Giro food: Chicken with garlic, lemon and rosemary

Well, it is the first big cycling tour of the year, the Giro d'Italia and so I thought I should do an appropriate recipe. I've done Tour and Vuelta linked recipes before but not one for the Giro which, given Italy has the most interesting and consistently high quality food of the three, is a bit of an anomaly.  One of the Eurosport commentators actually is doing a recipe a day so I thought I'd have a go at the one for Stage 8, which is a pheasant recipe.  However, while his recipe was for the regionally, appropriate pheasant, it is only in season in the UK from October to February, so I used chicken instead.  I pointed this out to him on his website and he came back and said that people might have frozen pheasant in their deep freeze. Oh yes, between the Ben and Jerry's and the peas, of course.  It was like when Selena Scott said on The Clothes Show, once, that "everyone has their Jean Muir little black dress".  Actually, Selena...  But then this character calls himself 'Jono', which is only one step down on the pretentious scale from calling yourself 'Jonty'.  Thinking about it, for many years I did actually often have frozen pheasant in the freezer as my aunt and uncle used to shoot them and give us a brace every time we went down to see them in Sussex.  The Old Bat pointed out that we had them in the field at the back of the house at the moment and perhaps I should get my air rifle out.  "Only if you pluck them" I replied.  Silence.  When I was small we often had dead (obviously) pheasant hanging around in the garage before Christmas (we would always have it on Christmas Eve) and my poor mother had to pull all the feathers off.  It is no wonder she preferred to cook Spam fritters.

For the first time in a major cycling tour the race started outside Europe, with three stages in Israel, giving us the most scenically tedious stage ever, as they trekked across the Negev desert.  Enlivened only by the occasional random camel, the landscape reminded me of a recent documentary on the Titanic where they digitally recreated what the wreck site would look like if the ocean was removed, thereby providing a scene like the one from the opening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It looks like it might be a close race this year with a number of people looking like they could win and Chris Froome and Sky looking decidedly off form (Are your men on the right pills? Perhaps you should execute their trainer).  The race is currently being led by British cyclist Simon Yates who was banned for four months in 2016 because his team doctor failed to apply for a Theraputic Use Exemption for his asthma inhaler.  It's amazing how many asthmatics seem to take up cycling.

Anyway, at least the Giro has not banned podium girls, unlike the Vuelta and as now threatened by the Tour de France this year.  Does no one worry about what tall, skinny students and models in Europe will do in the summer?  Don't they have an association fighting for their rights?  Perhaps, I could help them form one, as they are an oppressed minority and those seem to be the only groups who anyone thinks about these days.  It's not often I see the Old Bat completely enraged but she was last night when there was TV advert for the Army that showed a unit having to stop patrolling while a Muslim soldier prayed to his imaginary friend.  "But they're the people we should be fighting!" she squawked, on the edge of apoplexy (she loves Donald Trump).  On a similar note, I don't have any time for the government of the People's Republic of China, as I have worked with them quite a bit and found them unpleasant but they went up in my estimation last night when they refused to broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest, not on grounds of musical taste, as you might think, but because there were people with tattoos in it and these have just been made illegal in China.   Hooray!  Can we do this too, please?

Anyway, on to our recipe for Stage 8.  The trick with this is to marinade it for an hour.  I put two chicken breasts (or a jointed pheasant if you have bothered to check when it is actually available, Jono) in a glass bowl with around 50cl of olive oil, together with the individual leaves from around four stalks of rosemary, one quartered lemon and about six cloves of crushed garlic.  Make sure you rub the marinade into the chicken breasts thoroughly and add salt and pepper before covering and putting in the fridge for an hour.

Take the chicken breasts and gently brown them in a casserole on top of the oven and then add the marinade (without the lemons), two glasses of Italian White wine and cook with the lid on for about forty minutes.

You should, properly, serve this with rice and green beans but I substituted peas as I can't stand green beans which are always cold whenever you get them on the plate and, anyway, taste like compressed pond slime.

