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Chicken Braisi Au Risotto
Singe, draw, cut off the head and feet at the first joint, and neatly wipe a two-and-a-half-pound tender chicken. Truss and cover the breast with thin slices larding pork, place a mirepoix at the bottom of a braising pan, lay the chicken over it, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper and lightly baste with a little melted butter. Set in the oven to roast for thirty-five minutes or until a nice golden colour, then pour in a gill white wine, one tablespoon brandy and one gill demi-glace, place the lid on the pan and reset in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, dress a Piedmontaise risotto on a large dish, untruss the chicken and lay it on top of the rice. Skim the fat from the surface of the gravy, boil for five minutes, then strain it over the chicken and serve.
A straightforward pot-roast in the French manner, written for a cook who already knows what a mirepoix and a demi-glace are. The only real difficulty is that the book assumes both are standing by in the kitchen.
- The hinge: two heats, not oneThe chicken is browned uncovered first, then braised with the lid on. The book gives no temperatures; as a modern equivalent, roast uncovered hot (around 425F) for the first thirty-five minutes to get the colour, then drop to moderate (around 350F) once the wine and stock go in and the lid is on. Running it all at one moderate temperature risks a pale, steamed bird.
- A gillFour fluid ounces, half a cup, in American measure; five fluid ounces in British. Either way, a gill of white wine and a gill of demi-glace barely cover the bottom of the pan, which is correct for a braise rather than a stew.
- MirepoixRoughly diced onion, carrot and celery, sometimes with a scrap of bacon or ham. It is a flavour bed and a rack in one, keeping the bird off the hot metal. About two cups of dice for a pan this size.
- Larding porkThin sheets of fresh pork fatback, tied over the breast to keep it from drying while the legs finish. Blanched sliced salt pork or unsmoked streaky bacon substitutes; smoked bacon will dominate the sauce.
- Demi-glaceEspagnole and brown stock reduced together to a glossy half-volume — a multi-day proposition in a period hotel kitchen. Reduced brown chicken or veal stock stands in; commercial glace de viande, loosened with water to a light syrup, is closer than a bouillon cube, which will make the finished sauce salty once it is skimmed and boiled down.
- DonenessFifty-five minutes total is about right for two and a half pounds, but the modern check is a thigh reading of 165F. A four-pounder will need another fifteen to twenty minutes under the lid.
- Piedmontaise risottoRisotto in the Piedmont style: rice cooked in stock, finished with butter and grated Parmesan, and in a good kitchen shaved white truffle. Make it while the chicken braises and serve it at once — it will not wait on the platter.
- Finishing the gravySkim, boil five minutes, strain. The five minutes is not incidental: it cooks off some of the raw edge of the wine and brandy and reduces the thin pan liquid toward a sauce consistency.
- YieldThree to four servings, the risotto doing most of the work.
Braisé au risotto is hotel-kitchen French of the sort that filled American cookbooks after the great restaurant chefs of the late nineteenth century made their repertoire the international standard — the spelling "braisi" is most likely a typesetter's slip, though that is an inference rather than a certainty. The construction is classically hierarchical: the mirepoix is sacrificed for flavour and strained out, the demi-glace comes from a stockpot that had been going for days, and the garnish takes its name from the region it belongs to. Piedmont, in northwest Italy, is Europe's rice country — the Po valley paddies supply the short-grain varieties that make risotto possible — and "à la piémontaise" on a period menu generally signals rice with Parmesan and, when the season and the budget allowed, the white truffles of Alba. Pairing an Italian regional garnish with a French braise was ordinary practice in the grand kitchens, and it is exactly the kind of cosmopolitan borrowing that such cookery invited.