SC - SC: Fried Chicken

[Elysant at aol.com]

Poster: <Elysant at aol.com>

For those wishing to find a period Fried Chicken dish, here's the recipe and 
Ras's redaction of a Fried Chicken dish from Le Manegier de Paris.  The dish 
was cooked at last years Weekend of Wisdom event.  It was absolutely 
delicious. :-)

Elysant 


GEORGÉ BRUET (Parsley-laced Soup)
This dish was very well received with only one piece of chicken being uneaten 
by a vegetarian. I had thought that the liver and blood might be a problem 
but no one commented prior to service and there were only good things said 
about the dish after service.
(from Le Manegier de Paris. Translation by Janet Hinson)
Redaction copyright 1999 L. J. Spencer, Jr.
Makes 8 servings.

ORIGINAL RECIPE: George Soup, Parsley-laced Soup. Take poultry cut into 
quarters, veal, or whatever meat you wish cut into pieces, and put to boil 
with bacon; and to one side have a pot, with, blood, finely minced onions 
which you should cook or fry in it. Have also bread browned on the grill, 
then moisten it with stock from your meat and wine, then grind ginger, 
cinnamon, long pepper, saffron, clove and grain and the livers, and grind 
them up so well that there is no need to sift them: and moisten with 
verjuice, wine and vinegar. And when the spices are removed from the mortar, 
grind your bread, and mix with what it was moistened with, and put it through 
the sieve, and add spices and leafy parsley if you wish, all boiled with the 
blood and the onions, and then fry your meat. And this soup should be brown 
as blood and thick like 'soringe.'

Note that always you must grind the spices first; and with soups, you do not 
sift the spices, and afterwards you grind and sieve the bread.

Note that this is only called parsley-laced soup when parsley is used, for as 
one speaks of 'fringed with saffron,' in the same way one speaks of 'laced 
with parsley'; and this is the manner in which cooks talk.

8 Chicken quarters
4 slices Bacon, diced
2 Chicken livers
2 Onions, finely minced
1 T Cooking fat (e.g. lard)
½ cp. Blood
1 slice Bread, toasted dark
½ cp. Chicken stock
¼ cp. Red Wine
¼ tsp. Long pepper, ground
½ tsp. True cinnamon, ground
1/8 tsp. Cloves, ground
1 pinch Saffron, ground
¼ tsp. Grains of Paradise, ground
1 T Verjuice
1 T Red wine
1 T Wine Vinegar
¼ cp. Italian parsley (leaves only)
¼ tsp. Black pepper, ground
¼ cp. Lard

In a large pot, cover chicken and bacon with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce 
heat to medium. Cook until chicken is tender but not falling apart or until 
flesh turns white. Remove chicken from stock. Continue boiling the stock 
until it is reduced by half.

In another pot, sauté onions in fat until transparent and tender. Whisk in 
blood. Continue cooking on low. 

Mash liver and put through a sieve. 

Mash parsley.

Moisten bread in ½ cp. of stock and ¼ cp. red wine.
Moisten long pepper, cinnamon, cloves, saffron, grains of paradise and black 
pepper in 1 T red wine, verjuice and vinegar. 

Mash bread mixture and force through a strainer.

Mix liver into onion mixture. Mix blood into liver mixture, stirring 
continuously. Add parsley.  Mix in bread mixture and spice mixture. Simmer, 
stirring continuously for 5 min.

Brown chicken in lard. 

Serve chicken with sauce poured over top.

Ras