Speaking of pond slime, the Old Bat (careful) was cleaning out the pond yesterday and rushed inside ,crying: "There is a baby alligator in the pond! Get the camera!"  I pointed out that as we don't live in Florida it was unlikely but there you go.  It was a newt, of course but, still, we don't recall having one in the garden before.

An appropriate wine to accompany newt, er chicken masquerading as pheasant, would be the aromatic Greco di Tufo, the grapes for which are grown, appropriately for a stage with a mountain top finish, at altitude.  In fact it is produced in only eight villages just ten miles from the stage finish at Montevergine di Mercogliano in Campania, just north east of Naples.  Mine came from Waitrose (£10.99 and helped cushion my senses to the Eurovison Song Contest, too.

Lunch at Latium, Berners Street

Out to lunch with one of my former Personal Assistants on Friday for a not quite Valentine's day lunch.  In fact T (who is an American but still appreciates good food) was the first person I ever took to what is my favourite restaurant in London.  We first went there, rather shockingly, back in 2008 at the suggestion of my sister who had been looking for somewhere to provide some absorbent food following an evening of cocktails at the trendy Sanderson Hotel across the road.  When T and I went there first we had been expecting an old-style trattoria, not the stylish modern interior it actually possesses (no straw covered Chianti bottles here). 

Great Grappa selection

Owner-chef Maurizio Morelli is from Lazio and imports many of his ingredients direct from Rome. He specialises in ravioli which are as to the tinned stuff I had to endure when I was small as a Saturn V is to a November 5th rocket.  This really is one of the very best Italian restaurants in London and all the more remarkable because the lunchtime fixed price menu is so reasonable; at just £16.50 for two courses.

For a first course, T had Mozzarella di buffala con pomodorini, zucchini grigliate e basilico.  She said she had never been served the whole unsliced cheese before, but said it was the best Mozzarella she had ever tasted.  The cheese at Latium is never short of sensational.

The Legatus had Bresaola ruccola e Parmigiano regiano.  I spent a lot of time in Italy in the late eighties and early nineties and was introduced to this dish on my first business trip to Rome in about 1984.  I had never had Bresaola and it took me some time to find out that ruccola was called rocket in Britain (neither of which which you could easily get at home then).  Now of course you can get both in any supermarket, although not such meltingly delicious Bresaola as this, ruccola without a trace of bitterness and Parmigiano which is delicate and moist not dry and brittle. High quality  ingredients make high quality food, however simple!

Now the Legatus had given T a taste for Gavi di Gavi, as mentioned in my Poulet Marengo piece, over the years but we had one there which I hadn't had before: Masseria di Carmelitani 2014.  The first 2014 I have had since Beaujolais Nouveau it was crisp, fruity but not cloyingly so, with some mineral like backbone.  Remarkably good for such a new wine.  Unfortunately, it was so good we drank two bottles at £40 a time, thereby negating the good value of the food!

For her main course T had polletto alla griglia con aglio peperoncino e spinaci.  It had none of the stringiness you can get with baby chicken and, fortunately, the garlic was not overpowering either!

I had rigatoni con ragù di agnello e Pecorino.  The pasta is always perfectly cooked here and the sauce always avoids being too liquid but clings to the pasta in what is almost culinary engineering, not just cooking.

We got through three glasses of Grappa afterwards (well, alright, I had two and she had one).  Latium has an excellent selection of top Grappas and Italin liqueurs and this one was a Vuisinâr from my favourite distillery, Nonino.  Its three year ageing in cherry wood barrels gives it a lovely pale gold colour.   So total spend on food £33 and alcohol £113, which is about the right balance for a meal!

I have not only never had a bad meal in Latium I have never had a bad course or a bad wine.  It really is faultless 10/10.

