquid and the Matignon below) and place on top of the Matignon.

Baste the bird with the melted butter, cover with either the lid for the roasting dish or tented foil (to prevent the skin sticking to it) and place into the oven. Baste again every 15-20 minutes until the thigh registers 150° Fahrenheit. By this point you should have run out of the melted butter and be basting with the liquid from the bottom of the roasting dish.

Finished Poeled Chicken Remove the cover from the bird and place back into the oven until the thigh registers 160° Fahrenheit. The hope is that in cooking those 10 additional degrees the outside of the bird has turned a lovely golden brown. Here’s the thing, though: it may be more golden, less brown, but take it out anyway because it’s better to have a pale, tasty bird than a pretty, dried out one. All told it took around 2 hours to cook our little 4-pound chicken.
Matignon and drippings being simmered into gravy Set the poêled chicken aside and reuse that foil to cover it, keeping in the heat while you make the gravy.Pour the Matignon and pan drippings back into your pan from earlier, add beef stock (no real measurement here, but I’d say no more than a cup–you should have plenty of liquid from the pan to work with, too), bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes.
Straining the Matignon from the gravy Strain out the vegetables, ham and bay leaf from the gravy and de-fat what remains. De-fatting can be accomplished by skimming or dipping the edge of a white paper towel onto the top of the liquid and letting it absorb the fat (though that way can take a little while). One of those fat-separating measuring cups would really come in handy with this step!

Check the finished gravy for flavor (the seasonings from the poultry should make additional salt and pepper unnecessary, but it’s always good to check) and serve.

Poeled Chicken and Gravy over Quinoa, with Green Beans

Poêled Chicken and gravy over Quinoa, with Green Beans

This made for a delicious Sunday supper for us and the carcass went straight into the freezer for gumbo in the not-too-distant future.

The French Do Love to Fry

Nibbles

Well, I can’t speak for the country as a whole, these days, but back in the heyday of Classical French cuisine, frying was THE thing to do.

Escoffier’s The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery is not a cookbook for the beginner. It’s less cookbook and more, as the title suggests, a guide. It assumes the cook has quite a bit of preliminary experience with basic and advanced preparation methods. With over 5,000 “recipes” (mostly paragraphs telling you what to do, but not how and with only a few measurements given) it’s a treasure trove of all that haute cuisine was back in the early twentieth century.

Rambling through old school notes I was reminded of a particular dish that was a lot of fun to make, but it required yet another specific skill: How to Fry an Egg.

As most folks can “fry” an egg quite sufficiently, you might wonder why this is considered a special skill that takes practice and a bit of finesse to complete well.

Here’s the word from the man, himself:

1294  Oeufs Frits — French Fried Eggs

In the long list of ways of preparing eggs, that for fried eggs is relatively insignificant when compared with others. Although fried eggs are used to a great extent for breakfast in England and America, correctly speaking they are Oeufs a la Poele or pan-cooked eggs; in both countries the true fried egg is virtually unknown.

So, if our sunny side ups and over-easys aren’t technically fried eggs in the French sense, how do you fry an egg?

Deep fry it, of course.

Even our chef-instructor was a bit puzzled by how to go about it. Early attempts yielded messy results until he hit upon the seeming trick: to get the oil moving before the egg enters the picture. This makes forming a neat, fried egg with the white enveloping the yolk (which is left liquid) a much easier task.

How to (French) Fry an Egg

  1. Start with a small pan, like an omelet pan, with enough depth to contain an inch of oil without overflowing. Heat the oil until just before it begins to smoke–you’ll notice the oil “walking” along the pan, give it a minute or two more before proceeding. Oil that’s not hot enough will cook the yolk before the whites are sufficiently browned while oil that is too hot will, predictably, burn the bits of egg white that you want to coax around the yolk. Prepare a plate lined with paper towels to drain the eggs on once cooked.
  2. Break an egg onto a saucer. You’re going to fry these one at a time and cracking it directly into the oil encourages splattering and could cause burns. You can season the egg with salt and pepper now, or wait until it’s cooked to season it; I prefer to do it after frying, Escoffier prefers before.
  3. With a chopstick or wooden spoon, stir the oil rapidly to get it to spin a bit. This turned out to be the secret to making this task easier as the whirlpool effect helps keep the eggs from spreading too much once added to the hot oil.
  4. Slide the egg from the saucer into the spinning oil.How to French Fry an Egg
  5. Continue stirring the oil, a bit more gently, and scoot the edges of the white closer to the egg yolk.
  6. As the egg starts to firm up, fold the white over the yolk and keep turning the egg until it sticks.
  7. Continue to turn the egg as it starts to brown along the edges. It’ll puff up a bit but should not explode.
  8. Once the egg seems sufficiently done, gently lift it from the oil and transfer it to the towel-lined plate to drain. Repeat with as many eggs as you need for your dish and serve ASAP!

