The chicken chasseur recipe alternative you did not know

So let's complete our series on wine replacement. We've seen already the dry white vermouth for fish, the Madeira wine of course for sauces, braised meat and pan sauces like I've shown on the last episode, and now we're going to be talking about the last one which is of course port. Now port wine, delicious, red, rich, it can also be used as a white port as well so be careful there's two but the red one is the one we usually use. I do have some delicious recipes already on the channel, one of which is the braised lamb shanks, a link in the video description, but now I've digged out another recipe for you from Escoffier, a close cousin of the chicken chasseur, the super famous chicken chasseur, except that Escoffier replaces the white one with port wine. I think it's going to be really interesting. The technique is the same as the last time, we're going to be sautéing the chicken as we've done, butter and oil, add some mushroom, cook the whole lot, add some stock and of course the port wine and perhaps some cognac to add some extra flavor and some herb to have something completely different than the last time with the same amount of effort which is not much. So what do you think? Let's put the apron on and let's cook! Okay so wash your hands before you start, make sure you got your apron on, no loose clothing or anything like that, remove your rings and we can begin to cook. We're going to begin here with the ingredients, you're going to find everything in the video description for that video, so have a look, so I don't have to put this on the screen, but mainly this chicken, a chicken otero, is as I said a close cousin of the chicken chasseur which is in effect a sautéed chicken and that comes with a garnish of button mushroom, very simple, typically with a thickened brown stock or typically a demi-glace with tomato, so it's got that kind of reddish coloring in there and it is flavored at the end with some aromatic herbs, typically tarragon like I've got here, it's Mexican tarragon or parsley or anything like that, but tarragon is the predominant flavor that we have in the chicken chasseur. Now the chicken chasseur is made usually with white wine for the deglazing, but here the chicken otero, the variant, is that we're going to be using the port. So just to show you that we can jump from one French recipe that is an ultra classic and just by changing one component, here the wine, I'm going to transform that recipe into something very similar but it's going to have a much richer color and of course that very distinctive taste of red port which is absolutely beautiful. Now for this episode I'm going to be making that quick stock I'm talking about live, like I'm going to show you how easy it is because I think it really pays off to know how to do this at home, so let's begin with this. So let's begin here with the stock, so this is really the technique that is super useful, you start with a small stock pot, I've got a tablespoon of oil and we're going to start with a medium high heat and we're going to wait for that oil to come to temperature like nice and nice and hot. So once your oil is hot and typically when you move the pan and it flows a bit like water it's ready, we're going to use the off cut of chicken. So these are all the pieces that I had which is the carcass and the wings. So I had a whole chicken, I broke it down in four pieces for the dish and all the rest that I've got I used a cleaver and I'm doing these very small, as you can see, these very small pieces in there and we're going to brown them, sear them on a medium to high heat, like we want some coloring. So when you're browning your piece of chicken you can count a good 10-15 minutes, this is why it's always good to start with the thing that takes the longest time. So what we want here really is this and we're going to use this as a for the deglazing, the caramelized juices. So you mix things around and you can use a lid over if you want to keep the heat and avoid too much splatter. I'm going to spend a good time to have some nice browning colors. So I'm all done here, I've got some nice coloring on here, what we're going to do next is to add the mirepoix, so carrot, onion, celery, simple mix and there's a bit of carrots in there because with the pork I like to have a bit of a bit of flavor. So reduce the heat a bit, you don't want to have your caramelized, you know, the brown bits there to become dark, you want them brown. If they start to be a bit blackish it's going to make a bitter taste that you don't want. So now with the garnish I'm reducing the heat, two or three minutes, perfect. So the base for a simple stock at home, we've got number one the caramelized juices, number two the aromatic garnish that's going to give some flavor and here it's a tomato-based kind of stock. So what do we do? We add about roughly a tablespoon of tomato paste and I'm going to stir that through so that we're cooking the tomato paste to remove the acidity generally and to give some color of course. That's really just 30 seconds, something like that. See that color that I've got? It changes the profile totally and now I'm going to add the stock. Now the stock it's a it's a store-bought stock, a good quality one, either you use veal or beef stock. You can do a first deglazing if you want like this, we're not using any wine, nothing and then you can raise the temperature on here and we're going to try to slowly first detach all these brown bits at the bottom and then add the rest. So I've raised my heat slightly to medium, medium hot and some of my students are telling me can you show actually the burner because when you say you raise the heat, you lower the heat, it's hard to understand. So if you want a visual clue, that's the burner how it looks like. Okay that's the the type of fire that I've got here. Okay and now I'm going to add the rest of the stock. So that was two cups of stock. I'm using here a beef stock, I couldn't find a veal stock. So I'm waiting for this to come to a simmer and before we do so, I'm going to add the other stuff. So I like to add you know a bit of thyme, one or two bay leaves in there, a little bit of garlic and some pepper. Typically you don't add salt in a stock but if you want a tiny pinch, some chefs now are doing this, adding a tiny weeny bit of salt to let the flavors develop. That's what they say but for us I think a bit of pepper in there and we are done. We'll wait for the simmer. So we've got