Poulet à la Marengo: The dish named after Napoleon’s victory

Published today in Wargame Bloggers Quarterly is this piece on Poulet Marengo.  By posting it here I am reversing the trend in the magazine for putting a piece in it based on a blog posting.  I wrote this as a specific commission (thanks to Big Red Bat for putting my name forward) for the magazine and it has only become a blog posting now!  En avant!

It was my father who introduced me to the story behind Poulet Marengo. He also started me on my interest in Napoleonic military history and in the early seventies took me to see the Sergei Bondurchuck film Waterloo at the cinema and to Les Invalides in Paris, where he bought me a couple of splendid Starlux plastic 54mm French cavalry. Airfix Napoleonics followed and he bought me my first metal figures: Hinchliffe Imperial Guard and carabineers. 

My first metal painted figures.  Hinchliffe Imperial Guard completed 1971

Other than military history (he had served in North Africa in WW2 and Palestine afterwards), American architecture, wine (I had my first glass of wine at the age of two and a half – I’d probably have been taken into care by social services these days) and women, what he really liked was French cooking. He had a French friend, Lou, who was prototypically Gallic in a sort of Gilbert Bécaud way, whose house in Roussillon we borrowed during the summer holidays. My father was able to indulge his taste for French regional cooking, local wine (which even at the age of eight I realised was pretty rough in the area the house was – I can’t believe the price Corbières is now – you could get it for 5 centimes a litre then, if you supplied your own bottle), Gauloises and, I strongly suspect, French women. 

Certainly, when we were on holiday he would do all the cooking, delighting in the fact that the house was located in prime cassoulet country and dragging us around markets in places like Cahors as he tried to obtain some obscure ingredient. There were a quartet of key French dishes that defined his cooking: Coq au Vin, Boeuf Bourguignon, Cassoulet and Poulet Marengo. The first three were very popular in restaurants in Britain in the late sixties and seventies but Poulet Marengo was less so. This, I suspect, was to do with the rather odd set of ingredients involved. “After the Battle of Marengo,” my father told me “Napoleon sent his chef out to find him something to eat. He came back with some chickens, tomatoes, eggs and crayfish and invented the dish using those ingredients.” I was immediately doubtful when I was told that the egg was fried and put on the top. I also had no idea what crayfish were but fish, fried eggs and chicken did not sound promising. This was the only one of my father’s four classic French dishes that I don’t remember him ever cooking for me. Perhaps the difficulty of sourcing crayfish had something to do with it. After all, we could only have cassoulet if he had bought the key ingredients (particularly confit d’oie) in France. One of his other favourites was paella but in the late sixties there was just one shop in Soho where you could then buy the now ubiquitous chorizo. So, I was always intrigued by this dish with its Napoleonic connection and thought that it might make an interesting post. 

The Battle 

The Battle of Marengo by Louis-François Lejeune

The climax of Napoleon’s Italian campaign, the battle was fought on June 14 1800 near the city of Alessandria in Piedmont, in Northern Italy, between the French Consular Army under Napoleon, in his first battle as head of state and an Austrian army under General Melas. The hamlet of Marengo was sited at a key point on the battlefield which the Austrians had to take in order to deploy properly. One of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth century, the details of the battle are subject to controversy, not least because Napoleon subsequently had the accounts of the battle rewritten so that what looked like an imminent rout for the retreating French, saved by a fortuitous counterattack (led by Desaix and General François Kellermann’s famous heavy cavalry) was later transformed into a clever, according to Napoleon, pre-planned feigned retreat, brilliant manoeuver and calculated strike back. The fact was that Napoleon was very, very lucky and some have even said that the creation of Poulet Marengo was a deliberate part of Napoleon’s PR effort to re-cast the battle as a brilliant triumph complete with lovable food-linked legend. 

The Legend

Marie-Antoine Careme the real architect of Poulet Marengo?