To those not used to this sort of fried egg, it’s like a cross between a poached egg and one sunny-side up. It’s not greasy, despite being deep fried, and it’s a great option for the next time you’re feeling the Eggs Benedict craving.

Of course, I had a different recipe in mind when I wandered down the fried egg rabbit (chicken?) hole. Come back next week to find out what it was! (Though if you follow me on twitter, you might have already seen it!)

The Lost Art of… Marmalade?

Nibbles
Blueberry Toast with Mixed-Citrus Marmalade

Blueberry Toast with Mixed-Citrus Marmalade

On our second trip to the farmers’ market (Todd came with, this time), I spotted kumquats and thought making marmalade would be a good way to use the fruit and have it available for more than just one meal. Now, I’d made marmalade in the past, but it had been maybe 10 years since, so I wanted to check what I thought I remembered (namely that it didn’t require added pectin) and how much sugar per pound of citrus and so forth.

Would you believe that I went through 6 cookbooks before finding marmalade instructions? We have an entire bookcase of cookbooks and not all of them are general-use, so it’s not like I was looking in the specialty books and striking out, these were the massive tomes of all-purpose food knowledge. And while my “textbook” from Culinary School did have a definition and basic method listed, it still wasn’t telling me what I needed to know. Even Joy of Cooking only had a Red Onion Marmalade (which, by the way, is stretching the definition just a bit).

It’s no wonder, then, that the one book to finally come to my rescue was Forgotten Skills of Cooking. It had a whole section on marmalade and even featured a kumquat one. I ended up cobbling together several recipes to fit my time constraints (it was already Sunday and I wanted to use the finished marmalade Monday night, so doing an overnight soak of the seeds and membranes wasn’t practical) and did a mixed citrus marmalade using up some leftover lemons (from Lemon Curd-making the day before), tangerines from Christmas and a couple of pink grapefruits, too.

What I ended up with, after analyzing the various recipes I’d found, was a basic formula that can be used for any sort of citrus you’ve got:

Marmalade Formula

Per pound of citrus (weighed whole) you’ll need:

1 quart water plus 1 cup for the pot
2-3 cups granulated sugar, depending on the kind of citrus you’re using and how sweet you want your finished marmalade to be

And it really is that simple–which is probably why only 7 of our 95 cookbooks mention it at all. (The other reason being that most people buy their marmalade, of course.)

The reason you don’t need additional pectin is because you get that from the seeds and membranes of the fruit, itself–you use everything in some way, shape or form.

Marmalade Procedure

Break Down the Citrus Break down the fruit into its basic components: juice, seeds and peels. Juice each lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit, reserving the juice and placing the seeds in a cheesecloth-lined bowl. Remove the membranes from the squeezed-out fruit halves and add those to the seed-pile. Since kumquats don’t really juice so well, just slice those and remove the seeds, and slice the other citrus peels into bite-sized strips.
Combine and Simmer The initial simmer. Combine the reserved juice, the peels, water and the seeds and membranes tied up in their cheesecloth sack in a deep stock pot. Choose one deeper than I did to prevent boil-overs in later steps–learn from my mistakes, folks! Simmer this mixture, covered, for an hour or so. Don’t let it boil or your marmalade could end up very bitter. Unless, of course, you prefer your marmalade with a lot of bite, then boil it covered through the next step.
The Volume Decreased by Half Cook and concentrate. Right now you’ve got a lot of liquid and some still-tough peels in your pot. Remove the cheesecloth bag with the seeds and membranes (you’ve already harvested the required pectin from them). Bring the mixture to a boil and cook, at a low boil and uncovered, until the liquid has reduced your preferred amount and the peel is as soft as you want it to be.
Adding the sugar before the final boil Add the sugar and cook until set, approximately 15-20 minutes. Here’s the tricky part. According to Forgotten Skills you can test for doneness by placing a small amount of the marmalade onto a cold saucer and see if it gels. This didn’t work for me so I kept cooking the marmalade (on medium-low) for another hour or more (honestly, I lost track). It still hadn’t passed the set-test as described, but I pulled it off the heat and let it cool, anyway, figuring something had to have happened by now.
The finished Marmalade I started with 2.5 pounds of citrus and ended up with 2 quarts of marmalade. I’ve never been into canning so I just divided the spread between 4 pint containers and popping them into the fridge once they’d had a chance to cool off a bit on the counter. If you don’t go the sterilized jars and heat sealing method, you’ll want to store any marmalade you’re not going to use in the next couple of weeks in the freezer.

