“I don't get no respect.” - Rodney Dangerfield
A “chicken in every pot” is one political promise that has come all too true, at least in the United States, where chicken is about the cheapest protein going except for eggs. Chicken, achingly available in every place and season, is no longer universally regarded as a treat. To many, it’s more of a duty — either to waistline or bottom line.
Still, we enjoy a lot of chicken dishes despite the slings and arrows of an arrogant food press. I myself have complained of modern henhouse techniques producing tasteless birds. But, having sampled some muscular “free-range” chickens in Barbados (magnificent island, dismal food) last year, I was grateful to return to the plump, tender creatures of American poultry farming.
Chinese cookery treats chicken with the respect engendered when there is only one chicken for several pots, and many mouths around each of them. Even the feet are treasured (my very own grandmother used to put the hideous things in a stew), though I don’t think we need go that far. In this land of chicken plenty we can be as choosy as we like and, since it’s so cheap, we can afford to be rather lavish with embellishments.
Take Care
Wild mushrooms, wines, cream, truffles, or rare spices such as saffron can lift the humble bird to banquet status. But care is the most important ingredient in good chicken dishes— the white meat especially is routinely cooked to polyester pillow stuffing. Skinned and boned chicken breasts— supremes to the French, cutlets to us—are the most fragile, quick cooking, and easily incinerated.
There are hundreds of chicken dishes in French cuisine, but a large number of them are the basic “chicken saute” outfitted in a variety of costumes. I’m including one here because it’s quick, comforting, and you’re always glad that you’ve made it again: chicken saute with mushrooms and rice.
Chicken salad is another dish with “legs” suitable for family, friends, wedding receptions, or just a picnic under a tree. (Eating under a glaring sun—especially on a beach—is my idea of hell.) But even the old favorite is open to new interpretations, and a Chinese technique I tried recently has practically reinvented basic chicken cookery for me.
Chicken Salad As-You-Like-It
This is a basic chicken salad, faultless as is, but can be altered with various herbs, spices, and added ingredients. Some of mine have been, depending on the larder, fresh white mushrooms, water chestnuts, ham, or smoked tongue.
Fresh coriander or chervil, minced, are interesting accents, and a heavy sprinkling of chopped chives is delicious and non-controversial. Coriander is a love-it-or-hate-it taste and not wise to spring on the unsuspecting. Despite what the columnist Russell Baker calls your Life Style Guide’s disapproval, you don’t have to like coriander. I never liked raddicchio.
Serves four to six.
2 whole chicken breasts, not boned
2 slices fresh ginger root (optional)
1 bay leaf
2 scallions
2-3 chicken bouillon cubes
1 cup dry white wine
A few celery tops (optional)
Poaching the chicken breasts on the bone with the skin on retains more flavor and keeps the flesh much juicier. Just split them down the keelbone.
Combine the ginger, bay leaf, and scallions with enough water to cover the chicken breasts in a small deep pot. Add the bouillon cubes and stir to dissolve, then the white wine and the celery leaves, maybe a sprig of parsley or perhaps a clove of garlic if you fancy it. When the chicken arrives at a simmer, turn it low and hold it there for two minutes. Cover the pot, turn off the heat, and let the chicken poach in its own heat for 30 minutes. Remove it from the broth and plunge the breasts into cold water for a few seconds. This is what the Chinese call “white-cut chicken” and they very much fancy the skin which is taut and smooth from this technique. However, I usually discard the skin or feed it to the cat.
Pull the flesh from the bones. (I often put the bones and skin back into the chicken broth and simmer it a while before straining it to save for stock for my freezer supply.) It will be amazingly moist, tender, and close-textured. Cut it into manageable bites.
1 cup mayonnaise (blender home-made is easy)
Zest of one lemon
3/4 cup celery, finely diced
4-5 scallions, finely sliced
1/4 cup minced parsley
Salt and white pepper to taste
Dash of Tabasco sauce
2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
The poached chicken meat
Minced chives (or parsley)
Mix the mayonnaise with the lemon zest, then all the remaining ingredients. Mix lightly and don’t pulverize the eggs. Pile lightly onto rinsed, dried lettuce leaves, sprinkle the salad with more minced parsley, and serve. Freshly made, at cool room temperature is the ideal chicken salad. However, as this is rarely practical, remove it from the refrigerator half an hour before serving.
Mayonnaise should usually be thinned a little with plain water so that the salad won’t be gluey. Add only one or two optional ingredients or herbs. Don’t baffle the senses with a polyglot of flavors. Another of my borrowings from the Chinese, first employed to stretch the salad and now by preference, is to serve it on a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce that has been tossed sparingly with vinaigrette. Iceberg lettuce (modern iceberg lettuce is dark green and leafy, a far cry from the old stuff) makes wonderful “w rappers” for poached chicken, shredded Chinese-style and served in a walnut oil dressing.
Chicken And Mushroom Sauté
This must be served with rice, either plain white rice or a mixture of plain and wild rice, or it just doesn’t work—it’s like trying to have paella without rice. You can substitute fresh or canned or dried-and-reconstituted wild mushrooms for some of the domestic ones.
Serves four.
1 frying chicken, about 3 1/2 lbs.
1/2 stick of butter
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced
2 Tbsp. flour, preferably granulated “Instant” Wondra
2 cups chicken stock
1 sprig fresh tarragon or 1/2 tsp. dried
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 lb. fresh white mushrooms
4 cups cooked hot white rice
Minced parsley
Disjoint the chicken and discard the wing tips and giblets. Rinse and dry the pieces. Melt the butter and saute the chicken gently until gold-colored. Add onion, stir under the chicken, and saute briefly. Sprinkle with flour, stirring it into the butter. Stir in the chicken stock and tarragon, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile cook the rice and mushrooms. Melt the butter and saute the cleaned mushrooms, whole if they’re buttons or quartered if they’re not, over fairly high heat about two minutes. Drain off any extra fat.
Uncover the chicken, stir it smooth, and cook down, if watery, to a thick sauce. Stir in the cream and mushrooms. Make a depression in a bed of rice on each plate and serve some of the chicken in the center. Sprinkle with parsley. A few drops of lemon juice added after the cream is nice, but not essential. The essential thing about this dish is its simplicity.
