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Chicken Saute'
(Pollo saltato) Take a young chicken, remove the neck and trim the wings. Cut away the legs. Cut the chic- Take a young chicken, remove the neck and ken into six pieces. Remove some of the bones.
Beat an egg with a teaspoonful of water and place in it the pieces of chicken after dipping them in flour and seasoning generously with salt and pepper. Leave the pieces in the egg until it is time for cooking. Then take the pieces one by one, sprinkle with bread crumbs and place a saucepan with a good piece of butter on the fire.
When the butter begins to brown put in the pieces of chicken from the side of the skin, then turn them when browned to the other side. Let them on a good fire for about ten minutes. Serve with lemon. The chicken prepared in this way is good also when cold. 143
A straightforward breaded saute of cut-up chicken, closer to a French saute than to deep-fried cutlets. The method is sound; the timing is the part that needs attention.
- Ten minutes is not enoughBone-in chicken pieces browned in butter over a brisk fire will colour well in ten minutes but will not be cooked through. Brown both sides, then lower the heat, cover, and continue until the thickest part reaches 165F, usually 20 to 30 minutes in total.
- The size of the bird"Young chicken" is not defined here, but it implies a small, tender bird rather than a large modern roaster. A 3 1/2 to 4 lb supermarket chicken cut into six will need noticeably longer, and the breast pieces are better halved so they cook at the same rate as the thighs.
- Order of the coatingThe chicken is floured and seasoned first, then put into beaten egg, and only crumbed piece by piece as it goes into the pan. Crumbing at the last moment keeps the coating dry and crisp rather than pasty.
- Resting in the eggThe recipe has the floured pieces sit in the egg until cooking time. An hour in the refrigerator is plenty; do not leave raw chicken in egg at room temperature.
- Butter alone will burn"A good piece of butter" over a good fire browns fast and then blackens. Use clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, and keep the pan at a steady medium rather than high heat.
- Skin side firstStarting the pieces skin down renders fat into the pan and sets the crumb. Do not crowd the pan; two batches give better colour than one.
- ServingSix pieces will likely serve two to three. Lemon is the only accompaniment given, so use good fruit and squeeze at the table.
Pollo saltato belongs to the everyday repertoire of Italian home cooking, where a small bird was jointed rather than roasted whole. The flour-egg-crumb sequence is the same one used for cotolette, and the recipe closes by noting that the chicken is good cold as well as hot. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) consists largely of exactly this kind of plain household cooking, translated with the measurements left comfortably vague.