It has to be about chicken today...
since i have been watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 's chicken run 3 nights in a row this week. I really REALLY hope he'll succeed in making a difference. We had chicken at home when we were kids and it was great fun watching them walking around snatching worms from the grass! The other thing shown in tonight prgogram was how to make several meals of 1 cut of meat...but I think they should have spent more time on this , considering the main objection to switching to free range chicken was the price- understandably
Using leftovers is something I saw my mum and dad, and also my grandparents do at home all the time (not sure why, some people say that it's a sequel of the World War II that my mum and dad's generation was brought  upon not wasting anything...which was good.) I do the same now, I "recycle" leftovers more often that not. So much so that I have another blog dedicated to that...be prepared , it's in French!

Anyway back to my memories of when I was a kid (a bit of an older kid mind, was about 20 at the time!), I used to work part time near the Swiss border and stay with my best friend's mum one night a week. One of the dishes I remember eating at her place was Poule au Pot. It might be because, being from the Bresse area, she probably made it with a "poulet de Bresse" which is in my mind the king of all chickens.

"Poule of Pot" is a stuffed boiled chicken served with the vegetables from the pot and a rich creamy white sauce. A perfect winter dish which goes back all the way to...Henry IV!. You can prepare the stuffing, stuff the bird and prep all your vegetables ahead of time (just leave them in cool water), that way you can relax with your family whilst it simmer away for your Sunday lunch for example. Why not enjoy a nice "aperetif" in the meantime?

Here's what you need:
for 6 people
FOR THE STOCK
1 (free range, do I need to say) chicken  of about 1.2kg
3 carrots
3 turnips
the heart of a Savoy cabbage
6 small/medium potatoes
2 or 3 branches of celeri
3 whole leeks
1 large onion 
6 cloves
1 bouquet garni (basically take a sprig of rosemary, of thyme and a bay leaf and tie them together bit a bit of kitchen string)
3 table spoons of rock salt

FOR THE STUFFING
300g of sausage meat
gizzard and liver from the chicken
2 slices of white bread slightly stale
100ml of milk
2 shallots
2 garlic cloves
a large handful of fresh parsley
1 beaten egg
salt, pepper and grated nutmeg

FOR THE SAUCE
30g of butter
30g of flour
300 ml of  creme fraiche
500ml of chicken stock from the pot
1 egg yolk

here goes:

1. make the stuffing- Crumble the bread and pour the milk over, add the shallots,garlic, parsley, gizzard and liver  all finely chopped, the beaten egg, the sausage meat. Season to taste with salt, plenty of freshly crushed pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. Stuff your chicken with it then sew the skin to keep the stuffing in place.
2.Wash all your vegetables 
3. In a large pan pour 3l of cold water, add the bouquet garni, the green of the leeks, the onion, the cloves, the rock salt.
 4. Put the chicken in the pan, cover and simmer very gently for 1h30 skimming the top until the stock is clear
5. Whilst the chicken is cooking, prepare your vegetables: Cut the cabbage heart in 6 quarters and drop them in boiling water for a couple of minutes only. Remove from the water and leave to cool. peel all the remaining vegetables.
6.After an 1h30, add the vegetables to the pot and simmer for a further 30 minutes
7. Make the sauce (this is the most delicate step). 10 minutes before the end of cooking time, melt the butter in a pan, add the flour (to make a "roux") then pour in the stock  little by little whisking all the time until you get a thich smooth sauce. Take off the heat, add the egg yolk whisking all the time again (otherwise you'll get scrambled eggs!) then the creme fraiche. Season to taste (you might not need to since the stock is well seasoned already). Put back on the hob and heat gently for 5 minutes, stirring all the time. Ta-Dah!

To serve, remove the chicken from the pot, cut the legs off, then the wings. Cut the breasts off from the top of the bird. Serve a piece of chicken with a selection of vegetables, pouring the sauce over. Yummy!

(this next bit really belongs to my other blog but for once...) Here's a trick:
1. After the meal, pick up the rest of the chicken meat and reserve (for a risotto, a curry, a chicken pie, baked chicken and pasta gratin, cold chicken sandwiches, cold chicken and poached egg salad, ...)
2. Put all the bones and scraps of meats leftover after that back in the stock with all the vegetables left. Simmer for an hour until the meat falls off the bones. At this stage, pick the clean bones out of the pot with some kitchen tongues. Crush everything to a soup consistency with a hand mixer then add the leftover sauce (except if you intend to freeze the soup- the sauce tends to split). Serve with toasted crusty bread. Da-Tah!

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