The official version of the story of the creation goes something like this. After the battle the wagons carrying food supplies were nowhere to be found. Dunant, Napoleon’s chef, anxious to provide for his master, sent out a foraging party who returned with a number of chickens, tomatoes, garlic, eggs and crayfish from the Bormida River. After preparing the chickens they were chopped up with a sword and cooked with the tomatoes and garlic. The eggs were fried and added to the dish on serving with the crayfish which were poached in some white wine. Napoleon loved the dish so much he insisted it was served after very one of his battles. This gives us a nice, clear recipe of a dish with somewhat eccentric ingredients. Still, it is, perhaps, this curious combination which has kept the dish on the culinary scene for 200 years. Sadly, however, the story is absolute nonsense. None of the contemporary accounts of the battle mention the dish. For a start, Dunant was not Napoleon’s chef at the time. In June 1800 he was living in Moscow as the chef to the Condé family, who had fled France during the Revolution. Dunant didn’t enter Napoleon’s service until August 1802. Secondly, it is likely that Napoleon dined with Kellerman after the battle with food provided by the Convent de Bosco in exchange for being safeguarded from looting. There was jubilation in Paris after the battle and this Marengo mania must have resulted in the dish itself, although it isn’t recorded until 1814; but by then was on the menu of many of Paris’ top restaurants. It didn’t appear in a recipe book until 1820. Whoever created it (there have been suggestions that it was the great chef Marie-Antoine Carême) its popularity remained for 150 years until nouvelle cuisine, and increasing interest in ethnic food, essentially killed off traditional French dishes with rich sauces in restaurants. You will be hard pushed to find the dish on the menu of a restaurant today; which means that you will have to cook it yourself.


Order of Battle 

There is really no definitive Poulet Marengo recipe. Like cassoulet and Salade Niçoise the authentic ingredients are much argued about.  Really, like selecting a wargames army, you can choose from a number of troop choices.

Core Units

Chicken 

This is, in reality, the only 100% universal ingredient. You see veal and rabbit Marengo sometimes but they, of course, are just variants on the original not options. Napoleon was very fond of chicken and often had it for breakfast. which he tended to take late in the morning. There are those, therefore, who argue that Poulet Marengo is just a retrospective appellation given to the Poulet à la Provençale he often had for déjeuner.

Tomatoes 

Pretty much every recipe has these but some writers have argued that tomatoes would not have been available in Piedmont in June. Certainly some of the earliest versions of the recipe eschew them.


Olive Oil

Olive oil with pictures of girls on the label always tastes better 

Again, not everyone agrees that the dish was cooked in olive oil, which was something more common in the south of Italy. In this part of the country, walnut oil would have been more likely. Butter and dripping have also been offered as alternatives. Your cardiologist would certainly prefer olive oil, however.

Garlic 

Again not everyone agrees on this but I think it is a necessity and is in many of the versions of the original story.

Elite Units

Crayfish

These are certainly mentioned in most of the accounts of the dish being assembled. Lately, because of the difficulty of obtaining them, many recipes leave them out altogether or replace them with prawns. Freshwater crayfish are seasonal (May to September at their best in Britain) but you can sometimes get them at a good fishmonger (if you can find such a thing these days). They do add significantly to the taste of the dish and, anyway, they contribute to the sense of the randomly collected ingredients of the legend. You can get crayfish tails in some supermarkets but these are usually very small.

Truffles

Some accounts of the original recipe mention truffles but these are more likely a later addition by Parisian restaurants. One version of the story says that Dunant hoped his foragers could find some truffles but they failed.

Cognac/Wine/Sherry

Some of the early accounts call for Cognac (as used in Coq au Vin to deglaze the pan) but this is usually omitted today. White wine is usually added although Robert Carrier (whose recipes are usually infallible) uses dry sherry. One account says that when Dunant added wine to the recipe, when he cooked it for Napoleon on another occasion, Napoleon rejected it because it was not in the original recipe. Several accounts say that the wine was just to poach the crayfish in.

Heavy support 

Fried Egg

Pretty much every recipe includes the fried egg and it is one of the signature elements of the dish.

