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Chicken and Lamb Fricassee
1 small chicken 6 lambs chops 3 tablespoons shortening 1 onion, sliced 2 tablespoons boiled rice 1 apple, chopped 1 green pepper, chopped 1 teaspoon curry powder 1 teaspoon paprika 2 doz. small oysters Disjoint a small chicken and fry it in hot shortening with lamb chops, until all are well browned. Add onion, rice, apple, green pepper and seasonings. Add a small quantity of water and simmer slowly until meat is tender. Just before serving, add oysters. Heat thoroughly and serve on squares of toast with potato cakes. Serves six.
A skillet braise of two meats finished with oysters, closer to a mild curry than a classic white fricassee. The one thing to get right is the oysters at the end.
- Oysters last, and brieflyAdd the shucked oysters with their liquor only when the meat is done and the pan is off a hard boil. They need about two minutes, until the edges just ruffle; anything longer and they shrink and turn rubbery.
- ShorteningHere a solid frying fat, vegetable shortening or lard. Butter, oil or a mix browns just as well; butter alone will darken before the chicken does, so add a spoon of oil with it.
- "A small chicken"Read that as 2.5 to 3 lb, cut into eight or ten pieces. A modern 4-5 lb bird will feed six on its own and will crowd the pan against the chops; brown in two batches if you scale up.
- The rice is already cooked"2 tablespoons boiled rice" means cooked rice, added as a thickener rather than a starch course. It disappears into the sauce; raw rice in that quantity would not.
- "A small quantity of water"Enough to come partway up the meat, not to cover it. The liquid should reduce to a sauce by the time the chicken is tender; expect roughly half an hour to three-quarters at a bare simmer, judged by the meat rather than the clock.
- Curry powder and paprikaA teaspoon of each in a dish for six is a gentle hand rather than a hot curry. Bloom both in the hot fat for thirty seconds after the onion softens rather than adding them with the water; the flavour is better for it.
- ServingSix portions. Squares of toast are meant to soak up the sauce, so cut them thick and put them down just before the plates go out. Potato cakes can be made ahead and reheated in the same pan after the meat comes out.
The name is generous: a true fricassee is meat stewed pale in its own liquor and finished with cream or egg, while this browns everything hard and seasons it with curry powder, apple and green pepper, in the manner of the American country captain. Curried chicken and cheap oysters both had long careers in Anglo-American cooking, though a settled tradition of combining the three is harder to demonstrate.