About the setting thing? I needn’t have worried. The next day You could stand a knife in the marmalade and it wouldn’t even wobble. And despite it’s dark color (probably from the extra cooking time), it wasn’t bitter at all. Added to warm, buttered toast, it’s quite tasty!

Oh, and the main reason I purchased the kumquats and the redfish fillet on the same day? Monday’s dinner was marmalade redfish and it was wonderful!

Season the redfish (or any other firm, white-fleshed fish like cod or monkfish) with salt and pepper and place, skin-side down, on a bed of sliced lemons. Heat half a cup of marmalade with a tablespoon of white wine, just until pourable, and spoon over the fish. Broil the fish 10-15 minutes until done (the flesh is opaque and flakes easily when pressed with a fork), moving it a few inches farther away from the heat if the pieces of peel in the marmalade start to get too dark.

Marmalade Redfish

Marmalade Redfish

When a Cup is Not a Cup

Nibbles

Or, rather, a tale of unequal cups.

As I mentioned earlier, the Indian Cooking Challenge recipes were even more of a challenge because the recipes are coming from the UK or India, where British Imperial units aren’t exactly the same as US Customary, even if they do carry the same names. For those first few recipes, logic was telling me that certain quantities just weren’t going to do the trick and I would have to adjust until things looked right.

The ‘duh’ moment came when I was flipping through Polly Clingerman’s The Kitchen Companion (great book, out of print but if you find a used copy for under $30 snap it up!) and found this short list of common differences. If you do any sort of across-the-pond cooking or even historical recreation, these conversions might help things come out a bit more correct the next time you’re in the kitchen.

British US
Teaspoon 1 1/2 teaspoons
Dessertspoon 1 tablespoon
Measuring tablespoon 1 1/2 tablespoon
Coffee cup (demitasse) 1/3 cup
Gill 2/3 cup
Teacup 3/4 cup
Cup or breakfast cup 1 1/4 cups or

10 fl ounces
Pint 20 fl ounces

The most common substitution I’ve had to make were the cup conversions and the teaspoons. Still, when you’re dealing with small measurements and not everything is different by the same proportion, little differences can make a big impact on the results.

Or, when in doubt, use metric!

Country-Fried Procedural

Nibbles

Chances are you’ve heard of chicken-fried steak. You may have even heard of it’s cousin, chicken-friend chicken. Or maybe you know the thin, breaded and pan-friend delicacy as country-fried.

Chicken- or Country-Fried Chicken with Pepper Gravy, on Buttermilk Biscuits, with Turnip "fries"

Chicken-Fried Chicken with Pepper Gravy, on Buttermilk Biscuits, with Turnip "Fries"

It’s all the same thing, really, and if you’ve ever wanted to make your own here’s the good news: you don’t need a recipe. It’s more a technique than an absolute science.

The Meat

You want it thin. End of story.

Except it’s never that simple–you probably want to know why you want it thin. There are a two reasons:

  • Thin meat cooks quickly, meaning the coating won’t burn before the center of the meat is cooked.
  • Traditionally this is done with tougher cuts of beef and pounding it thin breaks up a bunch of those tough muscle fibers, meaning you can eat it without your jaw getting tired.

You can use a mallet or one of those gadgets with all the sharp needles and make a pincushion out of the protein, but I like to place whatever I’m smashing between two sheets of wax paper (the deli-style pop-up packs are great for this) and go to town with my stainless steel omelet pan.

