Poule au Riz, Part II

A couple of days ago I told you about the memorable Sunday lunch we enjoyed at the home of our neighbors, Odile and Armando Perrone. As promised, I have scanned Odile's recette for cooking the elderly hen. Remember that most French family recipes are "au pif" so, follow your gut where the instructions or measures may be vague. If you do try Odile's Poule au Riz, you will have a tender chicken with delicious sauce that is great on the rice as well as the slices of hen. Let me know how yours turns out.

This recipe serves 6 to 8 people.


Ingredients:

1 Hen (not a young one)

2 carrots

1 onion, with 3 whole cloves stuck in it

1 bouquet garni (thyme and bay leaves)

250 grams rice

salt & pepper



for the sauce:

2 soupspoons of potato starch

1/2 glass cold water

1/4 glass of boullion (taken from cooked chicken's pot)

1/2 juice of a lemon

2 soupspoons of capers

salt & pepper


Put 2 liters of boiling water into a large stockpot. Add carrots, onion with cloves inserted, bouquet garni and salt. Plunge the hen into the boiling water and and cook at least two hours, maybe more, until tender.


In the mean time, rinse the rice and let it drain. When the hen is done, season with pepper, remove it and keep it warm; cook the rice.


To make the sauce, in a small bowl, put the 2 soupspoons of potato starch; add the 1/2/ glass of cold water and mix well. Remove the 1/4 glass of hot bouillon from the chicken pot and add to the sauce. Mix very well. Add the lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.




Serve a slice of chicken accompanied by the rice and the sauce.




Enjoy with a smooth French white wine.



Bon Appetit!

Notre Poule au Riz

In past posts, I've frequently mentioned my Italian voisin, Armando. It was with Armando and his family that we traveled to Italie and spent a whirlwind weekend on the gorgeous Italian coast the day after my birthday. I also mentioned the Perrones in the story about our Sunday promenade in February.

During the six months we have lived here, we have had a number of great meals at the Perrone home. Usually, we arrive to find both Armando and Odile in the kitchen. However, our most memorable meal to date was the Poule au Riz we enjoyed one recent Sunday, prepared solely by Odile. She is a very soft-spoken and kind woman. She dropped by earlier in the week to invite us to dinner and she asked me if I thought Emily would be “ok” with a vrai French poule dinner. People frequently ask me what Emily will eat in advance of dinners at their homes, so I thought nothing of it. Of course, Emily loves chicken.

Sunday arrived and we headed over at noon. The aroma in the house was heavenly. Odile explained that the key to the dinner was going to the nearby hen farm and asking for an old hen. A young hen won’t do for this recipe. The flavor and ultimate results will not be the same. An old hen will stand up to the two hours or so that the meal cooks.

She lifted the poule out of the pot and I managed to keep my mouth closed as it dawned on me why she had come by earlier in the week to see whether I thought it would bother Emily to have the meal. The old hen we were having for lunch still had her head, beak and legs attached. I’m glad she was old; I hope she had lived a good life. We found it fascinating, not at all disturbing. I have to say, it gave me a respect for the meal that I have not previously felt. I believe that we need to regain connection with the food we eat. Life in this small country village is giving us that connection. I am grateful for this opportunity.

The meal was memorable not only for the poule, but also for the wonderful sauce Odile prepared. She explained that although it had a lemon flavor, it was not a true béchamel, but was made in a lighter fashion, without crème. I am going to post the recipe, but because the notes she gave me are all in French, that post will occur at another time, as I have a couple of things I may have to discuss with Odile. I recall that clous de girofle does not have anything to do with nails, but refers to whole cloves and that fècule is starch, but I can’t remember, as I write this, what Odile meant by fècule de p-de-t.

You may rest assured that any time I see “ c à s” in a French recette I have come to understand that it means you need a soupspoon full of the ingredient, while “c à café” does not mean add a spoonful of coffee, but instead, use a coffee spoon to measure an ingredient! The way the French write their recipes is rather charming. Thus, I‘ve decided the best solution will be to scan and post her hand-written recipe with this story. Ahhh, it's coming back to me; p-de-t; of course, pomme de terre; use potato starch for the sauce! Rest assured, the translation will be worth the wait.

A Beautiful Day for Notre Promenade

Sunday morning, close to noon, my portable rings. OK, I admit, I was still upstairs in my jammies and all the shutters were closed. Anyone passing by our house would know I had not yet started my day. A familiar cheerful voice speaks to me in French, with a delightful Italian cadence. It's my friend and property manager, Armando. "Suzanne, have you had a nice sleep?" he asks, "Odile and I would like for you to join us for a little promenade this afternoon. Stop by our house around 14h and we'll have a little coffee before we go.”














How could I resist? I ran downstairs to eat breakfast, lunch, whatever might be available in the fridge and to make sure Emily knew she would have to be dressed for a hike within the next two hours. We would be walking au fond du sac. Just after the church bells anounced the 2 o'clock hour, we arrived at the Perrone door.

"Au fond du sac" I repeated as Armando explained that we would have a short drive to our starting point and that we would take along Emily's bike. Of course, I thought, we are going to walk through "the deep part of the sack." Instantly my brain made the connection to our American use of the French "cul de sac" (bottom/butt of the sack, or dead-end loop in a subdivision) and I contemplated its phonetic relation to the French expression "cul sec," meaning "bottoms up" or "down the hatch!”

















Maybe now you get a hint of how exhausting it is for an adult brain to function immersed in a language not ones own...I see in my Word Reference online dictionary there are many interesting combinations using the word cul; I make a mental note to go back and study some of the ones that may come in handy next time I need to sling a few words...


















Ok, hit the rewind button; back to the story about our promenade. After a pleasant visit over coffee and a slice of Gâteau Moelleux aux Marrons that Odile had prepared the day before, we joined up with another voisine and her two children. We now had four adults, three children, a bike, a trike and a kid-porting backpack loaded into Armando's car.




The weather could not have been more cooperative; plenty of sunshine, blue sky, and mid-fifties temperatures. We stayed out until close to 18h, strolling on a delightful loop through a deep area of vineyards, stopping for a brief rest, past an occasional old stone farmhouse and a few barking dogs. A great time was had by all. I hope you will enjoy a few of the photos I shot along the way. I'd love to read your comments!