Let's just put it out there. I'm not feeling 100%. When I was flipping through Larousse Gastronomique, looking for something to cook for tonight's dinner, I stumbled on a recipe for potatoes and Bayonne ham cooked in goose fat. I had a near-death experience reading it.
Last night's dinner at The Press Club was lovely. Most of the wines were nice, although I still object strongly to dessert wines. They are not my friend and I am not their friend. I had 8.5 glasses of wine over the course of the evening plus a bottle or so of Henry of Harcourt's Original Cider (a vastly inferior product to Henry of Harcourt's divine Duck & Bull Premium Cider). This morning's breakfast was also a sad affair. Turns out, on New Year's Day almost no one is open in the CBD for breakfast. I wandered all the way from where we were staying on Flinders Street, opposite the station, to Cumulus Inc, but they were closed. Nowhere on Hardware Lane or Degraves Street seemed to be doing business. We ended up at some cafe on the corner of Bourke and Queen. The eggs were okay but, let's just put it this way, dearest cafe owners: you're not supposed to fucking confit cheap sausages in nasty arse vegetable oil.
Back to the matter at hand. I was searching through the Book for something light. I ended up settling on chicken breasts. That is, after all, what supremes are. Okay, supremes--as Larousse Gastronomique describes them--also include the wing up to the first joint. If you want that extra bit of meat it's really not that hard to do the necessary butchery work with a whole bird. There's even a recipe in it for you. Me, though, I'm in no state for such tasks. I can tackle the 'preparing of supremes' recipe another time, such as when I prepare supremes a brun, a l'anglaise or a la whatever.
Preparing supremes a blanc is a process even the most damaged of souls can handle. You season those titties with salt and pepper and brush them with clarified butter. You squirt a wee bit of lemon juice over them. You then stick them in a covered casserole and bake them at 220 degrees for about 15 minutes. Given that the chicken breasts I bought are fairly thick--about 275 grams apiece--I took 'about 15 minutes' to really mean '20 minutes'.
Turns out, 20 minutes wasn't enough. I took them out at this point and they were still a little pink in the middle. I returned them to the oven and after another three or four minutes--I wasn't watching the time as carefully as I should've been--they were perfectly cooked. The lemon-y pan juices make for a nice sauce. I like this method of cooking chicken breasts as the meat remains juicy. And, you know what? A golden brown crust isn't and shouldn't be the be-all-and-end-all. I like the blanc finish.
You can garnish chicken supremes with with ...
84. Garnishes for supremes of chicken
This isn't so much a recipe as a list of ideas. Basically, you can serve supremes with whatever vegetables take your fancy. I'm going along with one of the suggestions: a macedoine of vegetables cooked in butter. What's a macdedoine of vegetables? Why, son, it's no more than a 'mixture of vegetables or fruit cut into small dice.' It is, incidentally and, I guess, interestingly, named after Macedonia.
There is indeed a recipe for a macedoine of vegetables. Each kind of vegetable is cooked on its own in boiling water--there are beans, carrots, peas and turnips--and then served with butter or cream. Me, though, my macedoine is just a collection of diced vegetables--capsicum, carrot, garlic and shallot--sauteed in butter and olive oil and seasoned with salt and bay.
85. Clarified butter
I've made clarified butter several times during my Larousse Gastronomique journey and I had no idea there was an actual recipe for it under the 'butter' heading. #85 done and dusted.
And ...
Saint Sylvestre's lovely 3 Monts.
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