Chicken (Unrationed)

By HENRY NOBLE HALL

CHICKEN is about the only form of food not threatened with restriction. Some six million people in the United States are raising chickens, and their output — already in excess of a million tons a year — can be expanded indefinitely. As Oscar of the Waldorf says, “Chicken is America’s favorite food. It is almost as nourishing as beef and more delicate than game. It is within the reach of nearly everybody.”

Of all the pleasures of the table, roast chicken comes first; yet real roast chicken is scarce, and few people in America have ever tasted it, because spits and wood fires have gone the way of quill pens and sand-shakers. When a chicken is roasted, it cooks in free circulating air; when baked, it cooks in stagnant air and is not improved by the fumes rising from the metal casing around it. Now it is quite a simple matter to roast a chicken, and Alexandre Dumas, than whom no greater gourmet ever lived, tells how to do it wherever you can build a fire.

Hickory logs are best, but any dry wood will do. Just fold the flap of neck skin over onto the chicken’s back, sew it. up tightly, roll a lump of butter the size of an egg in salt and pepper, insert it in the vent, and bang up your chicken by its legs on a piece of twisted string in front of the fire. Beneath it place a pan with another good piece of butter and half a cup of cream. As the chicken turns slowly on its twisted string, baste it often, putting as much of the liquid inside the chicken as you can. To those who have only eaten chicken baked in an oven, this will be something of a revelation.

Cova’s restaurant was once the finest in Milan. There one met all that was best in Italian politics, finance, and industry, as well as artists, writers, and singers from La Scala. One day after a fonduta can trofati, made with melted Fontina cheese and white truffles, I was introduced to chicken à la Cova.

To make it you need a large roasting fowl and a really sharp knife. From the raw breast of the bird cut slices as large and as thin as possible. Season with pepper and salt, and let them soak for an hour in beaten egg. Drain the slices well and dip each one in cracker dust. Fry in butter and serve on a folded napkin with fried parsley and slices of lemon. This sounds like an extravagant dish, but it is nothing of the kind, for you can grill the legs of your capon next day and make a petite marmite out of the rack and wings.

There was probably no other city in the world where food entered so largely into the lives of the people as in Lyons. Creamed chicken was its most famous gastronomic specialty. It is quite different from American creamed chicken and, although simplicity itself, needs infinite care and cannot be left for a single instant from the time you start making it till it is brought to table.

A young and tender chicken of the highest quality should be used, or where cut-up chicken can be had, just the breasts of young Leghorns. If a whole bird is used, cut it up as for frying, but remove all skin, and bone the second joints. Turn the pieces of chicken over and over in plenty of melted butter on a slow fire and let them poach gently without taking the slightest color. When quite tender, add enough rich cream to cover the pieces of chicken and simmer gently for ten minutes. Take out the pieces of chicken and place them in a hot dish. To the cream add a little salt, a squeeze of lemon juice, and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Pass this sauce through a Chinese strainer onto your chicken, which should come to table well covered with the rich ivory-colored sauce.

The first thing to bear in mind in making a sauté is that, just as to poach is to boil without boiling, so to saute is to fry without frying. The chicken is cut up as for frying, except that a good piece of the breast is taken off with each wing, the pinion being removed. The second joints, separated from the drumsticks, should be boned. First the pieces of chicken are turned in butter, just hot enough to form a coating that will retain the juices, and as soon as this coating is formed the pot is put in a moderate oven so that the cooking may be completed. The moment the tender breasts and wings are cooked they should be taken out and kept warm, the legs being left a few minutes longer and added to the wings when they are cooked. Then the pot is used for making the sauce for the chicken, which is usually dished up in the center of a garniture cooked separately.

Here now is a chicken sauté especially for two portions. It is dainty and delicious, the only sauté with a garniture in the raw. If you have a cook who will gladly stay up to make you an “after the theater” supper, there is no better midnight delicacy than a chicken sauté Cynthia. Sauté the chicken in butter, keeping it to the color of champagne. When the pieces of cooked chicken have been withdrawn from the oven, swill the cooking vessel with a glass of champagne, let it reduce to half, and add a tablespoonful of chicken jelly, the juice of half a lemon, a piece of butter as big as an egg, and a brimming tablespoonful of dry Curaçao. Mix well and pour this sauce over the chicken, around which you have arranged alternately twelve sections of orange from which all skin has been removed, and half a pound of big seedless grape’s carefully peeled. A bottle of champagne makes an ideal accompaniment.

There are a dozen methods of frying chicken, and of course a great deal depends on whether the bird has just had its neck wrung or has been bought in a city market after being processed and chilled. Chicken may be fried in butter, in bacon fat, or in any other good frying medium, but not in oil. It never tastes the same cooked in oil.

After a good deal of experimentation I have come to the conclusion that the following is the best method of frying the commercial chicken to be bought in American cities. After cutting up the chicken, put the pieces to soak for one hour in clear cold water. Shake the water off and dip the pieces into plenty of flour, so as to form a thick crust. Plunge them into a deep skillet half full of very hot fat, turning them all the time. As soon as the pieces of chicken are a light golden brown, reduce the heat, cover the skillet, and let the chicken cook through. Then uncover the skillet, turn on the gas, and as soon as the pieces of chicken are crisped up again, bring to table with mashed potatoes and butter. Of course, if a cream sauce is desired, butter or bacon fat must be used and the frying process modified accordingly. But to my mind fried chicken is not improved by any sauce, no matter how good. Fried chicken should be eaten as is.

Bear in mind that chicken is one of the most delicate of meats and cooks at a lower temperature than any other. Overdone or exposed to too great heat, a young bird can be made stringy and tough; but cooked with loving care, even an old rooster adds to the joy of life. I once ate a seven-year-old cock that weighed close to twelve pounds—his name was Abraham — and the pleasant memory of that noble bird is with me yet.