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Capon Au Gros Sel
Cut off head and feet from a tender three-and-a-half-pound capon, singe, draw, wipe and truss. Cover all around with thin slices larding pork, tie around firmly with string, lay in a saucepan with six small carrots, six small round white turnips, four branches parsley and two branches chervil, tied together. Pour in sufficient water to cover capon, season with good teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, cover pan and gently boil for thirty minutes. Add six medium white onions, let slowly boil for one hour lift up capon, untie, remove lard and untruss. Place on a hot dish, arrange vegetables-except parsley and chervil-around, sprinkle a teaspoon coarse salt over and serve. Remove fat from surface of capon broth and strain it into white broth pot.
A plain poached bird, French style, finished with nothing but coarse salt. The whole point is the poaching liquid and the vegetables cooked in it, so most of the modernising is about timing and salt.
- The birdA capon is a castrated cockerel, fattier and larger than a standard chicken and rarely sold at supermarkets. A 4 to 5 lb roasting chicken poaches the same way; a boiling fowl will need considerably longer than the hour and a half given here.
- Singe, draw, trussAll three assume a bird bought whole with pinfeathers and innards still in. A modern packaged chicken needs only the giblets removed from the cavity and the legs tied close to the body so it holds its shape in the liquid.
- Larding pork is really bardingThin sheets of fatback or unsmoked salt pork tied over the breast keep it from drying and add fat to the broth. Fresh pork fatback or thinly sliced unsmoked streaky bacon works; if using salt pork, cut the added salt in the pot.
- Coarse salt is the dish"Gros sel" means the bird is served unsauced with a scattering of coarse sea salt and, usually, a small dish more at the table. Do not substitute fine table salt at the finish, since the crunch is the whole seasoning.
- Gently boil means simmerHold the liquid at 180 to 190F, with the surface barely moving. A real boil tightens the breast and clouds the broth, which the recipe expects you to keep.
- Vegetable timingNinety minutes will reduce small carrots and turnips to mush. Poach the bird first and add the root vegetables and onions for the last 25 to 35 minutes so they arrive whole and intact around the platter.
- DonenessTake the bird out when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F, generally 60 to 75 minutes for a 4 lb chicken at a bare simmer. Let it rest a few minutes before untrussing.
- ChervilSold fresh only briefly and seldom stocked. Flat-leaf parsley with a small sprig of tarragon gives a close approximation of its faint anise note; dried chervil contributes nothing.
- The broth and the yield"Strain it into white broth pot" is restaurant housekeeping: the defatted poaching liquid goes back into the kitchen's unseasoned white stock. At home, save it as chicken stock or serve a cup of it before the bird. A 3.5 lb capon should feed about four.
"Au gros sel" is one of the oldest and least decorated ways a French kitchen handles a good bird: poach it in seasoned water with roots and herbs, present it surrounded by the vegetables, and season only with coarse salt at the table. It belongs to the same family as poule au pot, the farmhouse boiled fowl often said to have been a favourite of Henri IV, but where the peasant dish stretched an old hen over a long simmer, the restaurant version uses a young capon and a short one, so the flesh stays pale and moist. Capons were fattened birds sold by weight and prized for their tender breast. The closing instruction to strain the broth into the white broth pot suggests that this is a professional recipe rather than a domestic one: nothing is thrown out, and one dish's poaching liquid becomes the base of tomorrow's soups and sauces.