a light simmer and our stock base is ready. So this is the required one, a stock base with the tomato in there with that red tinge. So I'm going to reduce the heat. I'm going to put this on the side of the stove and leave to simmer very very gently when we start the chicken and because we need to reduce this by half. So I'm going to forget about it on the side of the stove and let's move on to the chicken. Now for the occasion I've taken out this rondeau from Mauville. It is a kind of a casserole I never ever use it. I don't know why for some reason maybe it's the size or I can't remember why I was not using it but you know what test drive. So the same as we've seen before if you were here the last time and by the way if you're new to the channel if you want to learn french cooking at a you know not a snail pace but a low kind of easy pace not like what we see on youtube today this is a place to come and we have here a mixture of butter and oil and we're gonna gently sauté the chicken. So first we melt everything. All right so everything is melted it's chanting and even the Larousse Gastronomique I think was talking about 80 grams of butter only just butter to cook these things but this today I've left the legs whole typically I cut the thighs and the drumstick. I use drumstick for something else but here I'm going to try to fit if it does everything skin side first. Perfect so now I'm going to turn things around so you've got a nice color I'm going to turn everything so I've got a beautiful coloring and the rest of the cooking is going to happen into the oven so we're going to preheat your oven at 180 degrees celsius with the equivalent fahrenheit on there and you want to have a pan that is ovenproof so that can go in the oven and we're going to use a lid so I'm waiting one or two minutes cover and then finish to cook this into the oven. Ready to go my heat is off I've got my lid on here so remember the legs are going to cook longer in the oven than the breast on here so typically I do 15 minutes in the oven then I take the breast out and keep them warm on the tray and cover with foil or something like that and I leave this to cook for the five minutes so I can 20 minutes for the legs and 15 for those. All right so I'm not going to show you this on camera I'm just going to put this into the oven now and the next step is going to be preparing the sauce. So immediately when things are in the oven you can take off the rest now this is something you can do before I you start you need to pluck off basically the leaves so you know take the leaves out of the branches and then we're going to finely chop them so it's a bit of work so you go through make sure you only get the leaves and not the stalk okay so I'm going to make a little pile there get let's say one or two tablespoons of chopped leave would be enough. My tarragon is ready on here we're going to do the Larousse gastronomic version it says that we need a shallot thinly diced so if you want to use that you go ahead and we're going to thinly dice a shallot like this for the sauce. Now the mushroom you want to leave them whole like this until the end until we're ready to uh to recut everything and now what we need to talk about is the thickening agent for the stock so it's you know it's very strictly said you need a thickened stock so you can use corn starch and you can use arrowroot the one thing I use a lot is uh potato starch that's actually quite good uh that works really well it's got a really great power of thickening but the old fashioned way that I always like is the beurre manié typically the same equal amount of flour and butter mixed together until you get it you know it goes into a bowl and then we can use bits of that for that in the sauce and control our thickening and I like the fact that there is butter in there I don't know I just add something different than when you use like you know the starch and stuff already so I've got everything I need the beurre manié for the thickening the shallot the tarragon for the flavoring the mushroom at the last minute and that's the amount of port we're going to be using from Escoffier a good glass about 100 milliliters and of course don't forget to turn off the heat under your stock you reduce it by half and it should be done so it's on the side on there and that is the the thing we're going to be taking care of once the chicken is ready which is almost to be ready so let's prepare a tray and I'm going to start to take the chicken breast out so my breast is out but I've noticed that at 180 with all the butter and oil it has really created some condensation with the moisture of the chicken and I've just raised the temperature to 200 now for the next 10 minutes for the for the legs in there and I've removed the lid because it was a bit too too watery for my taste so I'm just going to cover this with a foil in the meantime so while the legs finish to cook what I'm going to do on here is take all the stock that we have that's everything for us here beautiful you see that's my pan and boom what I'm doing here I'm adding all the stuff that we have in there and then we're going to thicken it so high heat let me just do a light boil now very important when you do this now you want the stock to boil so we need to thicken the sauce or the stock this is very liquid and the ideal consistency when we say thickening a sauce in french cooking is typically a spoon coating consistency but it depends how you like it so I've got 10 grams of flour and 10 grams of butter mixed together to start with I'm going to put these three pieces here and what you do you put that in and then you mix when you use the beurre manier it is very important to have the whole mixture to boil otherwise it's just the thickening just doesn't happen it doesn't happen properly so when you whisk don't be shy when you you don't want to have any clumps you spend a good 30 seconds mixing the whole lot properly okay I think we're done let's check take a spoon to check typically I take the back of the spoon it is coating the spoon you can see there's that little trace some people like to go further than that if you go further than that what can happen I'll show you I'll go a bit further it can start to develop a bit of a floury taste you have to be careful so I'm going to put the whole lot just to show you and that is typically here we've got precisely 10 grams butter 10 grams flour you're going to see how thick it becomes all right so second amount in my view this is too much okay but a