No. 2239

Casserole of Rice with Chicken or Young Guinea Fowl a la Palestine

Casserole de Riz Garnie de Poulet ou Pintade a la Palestine

Pick and wash in several waters, one pound of rice, more or less according to the size of the casserole that is to be made. Place it in a saucepan, moisten with double its quantity of water and cover entirely with slices of fat pork, salt over and allow to cook, then drain and pound, moistening with a little water. Put this into a saucepan on the fire and let get dry, then turn it over on to a baking sheet or a marble slab and taking in the hands a little less than half, mold it to the shape of a mushroom head, proceeding exactly the same with the other half, keeping back a piece to roll into a round form, then flatten it down to half its thickness. Dress the croustade, laying the flat side of one of the small mushroom pieces on a sheet of paper, then fasten the flattened ball in the center and place the other large mushroom on top of this, only having it reversed, the widest part uppermost. Carve the croustade all around and cover it with clarified butter, then brown in a brisk oven and empty out the inside; fill it with fillets or breasts of chicken sauted in clarified butter and small artichoke bottoms cut in four, also some truffles; when these ingredients are well done dress them inside the croustade; drain the fat from the sautoir, moisten with a little Madeira to detach the glaze, then add some half-glaze sauce (No. 413), reduce, and pour it over the chickens; garnish around the top with hatelets of chicken Villeroi.

A Potato Casserole can be prepared the same as the one of rice, having a very dry mashed potato preparation moistened with raw egg-yolks, then molded; baste butter over and brown in the oven; empty it out and fill up with chicken livers sauted in butter with cooked fine herbs (No. 385) and Madeira sauce (No. 492).

← No. 2238 Casseroles of Lamb Sweetbreads a la de Luyne Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2240 Cream of Partridge or Chicken →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a molded rice case, not a baked casserole: the "casserole" here is a free-standing croustade shaped by hand, browned, hollowed out and filled at the last minute. Nearly everything that can go wrong goes wrong at the shaping stage.

The hinge: drive off the moistureThe pounded rice must be returned to the pan and cooked until it is genuinely dry and tacky, stiff enough to hold a molded edge without slumping. Rice with any free water in it will spread on the sheet and collapse when the inside is scooped out.
"Casserole" and "croustade"Here both words refer to the same thing: the shaped, edible rice container. Ranhofer calls it a casserole in the title and a croustade while it is being dressed, browned and hollowed. Neither word means a covered baking dish in this recipe.
Brisk ovenA hot oven; in modern terms somewhere around 425F, though the book gives no temperatures. The case only needs to take colour and set a crust; the filling is cooked separately in the pan.
The slices of fat porkSalt pork or fatback laid over the rice as it steams, both for seasoning and to keep the surface from drying. Blanch it first if it is heavily cured, or the finished case will be too salty to eat with a Madeira sauce.
Sautoir and half-glazeA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow sauté pan. "Half-glaze sauce" is demi-glace; a reduced brown stock or good jus reduced with the Madeira deglazing does the same job.
Hatelets of chicken VilleroiHatelets are ornamental skewers. Villeroi means the pieces are coated in a thick, cooled Villeroi sauce, then breaded and fried. This is purely decorative and can be omitted without touching the dish.
Guinea fowl and trufflesYoung guinea fowl is available from game dealers and some butchers; a 3 lb chicken substitutes directly, using the breasts only as the recipe specifies. Fresh truffle is optional — sautéed mushrooms give body, though not the perfume.
On the nameIn nineteenth-century French menu code a la Palestine normally signals Jerusalem artichokes. Ranhofer here simply calls for "small artichoke bottoms" -- apparently globe artichokes -- which is worth knowing if you are matching the dish to other books of the period.
YieldA pound of rice should build a case for roughly four to six as a course, though the recipe gives no yield; scale the rice to the diameter of the croustade you want rather than to the number of eaters.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the kitchen at its most architectural: a base ingredient molded into a shape, browned, hollowed, and used as a serving vessel for something more expensive. Rice and potato croustades of this kind were the everyday cousins of the pastry and rendered-fat socles that carried set pieces at grand nineteenth-century services, and their purpose was as much display as dinner — the two stacked "mushroom heads" described here would have arrived at table dressed with skewers standing up out of the top. The Palestine label is generally traced to the Jerusalem artichoke, whose name itself is usually explained as an English mangling of the Italian girasole, the sunflower to which the plant is related; by Ranhofer's day such menu names had drifted loose from any strict definition, which is why an artichoke bottom can stand in without comment.