into double digits

'Stanley: The name of various onion dishes seasoned with curry powder, named after the British explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley.'
 - Larousse Gastronomique

11. Sauteed chicken Stanley

Larousse is full of interesting, if useless, tidbits like that and it's one of the many reasons I love it so. Anyway, here's a picture of Sir Stanley, the onion- and curry powder-loving (presumably) colonialist who maybe gave Conrad an idea or two. The horror, the horror.

Stanley's chicken is, again, simple fare. The recipe calls for jointing a whole chicken but given I'm cooking for two a whole chicken is a bit excessive. So: four bucks worth of free range drumsticks. The chicken components are sauteed in dairy fat and then, after a half hour, introduced to right proper quantities of onion and cooked for a while longer. When the chicken is done, it is set aside. Mushrooms are cooked somewhere along the line and, too, set aside. I opted for Swiss browns because, I guess, they were avaliable. The pan in which the chicken was cooked gets deglazed with, of course, of course, of course, double cream. The cream is reduced and strained and then laced with curry powder and chilli powder. Butter is then whisked in.

I like the sauce. It's mild in heat. I think, actually, it would work better with a boiled chicken than the sauteed chicken, although you'd probably want to fry up or roast some chicken bones and giblets to get a sauce of the same quality as this one.

I remember, with the previous sauteed chicken dish, feeling drumsticks were unsuited to cooking this way. I'm still of that onion. Cooking them over a very low heat (the recipe says they're not supposed to be brown) with the lid on, which the recipe didn't actually specify, does make for better drumsticks and as you can maybe see in my crappy photo, they reached the point of falling apart. There was still the odd bit of toughness from connective tissue, though.

12. Glazed carrots

The recipe calls for taking some carrots, placing them in a frying pan and covering them with water laced with butter, sugar and salt. The liquid is bought to a boil and what remains is wonderfully simple: you reduce and reduce and reduce the liquid until you end up with, well, glazed carrots. Said glazed carrots supposedly go well with parsley, chervil, roast meat juices, bechamel sauce and, naturally--this being Larousse after all--butter and cream.

The carrots were okay but, really, they're nothind that'd pull me away from just cooking baby carrots in butter. 

13. Sauteed cooked potatoes

Potatoes are boiled until almost done, cooled, peeled and sliced. Potatoes are then sauteed in a blend of butter and oil for 15 minutes and seasoned with salt, pepper and parsley.

I really liked the potatoes. They came out really crispy and, with the right seasoning, would emerge from the pan as perfect beer food. Too, only good things could happen if you replaced the olive oil and butter with duck fat.

And ...



My knife work is shit. I never thought it was good but, really, that finely sliced parsley on the potatoes is just shamefully bad. The potatoes were nice but the parsley, really, it was like eating grass clippings. I admit I don't work with fresh herbs too often--I don't have a garden where I am at the moment, so fresh herbs means paying $2-3 a pop and, truly, they're generally not that fresh. Luckily, I'll be moving soon and one of the first things I want to do is clear great patches of grass and plant herbs and vegetables.

I need to work on my knife skills and, too, basic things like finely dicing--as opposed to slicing or roughly dicing--onions. Just the most basic shit. I think in the next few weeks that'll be my goal and I'll focus, I guess, on Larousse recipes that will help me develop those skills.