A chicken in every pot belly

8 May 2008, 3pm

Where we live you’d be hard pressed to find anyone under 70 (and even then, at any time other than Sunday morning before family lunch) making poule au pot, but nonetheless it is I think one of the very best of the ancient, rustic slow-cooked standards, and everybody should have it at least once or go to the grave wondering why they hadn’t.

Tons of good brining info here.

Right: brining chicken, even if it is to be poached in liquid, is righteous and good. On a tip picked up reading the great McGee (a book so hugely useful it should be distributed Gideon-style) I’ve been tinkering around with the idea of brine as tea, into which other flavours can be brewed to participate in the saline-protein exchange voodoo. You’re going to prepare a 7% brine (70g of salt per litre of water), so while boiling enough water to dissolve the salt, chuck in a few bay leaves, a head of smashed garlic, a big bunch of thyme and twenty three black peppercorns. Boil for 5–10 minutes, then strain and add enough ice water to make the final brine, into which is gently slid a nice plump dead chicken. Into the fridge overnight, then rinse.

Elizabeth David’s bread crumb method still reigns: dry slices of dense crusty white low and slow in the oven, lay them out on a counter and bash like hell with a rolling pin. Also: packaged bread crumbs taste like shit.

Create about a chicken cavity’s worth (that’s a standard measurement, look it up) of a stuffing made from chopped garlic and shallots, lots of chopped flatleaf parsley, good home-made bread crumbs and ground pork or sausage meat (the proportions are entirely yours to choose; I go about 40/60 bread/flesh) and a raw egg. You should be smoking while doing this, with the cigarette perched at enough of a jaunty angle that falling ash may add random colour and texture every time you swear. Stuff the chicken quite tightly (cram, cram) before trussing with string.

It now dawns on me the whole reason for typing out this longish quasi-recipe is to strut about a fetish object I’ve wanted for, like, ever, and just got because the local hardware store was doing a sale on Le Creuset, which even here in its country of manufacture is risibly expensive, and hardly ever discounted. Anyway, in the second recent bout of consumer ecstasy I am now in squidgy love with this enamelled cast-iron thing:

Seriously, love. I visit it at random throughout the day. Anyway this or any vessel of its ilk will do: it’s strictly stovetop, so oven-proofedness isn’t a concern, but it should be deep enough so the chicken can be, oh do we really need a Pooh reference, completely surrounded by water.

Do just that and bring to a low boil, skimming off any scum that should rise to the surface. Add any combination you like of aromatics like carrots, celery, onion, parsley, garlic. Simmer for an hour or so, then remove the chicken and strain the by-now knackered vegetables from the broth to be chucked in the compost or served to rotten children.

Check the broth for seasoning, then the chicken goes back into the pot, to simmer for another half hour with whatever vegetables you like; here that’s chunks of waxy potato, carrots, young purple turnips, spring onion bulbs, and, toward the very end, thickly sliced fresh fennel (this does tend to make everything taste like fennel, so go lightly if that’s not your thing).

While that is burbling away, mash together a sauce gribiche, which is just an emulsification of boiled egg yolk, mustard and olive oil into which you mix chopped sour pickles, chopped boiled egg white, capers, anchovy, chopped parsley and shallots with salt and pepper until it’s about the consistency of lumpy ketchup.

Let the chicken rest on a plate for 15 minutes before mutilating it into dainty little portions with your favourite knife, then prise out and slice the stuffing. Pile the vegetables high in a huge bowl, arrange the chicken and stuffing slices on top, ladle a lot of the broth on top of the whole mess, then plunk it down in the middle of the table. The sauce may be passed from person to person, but only counter-clockwise, to be globbed thickly onto the plate as necessary. Cheap red wine and bread go real good.

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