Croutons

The original story had Dunant using some soldiers’ biscuits but you are more likely to see slices of fried French bread, often to act as a bed for the fried egg or, sometimes, if included, the mushrooms.

Light Support 

Chicken stock

Pretty much essential this. Fresh is best, of course (I make it and freeze it) but there are good supermarket options these days. Bouquet garni: Bay leaf, tarragon, parsley etc.

Pepper and salt

Certainly black pepper but I personally never add salt to food.

Mushrooms 

These were probably only added to the recipe to replace the more expensive truffles

Onions 

Many recipes include onions, as well as garlic, and shallots in particular.

Olives 

The inclusion of these is more likely a throwback to Chicken Provencale, considered by some to be the origin of the dish.

Anchovies 

Unlikely to be found on an inland battlefield, I suspect these were added as a fishy alternative to crayfish.

Lemon juice

Some recipes include a squeeze of lemon juice but I suspect this is linked to the crayfish cooking process.


 The Recipe 

You can mix and match from many of the ingredients above but this is how I cooked it. I don’t give quantities for everything because I am not that sort of cook. I base everything on feel and experience as I have been cooking French recipes for forty-five years now.

My ingredients: 

• Chicken. I used chicken breasts but you can add chicken legs or a whole chicken jointed (more authentic – especially if you use a sabre).
•A dozen small shallots or one small onion and two cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• Flour (about a tablespoon).
• Black pepper.
•A tablespoon of olive oil.
•A glass of white wine, such as Gavi.
•Tomatoes. Plum tomatoes are, perhaps, more appropriate but in recipes like this I think you get more taste from high quality tinned Italian ones than fresh, supermarket greenhouse ones. If using fresh tomatoes they need to be peeled, seeded and chopped. Tinned ones just need slicing
• Chicken stock - homemade or in a pot or sachet from the supermarket. Not chicken stock cubes!
• Bouquet garni. You can get good ready-made ones in little muslin bags.
• Cooked crayfish tails. For small ones from the supermarket about a dozen would be fine for two people and half a dozen, if large fresh ones, which will need cooking first.


The process

•Brown the chicken at a medium heat in the olive oil in a heavy frying pan or, ideally, a cast iron casserole.  Keeping the lid on during this process keeps the chicken from drying out.
•Then add the chopped shallots and garlic and sprinkle the flour over it all. Mix the flour into the onion/garlic and add black pepper. Cook until the shallots are transparent.

 •Add the chopped tomatoes, bouquet garni, white wine and top up with stock until the chicken in covered. Cover the pan and cook in an oven (for a casserole) or on the hob (for a pan) so that it simmers for about forty-five minutes and the sauce thickens. If it’s not thickening take the lid off for a while.
•Shortly before serving, fry slices of a thin French loaf to make croutons. Put to one side.
•Add the crayfish tails to the casserole.
•Fry one egg per person.
•Remove the bouquet garni and serve the contents of the casserole. Add the croutons to the plate and top with the fried egg.

Serve with 

This is a rich dish so I just had peas but you often see it served with ribbon pasta. Napoleon was very fond of potatoes (at a time when many saw these as animal feed only) so they would be a good choice too.

Wine 

Napoleon was not much of a drinker and invariably had his wine watered down. He drank, almost exclusively, Chambertin but any recipe that includes wine in Poulet Marengo specifies white wine. Piedmont is very much a red wine area apart from the sparkling Asti and, more appropriately, Gavi. Gavi di Gavi is the best of this region and is what I put in the dish and served with it. La Scolca, which is the best Gavi di Gavi, is served at every first night at La Scala opera house in Milan. I was introduced to this wine when living in Rome by a splendid young lady who was a princess of the Borghese family, whose direct ancestor was married to Napoleon’s sister, Paulina!

There is actually a book about this dish, although it is as much about the political machinations of Napoleon after the battle, as the culinary aspects. Napoleon’s Chicken Marengo: creating the myth of Emperor’s favourite dish by Andrew Uffindell.