Creole Fricassee of Chicken a la Jardiniere

This isn't a new twist on an old standby. It's an old twist on an old standby.

Chicken fricassee holds a special place in Creole cuisine - front and center. It is so fundamental, so basic that to an old Creole it must have seemed quite ordinary. But thumbing through archived recipes of a century ago (in The Times Picayune Creole Cookbook), one can see that it did not have to be ordinary. It could be transformed into something stupendous. Fricassee a la Jardiniere is an outright celebration, a showcase of the best of the garden.

You begin with the chicken fricassee - a sauté of chicken, braised in sauce with aromatics, swimming in gravy, laced with green onion - but then you get extravagant. There are already vegetables in the fricassee. That was just part of the foreplay.

Now for the showcase vegetables - they are our second line. And it can be everything a second line should be. Arrange them on top of the fricassee, in and out of the gravy, nestled among drumstick, thigh and breast. Then finish it all in a hot oven.

FIRST LINE FRICASSEE

 

1 C (in all) olive oil

1 1/2 C (in all) flour

1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces

salt and pepper

2 carrots diced

1 1/2 C diced onion

1 C diced fennel bulb

3/4 C diced bell pepper

3/4 C diced celery

3 T finely chopped garlic

1 C green onions, sliced, with a good bit of green - Note: the green onions are not to be added until the braise is finished.

2 C chicken broth

1 can condensed beef broth

3/4 C white wine

2 t paprika

1/2 t cayenne

1/2 t black pepper

1/2 t white pepper

4-5 springs of fresh thyme
Sour cream (optional) 

1. Generously salt and pepper the chicken pieces. Scatter 1 C flour on a plate, and dredge chicken in flour, thoroughly coating each piece.

2. In Dutch oven, over medium high heat, bring 1/2 C oil to shimmering, then brown the chicken, in two batches so as not to over-crowd, 3 or 4 minutes a side, till golden brown all over; set aside.

3. Discard oil, wipe pan - but do not disturb any brown crust left on the bottom - do remove any burnt spots - and add 1/2 C fresh oil.

4. PREHEAT OVEN to 375

5. Blend in 1/2 C flour, stir until smooth, and cook over medium heat, still stirring occasionally, till you have a golden brown roux.

6. Stir in all the vegetables except the green onions, and stir, stir - till vegetables are wilting. Then add paprika, cayenne, black and white pepper - still stirring.

7. Slowly add the chicken broth, stirring until well incorporated. As it thickens, add the consume, a little at a time, and then the wine - still stirring -

8. Place the chicken back in the pot, cover. Lower heat and simmer 45 minutes.

9. Stir in the green onions. You might wish to stir in some sour cream, too.

And the fricassee is basically done. Now to make it a la jardiniere.

SECOND LINE VEGETABLES

10. Add your second line vegetables to the fricassee after it has been braised for 45 minutes. Keep them on the surface - at least don’t fully submerge them. But do make sure everything is at least moistened in the sauce. With tongs lift exposed pieces of chicken enough to allow some crisping of skin.

11. Then place Dutch oven in oven, uncovered, on an upper rack, and cook 15 minutes.

Artichoke. This recipe should feed to bursting four people. So an artichoke, quartered, will provide each an interesting diversion. If you have more than four people, you might wish to cut it into eighths. Or use two artichokes. Bring to a boil enough water to cover the artichoke, add the juice of a lemon, the lemon itself, a bay leaf, a couple of garlic cloves, a teaspoon of peppercorns and some olive oil - don't forget the artichoke. Cook for 30 minutes. Remove,  and drain. Cut off the stem, peel it and slice it. Cut the artichoke in half, length wise. Carefully remove the spiny choke and the tough inner leaves; then - with cut side facing down - carefully slice the halves in two.

Cauliflower. Cut it in half, lengthwise. Half a cauliflower should be plenty (save the other half for a salad). Cut florets from the stalk, and halve the larger ones if it will make the general size more uniform. Over high heat, bring about a quart of water to a boil. In a large bowl, prepare an ice water bath. Drop the florets into the boiling water, give it a few seconds to get back up to a boil, and cook 3 minutes. Remove the florets and drop into the ice water bath. When cool, remove.

Corn. Boil an ear or two for 10 minutes. Remove, and cut into 1/2 inch roundels.

Green peas. 1/C fresh, blanched for three minutes; or thawed frozen - no precooking necessary.

