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Stuffed Artichoke Bottoms
Trim, cut in quarters and cook the desired number of artichokes in the Italian style, and fill the center of each with a little chicken forcemeat mixed with d'uxelles sauce. Place in a sautepan with a little butter and put in an oven to poach the forcemeat. Then remove, arrange on a dish and serve, pouring a little half-glaze over them.
Oscar writes for a brigade that already knows the four other recipes this one leans on. Read it as an assembly: cooked artichoke bottoms, a chicken forcemeat bound with duxelles, a gentle oven poach, and a spoonful of demi-glace.
- The hinge: poach, do not roastThe forcemeat is raw when it goes in, and Oscar's word is "poach," so the oven is being used gently rather than to brown. He gives no temperature or time; in a modern oven a moderate heat (around 325–350F), loosely covered, will set a walnut-sized mound in roughly 15 to 20 minutes, and poultry forcemeat should reach 165F at the center. Too hot an oven and the forcemeat weeps and turns grainy.
- "Artichokes in the Italian style"A cross-reference to another recipe in the book; in classical usage the phrase generally means artichokes trimmed and stewed in oil with a little liquid, lemon and seasoning until tender. A blanc — water, lemon juice, a spoonful of flour — works as well and keeps them pale. Cook until a knife slides into the base without resistance, then drain well or the sauce will thin.
- Bottoms versus quartersThe title says bottoms; the text says quarters. For bottoms, snap off the leaves and scoop out the choke to leave a cup; for quarters, use large globes, halve, quarter, and pare away the fuzzy choke and any tough leaf tips. Rub cut surfaces with lemon as you go.
- Chicken forcemeatA quenelle mixture: raw chicken breast pounded or processed with a little egg white and salt, then let down with cream over ice. About 8 oz of breast to 1 egg white and 4–6 fl oz cream. Keep everything cold and test a small poached spoonful for seasoning before filling anything.
- Duxelles sauceNot plain duxelles. It is finely minced mushroom and shallot cooked dry in butter, moistened with white wine and a little brown sauce or tomato, reduced thick. Add it cold and sparingly — a tablespoon or two per cup of forcemeat — or the moisture will keep the mousseline from setting.
- "Half-glaze"Demi-glace: brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats a spoon. A good reduced veal or chicken stock, thickened lightly, serves the same purpose. Pour it around and over at the last moment so the pale forcemeat is not muddied.
- YieldThe original leaves the count to the cook. Figure two artichoke bottoms or three quarters per person as a first course, and roughly 1 lb of forcemeat for a dozen bottoms.
- Working aheadArtichokes can be cooked and held in their cooking liquid a day ahead, and the forcemeat mixed a few hours ahead and kept cold. Fill and poach only when you are ready to serve; a reheated forcemeat tightens.
Stuffed artichoke bottoms are a standard of the classical French repertoire — fonds d'artichauts farcis — and Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book records them the way a Waldorf cook would have received them: as a short instruction assuming fluency in the surrounding system of forcemeats, small brown sauces and glazes codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens and later fixed in print by Escoffier. The book's compression is the point; a line like "cook the artichokes in the Italian style" is a cross-reference, not an omission. Artichokes themselves were a luxury vegetable in American hotel dining of the period, and many of their preparations in Oscar's pages carry Italian and French names. The dish is characteristic of a hotel garnish course: a vegetable turned into a vessel, filled with something richer than itself, and finished with a sauce made from bones and time.