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Chicken with Sauce Piquante
(Pollo al diavolo) This ought to be cooked with Cayenne pepper and served with a highly seasoned sauce, but not everybody likes that and a simpler way to cook the chicken "al diavolo" is the following:
Take a young chicken, remove the neck and the legs, open it all in front and flatten it open as much as possible. Wash and wipe dry with a towel, then put it on the grill and when it begins to brown turn it. Grease it with melted butter or with oil, using a brush, and season with salt and pepper. The later may be Cayenne pepper for those who like it. Keep turning and greasing until it is all cooked.
To prepare the sauce piquante that many like with chicken broiled in this way, put four tablespoonfuls of butter in a saucepan and when it begins to brown add two tablespoonfuls of flour and stir until it is well browned, but do not let it burn. Draw to a cooler place on the range and slowly add two cupfuls of brown stock, stirring constantly, add salt and a dash of Cayenne and let simmer for ten minutes. In another saucepan boil four tablespoonfuls of vinegar one tablespoonful of chopped onion, one teaspoonful of sugar rapidly for five minutes; then add it to the sauce and at the same time add one tablespoonful of chopped capers two tablespoonfuls of chopped pickle and one teaspooful of tarragon vinegar. Stir well and let cook for two minutes to heat the pickles. If the sauce becomes too thick dilute it with a little water.
This sauce is excellent for baked fish and all roasts and boiled meats, besides being a fitting condiment for the chicken "al diavolo". 141
Two recipes in one: a spatchcocked broiled chicken and a browned sauce piquante that will outlive the bird in your repertoire. The hinge is the roux — brown it deliberately but stop short of bitterness, because scorched flour cannot be rescued once the stock goes in.
- "Open it all in front and flatten"This is spatchcocking: cut down either side of the backbone, or straight through the breastbone as written, then press the bird flat with the heel of your hand until the joints crack. A weight — a foil-wrapped brick or a heavy pan — on top keeps it in contact with the heat and cuts the cooking time considerably.
- Bird sizeA "young chicken" here would likely be a broiler of roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb rather than a modern 4 lb roaster. A large supermarket bird flattened out will char before the thigh is done; look for a small chicken or a poussin, or accept that you will need to finish it in a 400F oven.
- "Remove the neck and the legs"Most likely the feet and lower shanks rather than the whole leg quarters, since the bird is then opened out and flattened whole. Nothing to do today beyond trimming the wing tips.
- The grillWritten for a gridiron over coals or a hinged broiler in a range. A charcoal grill over medium indirect heat is the closest equivalent; an overhead broiler works but sits the bird too close, so drop the rack.
- DonenessJudge by an instant-read thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone. A flattened 2 1/2 lb bird takes roughly 30 to 40 minutes over moderate coals with regular turning and basting.
- Brown stockVeal or beef stock made from roasted bones — richer and darker than chicken stock. A good commercial beef stock reduced slightly will do; avoid anything heavily salted, since the sauce reduces and you are also adding capers and pickle.
- The rouxFour tablespoons butter to two of flour is a loose ratio by modern habit; the extra fat is deliberate and gives the sauce its gloss. Cook it to the colour of a hazelnut shell, then move off the heat before adding stock so the flour does not seize into lumps.
- "Chopped pickle"Sour gherkins or cornichons, not sweet American pickle relish, which would throw the vinegar-and-sugar balance the recipe carefully sets up. Two tablespoons, chopped fine.
- YieldThe chicken serves two, three at a stretch. The sauce makes about two cups — more than the bird needs, which is why the author recommends it for fish and boiled meats as well. It keeps three or four days refrigerated and reheats gently with a splash of water.
Pollo alla diavola — chicken "in the manner of the devil" — is a Tuscan and Roman grill dish, and the name is generally traced to the fierce heat of the fire and the sting of the pepper rather than to any legend in particular; the same logic gives French cooking à la diable and English kitchens their devilled kidneys and devilled bones. What is telling about this particular version is the sauce: a browned-flour sauce piquante built on brown stock, vinegar and capers is French technique, not Italian. The closing note — that it suits baked fish, roasts and boiled meats besides — is how these books earned their keep, one preparation stretched across a week of dinners.