Cherry tomatoes. Especially if you can find a variety of sizes and colors. 1 C should suffice.  

Serve over rice - or dirty rice. Get casual. Use your hands - with the artichoke and the corn, you’ll have to.

There are of course a lot of other options for the second line vegetables: spring onions, roasted in foil; wedges of fennel bulb, roasted without the foil; roasted garlic, patty pan squash, red chilis; blanched asparagus or broccoli florets - and on and on.

Cornish Hen Paradis

Madeira demi glace spiked with current jelly and truffles, and adorned with fresh green grapes – an old haute Creole concoction – Sauce Paradis was once upon a time served with the squab at Antoine’s. But it is great on anything – veal scallops browned in butter sure comes to mind – though it especially shines with roasted fowl.

Squab is a young pigeon, right? Getting your hands on a pigeon can be complicated. It can involve more embarrassment than one would expect. When you live in a small town, you can’t count on anonymity. So I gave up on Pigeonneaux Sauce Paradis; I need a bird I can get in the grocery store. A Cornish hen will do. And each guest can still have a picture perfect fine-figure-of-a-fowl on his or her very own plate.

  

My wife says this dish is perfect for Easter, because it has the fresh look of Spring, and there is absolutely nothing ordinary about it. It is, she says, Holiday special. (She really talks like that).

It might be a good idea to serve a light salad as a first course, and then end with the bird - and just the bird. Lots of garlic bread nearby for the sauce.

The last time we made this, we finished by passing the roasting pan around the table for mopping up with the last of the bread.

That’s how everybody knew it was time for dessert.

For each Cornish Hen:

With a pair of Kitchen shears remove the backbone, and save it to make a broth with later on. Spread out the hen, breast up, on a work surface. Press down on the breast until you hear the pop, and flatten the bird. Rub it down with olive oil, and generously salt and pepper.

On a half sheetpan, in a 400 degree oven, roast the birds for 40 to 45 minutes. You want them done enough to come easily off the bone, with some crisp in the skin to stand up to the sauce.

SAUCE PARADIS

1 stick butter

1/4 C flour

2 C condensed beef consomme

1/2 C Madeira

3 T current jelly

1/8 t white pepper

3 C sliced white grapes

black truffle - at least 1 whole truffle, sliced 

In a 2 quart sauce pan, on low heat, melt a stick of butter, then add a quarter cup of flour, and start whisking. You are making a roux. A blondish roux, not a dark one; the darker the roux the less thickening power. Five or ten minutes on low heat should be enough to cook the flour taste out of it, but not so much you’ll wind up with soup instead of sauce.

Then - still whisking - blend in 2 Cups of condensed beef consomme.

Don’t worry, this is not one of those condensed soup recipes from A Man, a Can, and a Plan (which, by the way, is a great little book). The original prescription is for a rich beef broth - so why not condensed beef consomme? Beats looking for a bunch of bones and an extra couple of days’ work. Or reducing four cups of regular beef broth to make it double strength. But a 10.5 ounce can contains only 1 1/4 Cups, so you will need two cans. (The dog is entitled to the remainder mixed in with his dry food).

Back to the sauce – whisking, whisking – Blend in 1/2 Cup Madeira. This makes it old world Southern. Use Rainwater Madeira, and it makes it even more so. There are some good stories about Rainwater Madeira and old Savannah - which I should save for a Savannah recipe.

Add the 1/8 t white pepper and 3 T’s currant jelly. Keep stirring. It will begin to thicken.

Keep cooking and stirring. You don’t want to add the truffles until you are pretty much done with the stirring. No sense in breaking them up any more than you have to.

Once you have the sauce the way you want it, add the truffles and any remaining truffle liquid.

Then add the grapes and turn off the heat. 

Shortly before the birds are ready to take out of the oven, start reheating the sauce.

When the birds are done, sauce them, arranging the grapes and truffle slices for best effect.

Put them back in the oven for five or ten minutes, to glaze the sauce and get them piping hot before serving.

This same recipe works just fine with any manner of roast fowl. Butterfly a chicken, roast it, reheat it with sauce and then cut it up. Think about thinly sliced turkey breast - which is screaming for sauce. What about duck? You like Veal Marsala? You’ll like Veal Madeira. You’ll die for Veal Paradis. Ever notice that any veal dish makes a great pork dish? It goes on and on.

This sauce is special.