lot of people like it like this you see you turn the spoon you get a really thick layer and coating I would not go any further than that turn my heat off take the chicken out and we'll continue okay let's make the sauce so the chicken is out I put it back into the tray the oven door is open and I put everything in there to keep everything warm high heat and you see what I meant in here plenty of fat plenty of juices I'm going to reduce this a little bit I'm going to start by cooking the mushrooms so remember what we've done in that recipe we've cooked the chicken we've prepared the stock we've thickened the stock which is going to be base of the sauce and now we're adding the other elements for the sauce which starts here with the fat from the chicken caramelized juices and mushrooms of course a little bit of seasoning so salt and pepper not too much otherwise it's going to be over salty a lot of black pepper and spend a good three minutes on high heat something like that make sure to use a towel not to burn your finger like I did just before in there and we're going to sauté the mushrooms about two minutes in roughly we're going to add the shallots on here mix everything well and leave this natural juices to reduce before we deglaze after another minute when the shallots are in it is typically the stage where you deglaze first with cognac and then white wine cognac and white wine yes but I think cognac and port not too salt on this what I'm going to do here I'm just going to deglaze as per escoffier with the port and it's a pretty big amount okay see what I mean and gently detach this caramelized juices and put this into the sauce so we don't want to reduce pour too much otherwise you get too coarse so it's really just a matter of minutes before we add the rest of the sauce in there so really a short time I'm just showing you the pan you see up we've cleaned the pan so what you want you not reducing really we're just cleaning the pan and then immediately now we add the stock so I've got the stock it's really I think it's way too thick happy we've got the the port on here see I told you when there's too much beurre manié that's what happened we're going to end up with something very very thick so the thing here because it's so thick you don't need to cook it or anything like that I'm going to reduce my heat and virtually the sauce is ready because we thicken it you've got the consistency we've got the color we've got the mushrooms we just need to add the herbs and that's it now if you think it's really too thick you can add a little bit of um you know the chicken cooking juices or some stock in there eventually water if you don't have anything it's fine now still let me try that I've put the heat on minimum because it looks good look at the color um that's quite good yes I like it so well that's it really from here we're going to add a little bit of the fresh herbs so we've got the base the port wine is very nice I think very dense the mushrooms I'm gonna you know a good tablespoon of fresh tarragon in here I'm gonna mix that in and just before serving so there's our sauce we've got a chicken ready just before serving you add the cooking juices of the chicken in there to dilute put this on the tray and we're going to add a piece of butter now to really add some silkiness to the sauce and that happened just before serving so with the tarragon you can taste again I'm gonna be a bit naughty there I had already some but oh yeah the tarragon the tarragon is good huh the tarragon really adds it's a new dimension it's a new layer of flavor it really adds something totally different yes anisey kind of taste with the port the mushroom actually beautiful that now I've put all the chicken on the dish let me warn you it's gonna be very old-fashioned as well because you put everything on a dish and you cover with sauce so be warned I'm turning this off no boil when we add the butter which is the very last step so there's no boiling the heat is off butter in about good 20 grams we incorporate and I'm gonna pour that sauce over the chicken it's gonna be I've got some extra tarragon if you want to have parsley you can and chop some parsley on the side just to have some green green bits on top and I was gonna go but the sauce is magnificent it's so rich so good you see it's almost all disappeared already ready to go look at that look at that that's the old days for you let's go all right so virtually the chicken on the plate that's what it says in the book I've got a whole pan of sauce on here in my bit of of extra tarragon and all it says here is to pour the sauce over the pieces of chicken virtually that's what it says but I think we're not gonna we're not gonna see much from whatever's left so maybe I put some here and there maybe not everywhere but look at that sauce it's absolutely crazy you won't see much and he's just covered in sauce and all brown but this is a flavor bomb that's what the book is saying that's what it recommends let's try a picture of a better presentation all right so just before I show you the the plating we're trying to to do that that leg of chicken here um very hard to see anything with that sauce I just want to have a bite on here because that sauce is so rich and beautiful it's crazy I'm telling you what look at that sauce the pork the sweetness with the mushrooms was really really beautifully with the meat I'm not gonna make a disaster gonna keep it at that because not the best of side but the taste is absolutely gorgeous and you know for cousin of the chasseur a recipe it's actually brilliant and there we have it for the modern plating so if you're looking at something different using pork than the chicken ottero from escoffier simplified version because the real version you have truffle bird eggs on toast on the side is an amazing recipe that deep rich sauce with the the mushroom the anise notes from the tarragon goes perfectly with the chicken it is a reminder that this good old classic cuisine really work and it's hard to beat yes there's plenty of new recipes but have a go at these older ones because they're absolutely delicious and this is my fault try the recipe let me know what you think in the comment section as always and as well we'll leave you with that picture and make sure to come back to the french cooking academy if you want to learn french cuisine the way it used to be done with all these step-by-step tutorials because this is what we do here okay take care and i'll see you next time for the next video bye