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Chicken Saute, Monaco
Cut necks and feet off two spring chickens of one and a half pounds each. Singe and draw and cut each into six even pieces. Heat two tablespoons oil in a large frying pan, add the chicken, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and briskly brown for five minutes on each side. Add two ounces of lean, raw ham cut into small squares, lightly mix and cook for five minutes more. Remove the oil from the pan, moisten with a half gill claret, let reduce for six minutes, then pour in a gill of broth and one gill demi-glace, mix a little and let cook for fifteen minutes. Add one finely sliced, small truffle, twelve fresh tarragon leaves, and half teaspoon freshly chopped chives; lightly mix and cook for five minutes more, remove from the fire, take up the chickens with a fork and place on a large dish; boil the sauce for five minutes more and pour it over the chickens; arrange six heart-shaped croutons around the dish and serve.
A straightforward French-style saute, but the measurements and the poultry both need translating before you shop.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. So the wine is 1/4 cup, the broth 1/2 cup and the demi-glace 1/2 cup.
- Spring chickensA 1 1/2 lb bird dressed is roughly a poussin or a Cornish game hen. Two Cornish hens are the closest match; a single 3 lb chicken cut into eight will also work, but add five to ten minutes to the fifteen-minute simmer.
- Singe and drawBoth steps are done for you at the butcher. Cutting each bird into six means two legs (thigh and drumstick left joined), two wings, and the breast halved.
- Raw lean hamNot American cured-and-smoked ham. Use prosciutto, speck, or unsmoked pancetta, cut in small dice; 2 oz is about a scant half cup.
- ClaretPeriod English for red Bordeaux. Any dry, medium-bodied red does the job.
- Demi-glaceThe one component with no honest shortcut. Buy a good jarred or frozen demi-glace, or reduce 2 cups of strong brown veal or chicken stock to 1/2 cup. Watery stock in its place leaves the sauce thin and the dish falls flat.
- TruffleA fresh black truffle is a luxury purchase; a small jarred truffle with its juice, added at the same late stage, is the practical substitute. Truffle oil behaves differently and tends to dominate the tarragon.
- TarragonTwelve fresh leaves is a light hand by design. Dried tarragon is a poor stand-in here since the leaves go in whole at the end for perfume, not for steeping.
- CroutonsBread cut into hearts and fried in butter or clarified butter until crisp. Make them while the sauce reduces; they soften quickly once they touch the platter.
- YieldFour servings, or two generous ones. The recipe's own stated timings add up to about three-quarters of an hour at the stove, so allow an hour with prep.
Naming a saute after a place or a patron was standard practice in the French restaurant kitchens of the late nineteenth century, and "Monaco" belongs to a cluster of garnishes and preparations that borrowed the glamour of the principality and Monte Carlo in their casino heyday. The structure here is textbook: brown the bird in fat, add a cured pork element for depth, deglaze with red wine, reduce, then build the sauce on demi-glace, the reduced brown stock that underpinned nearly every sauce in the classical repertoire. Truffle and tarragon at the very end, off the heavy boil, are finishing touches rather than cooking ingredients. The assumption that a cook had demi-glace and a truffle to hand says a good deal about who was expected to be reading.