Plats historiques : La poule au pot.
Historical dishes: recipes from the past!
From Béchamel sauce to tarte tatin, chicken in a pot and veal Marengo, the great recipes of French cuisine are made up of little stories!
On the way for a journey through time (and into the back kitchens) to discover the secrets of some of the jewels of our gastronomy...
The chicken in the pot.The myth of the hen in the pot of Henri IV (1533-1610) is part of the French collective memory.
It only saw the light of day half a century after the death of the good king, under the pen of Hardouin de Perefixe, tutor of the future Louis XIV. After an argument with the Duke of Savoy, Henri IV would have had this formula "If God still gives me life, I will ensure that there will be no plowman in my Kingdom who does not have the means to have a hen in his pot".
Nothing attests to the veracity of this statement, but we know that Henri IV was greedy and concerned about the fate of his people. Be that as it may, the success of this formula will not be denied and would also be at the origin of the institution of the sacrosanct "Sunday chicken" under Louis XVIII...
- Our old-fashioned chicken pot recipe: you need 1 ready-to-cook chicken (about 2kg), 250g ground veal, 250g ground pork, ½ salted pork belly, 1 egg, 1 bunch of parsley , thyme, bay leaf, salt, pepper, 1kg of carrots, 1kg of turnips, 2 large leeks, 1 stalk of celery, 1kg of potatoes, 2 large onions, 2 cloves, 1 sprig of rosemary.
Put the chicken in a Dutch oven ¾ full of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 hours, skimming often.
Meanwhile, mix the veal, pork, washed and chopped parsley, chopped onion, salt, pepper and thicken with the egg yolk. Roll the mixture into a sausage shape in a clean cloth, then tie tightly at the ends. (NB: this stuffing is optional, but what's good!)
After 2 hours, add the peeled and washed vegetables, the thyme, the bay leaf, the second onion studded with cloves, the parsley stalks, the celery and rosemary stalk, the coarse salt and pepper, as well as the pork belly and the stuffing “boudin”.
Put back to cook for about 1h30 and add the potatoes 20min before the end.
Cut the poultry, the breast and the stuffing into slices. Serve very hot in the defatted broth.
