[Sca-cooks] "Honey gilded" chicken.

[Ruth Frey]

	Okay, I'm finally getting some of my
Banner War Arts recipes posted here (as I
promised to a while ago).  This first one is
the result of an ingredient snafu, that still
managed to produce excellent results.
	The background: Banner war this year was
held at Three Meadows campgrounds in Northern
Idaho.  Lovely place, wonderful facilities
(including a full restaurant-style kitchen --
we had trouble getting some of our cooks to leave
that kitchen when the event was over!), but out
in the middle of absolute nowhere.  At least a
3-hour round trip to the nearest grocery store.
	One of my planned Arts entries was
"gilded" chicken, which is roast chicken coated
in an egg yolk/flour/spice crust; it's a well-
documented Period recipe, and one I figured would
be pretty easy to do.  I pre-measured the spices
and flour and put them in a little jar, arranged
with the breakfast cooks to reserve 4 eggs for my
recipe, and tossed a chicken in the cooler.
	Lo and behold, the morning of the day of
the Arts tournament, the breakfast cooks decided
to beat the morning rush by cooking up the eggs
ahead of time -- *all* the eggs, and there was no
hope of getting more that day.
	A frantic inventory of free ingredients on
hand, and a consultation with the Mistress of Arts
and Sciences, resulted in my substituting honey for
the egg yolks.  I was actually leaning towards making
a Bisquick crust, myself, since I feared the honey
wouldn't seal in the juices effectively (the goal of
gilding is to keep the meat moist, while adding flavor).
But, A&S favored honey, and one listens to the Mistress
of A&S, so . . .
	The resulting honey coating did manage to
seal in the juices, and the chicken came out with
excellent flavor.  People who had tried the "real"
gilded chicken I had made at home as a test vastly
preferred the honey version.  The A&S judges, in a
fit of culinary transport, awarded me a Masterwork
(which I disputed, since the recipe as actually
concocted has no Period documentation whatsoever;
but the A&S Mistress told me to take the award and
shut up, so . . .).  The chicken itself was stripped
to the bone within minutes of handing it over to
the crowd of onlookers.
	Any recipe that gets that kind of reception
deserves to get passed along, though with the caveat
that it is *not* documentable to Period, as far as
I know.  I am, however, considering making it up
again in the future -- I think it would adapt
especially well to the Period practice of coating
roast fowl in crusts of various colors and flavors.
Add parsley juice, or red sandalwood, or some other
colorant, change the spices a little, and the possible
variety is endless.
	Anyway, the following recipe is adapted from
Cindy Renfrow's _Take a Thousand Eggs or More_
redaction of gilded chicken; I have listed both the
honey and the egg yolks, so folks can try both incarnations
of the recipe.

"Gilded" Chicken

	1 whole roasting chicken, giblets and excess
		fat removed.

	1 tbsp. flour

	4 beaten egg yolks *OR* 1 cup honey

	2 tsp. ginger powder

	1 tsp. ground black pepper

	1 tsp. salt

	Pinch saffron, to taste (more saffron
		gives a stronger golden color).

	Place the chicken breast side up in a roasting
pan.  Combine the remaining ingredients to make the batter
for the "gilding."  Apply a coat of batter with a pastry
brush (for the honey version, I found that spooning it
on worked better than brushing), and bake at 350 F,
brushing (spooning) on a fresh coat of batter every
20 minutes until done (1 1/2 - 2 hours).  If you use
honey, which makes a runnier batter, you can spoon
up the runoff in the pan and use that to re-coat the
chicken, if you run out of fresh batter.

	May future last-minute substitutions turn
out so well for us all!  :)

		-- Ruth