1/4-inch is your goal–thinner and it’ll start to fall apart on you, thicker and you’ll burn the breading.

The Breading

Speaking of which, there are 2 very important parts when it comes to a proper chicken-fried breading:

  • 3-step breading
  • let it stand 10-15 minutes before frying

The 3-step bread goes dry-wet-dry. The first dredge in seasoned flour sticks because of the natural moisture in the meat. This is enough if you’re just going to sear or brown something, but if you want a good coating, you need a little more.

Dry isn’t going to stick to dry, so you have to dip it into something wet in between, For this, 2 eggs & a couple tablespoons water whisked together does the trick. Buttermilk is not a bad way to go, but I save that for regular fried chicken.

Regular, plain, all-purpose flour is what you’ll see referenced most often, and the seasoning is up to you but you do want to season it, otherwise your chicken or steak is going to be bland. After a few months participating in the Indian Cooking Challenge, I’ve become quite enamored of the properties of gram flour (aka besan)–it’s got a great flavor, is high in protein and low in carbs (compared to wheat flour) and makes a great coating and batter.

Using half gram flour and half all purpose, I seasoned my flour with salt, pepper, dried parsley, garlic powder and a little chili powder. Make sure you’re using dried herbs and powdered spices–they disperse through the flours evenly and stand a better chance of making contact with the food and your palate.

The resting times allows the coating to dry out a little and grab hold of the meat. If you were to immediately put it into the hot oil the coating would fall off, you’d have bare spots and the particles left in your flour would burn, smoke and ruin the pan drippings you’ll need for the gravy, later.

The Frying

Pick the oil of your choice (I went with olive oil–not the usual for cooks down here in the South, but I like my comfort food slightly healthier where I can make it) and pour about a quarter of an inch in your pan, give or take a little. We’re not deep-frying, here, folks, you just need enough to convey that heat up into and through the breading and meat.

The actual cooking should take no more than a few minutes on each side. Flip it once, let it cook through the second side, then set it on a spare plate while you cook the rest, covered and stored in a warm oven if your’s isn’t otherwise occupied (mine was–buttermilk biscuits and turnip “fries”–so I popped a dome on it and set it in the microwave just to keep the heat in one small space).

Portion control folks get all flustered when they see an entree of country-fried steak. It looks huge. It takes up most of a good-sized plate. But most of the time it’s a standard 3 oz piece of meat. Pounded to within a quarter-inch of it’s life, sure, but it’s still 3 oz. At least our chicken breasts were, and they still covered some serious real estate in the pan.

The Gravy

Yes, you can eat chicken-fried chicken without the sawmill gravy but why would you?

Pour off all but 2 tablespoons or so of the fat left in your pan and whisk in 1/4- to 1/2-cup of flour to make a paste. One thing I’ve learned making olive-oil roux is that it sometimes takes a bit more flour than the 50/50 ratio you need with butter and other animal fats, so add it in until it looks right.

The more flour you add, the more milk or cream you’re going to need. I started off with 1 cup heavy cream (because we had it in the house) and 1 cup fat free milk (our usual supply–it balances). This worked well to form a stiff sauce but I knew it was going to need to simmer and I still wanted it spoonable by the end, so ended up adding, I think, a cup more milk. You can also use stock for part or all of the liquid, it just won’t be the creamy white gravy that’s the usual.

Season with salt and LOTS of freshly ground black pepper. Now, from the frying you’re going to have some great flavor already, but it’s still going to need salt. Pepper, on the other hand, is what makes this gravy sing so grind a little, stir, taste and repeat until it tastes like what you remember. Depending on the grind of your pepper and the age of your peppercorns it could take a little or a lot. Give it what it needs.

The Verdict

The gram flour was a total success: the color on the chicken was vibrant instead of drab, the coating was thick and crunchy without being tough and the flavor was enhanced by the new ingredient. I think I could go as far as 75/25 next time and still come out with a fabulous country-fried chicken. I would have tried it in the gravy, too, but the color difference (besan is a light yellow that deepens when wet) might have been too much for me. We had leftovers the next day and the breading had not gotten the least bit gummy nor did it fall off–I attribute this to the gram flour, as well.