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Chicken Saute, Florentine
Cut off the head and feet of a tender three-pound chicken. Singe, draw and cut into twelve even pieces. Place in a frying pan two table-spoons oil and a bean garlic; thoroughly heat for five minutes, remove the garlic, place in the chicken, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and gently fry for twenty minutes, turning the pieces quite frequently. Drain out the oil, then add six finely chopped shallots and one finely chopped, seeded green pepper Stir well and cook for five minutes longer, stirring lightly meanwhile. Pour in a half gill sherry, one gill each fresh tomato juice and demi-glace, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and half teaspoon of chopped chives. Mix well and cook on the range for twenty minutes more, lightly mixing once in a while, and dress the chicken on a hot dish. Reduce the sauce for five minutes, squeeze in the juice of a quarter lemon, pour the sauce over chicken, arrange six heart-shaped bread croutons around and serve.
A straightforward stovetop chicken saute in the Delmonico manner, written for a cook who already had stock reduction on hand. Two things need translating: the liquid measures and the demi-glace.
- Gills and half gillsA gill is half a cup. So the sherry is 1/4 cup, and the tomato juice and demi-glace are 1/2 cup each.
- "A bean garlic"This means a single clove, roughly bean-sized, used to perfume the oil and then discarded. Do not let it colour past pale gold in those five minutes or the whole dish turns bitter.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole combined with brown stock and reduced until it coats a spoon. Jarred demi-glace or reduced glace de viande diluted to sauce consistency will do; unreduced canned broth will leave the sauce thin and salty rather than glossy.
- Fresh tomato juiceNot the canned breakfast drink, which is salted and cooked-tasting. Grate or blend a ripe tomato or two and strain.
- Cut into twelve piecesFrom a 3-lb bird: two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, each breast halved, and the back split, which comes to twelve. Modern birds tend to run larger, so a 3 to 3 1/2-lb bird cut the same way is the nearest match.
- Total cooking timeTwenty minutes frying plus five plus twenty plus a five-minute reduction is around fifty minutes of heat on dark meat and white together. Breast pieces will be dry by then; pull them once they read 165F and return them to the pan for the last few minutes to coat.
- "Cook on the range"Stovetop rather than oven. The text does not say whether to cover; left uncovered the sauce will concentrate as the chicken finishes, while covered it will stay thin and need the later reduction to do all the work.
- CroutonsBread cut into hearts, as the recipe says, and fried in butter or oil until crisp. The recipe sets them around the dish rather than in the sauce; they soften quickly once sauce reaches them, so arrange them at the last moment.
- YieldServes four generously, three if the chicken is the only substantial dish.
"Florentine" in classical French kitchen shorthand generally signals spinach, but this dish carries none: what it has instead is garlic softened in oil, sweet pepper, tomato and herbs. The technique underneath is French: poulet saute, in which the bird is jointed, browned in fat, and finished in a small quantity of wine and reduced brown stock so the sauce is built from the pan itself. The demi-glace called for here assumes a larder with stock already reduced and on hand, which is why the recipe reads as effortless in a professional kitchen and as a much longer undertaking at home.