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Chicken a la McDonald
1 cup cold cooked chicken, cut in strips 3 cold boiled potatoes, cut in one-third inch slices 1 truffle cut in strips 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour 1 1/2 cups scalded milk Salt Pepper Make a sauce of butter, flour, and milk. Add chicken, potatoes, and truffle, and, as soon as heated, add seasoning.
A plain white-sauce hash of leftover chicken, held together by butter, flour and milk, with truffle as the one luxury. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes once the chicken and potatoes are cooked.
- The hinge: cook the roux before the milk goes inMelt the butter, stir in the flour and let it bubble a full minute before adding the scalded milk in stages. Skipping this leaves a raw, pasty flavour that nothing later in the recipe covers.
- Scalded milkMilk heated to just below boiling, until it steams and a rim of bubbles forms at the edge. It blends into a roux with less lumping than cold milk, though with a whisk cold milk works too.
- Sauce consistencyThree tablespoons each of butter and flour to 1 1/2 cups milk works out to about 2 tablespoons flour per cup, a medium white sauce close to a modern bechamel rather than thicker than one. Thin it with a little more milk if it sets up stiff, since the potatoes will absorb liquid as it stands.
- TruffleOne fresh truffle is out of proportion to the rest of this dish today. A small jarred black truffle, a teaspoon of truffle paste, or 2-3 ounces of sauteed cremini or chestnut mushrooms all read correctly here; presumably the truffle contributed aroma and dark flecks against the white sauce.
- PotatoesBoiled and fully cold, so the third-inch slices hold their shape when folded in. Warm potatoes crumble and thicken the sauce into a paste. Waxy varieties hold best.
- Season at the endThe recipe adds salt and pepper only once everything is hot. Season and taste at that point, bearing in mind that the chicken and any canned truffle bring their own salt.
- Serving and yieldServes two as a light main, three or four as a small course. The recipe says nothing about serving; mixtures of this kind are commonly spooned over toast, into pastry shells, or into a shallow dish and browned briefly under the broiler.