Shouldn't You Just...?

SHOULDN’T YOU JUST...?

Advice on modern etiquette for the not-so-new millennium.

• Outfit your dining table with a bunch of yellow candles to celebrate spring, even after Easter has come and gone?

• Enliven your summertime drinks with these rosy cocktail picks?

                                            

• Keep a jar of cocktail onions on hand when you find yourself needing the occasional onion? They last for such a long time in the fridge and impart a nice flavor to recipes in a pinch!

                                          

• Burn sprigs of dried thyme and rosemary to add a delicious fragrance to your home? Or as a smoky garnish to your steak, the way French restaurants often do? Not only is thyme believed to bring about strength and clarity, rosemary is thought to be helpful in removing negative energy from the air.

BOOK/A TABLE - Vinegar Chicken

While reading P.G. Wodehouse’s devastatingly witty Love Among the Chickens, I was reminded to pull out one of my favorite cookbooks, Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, and once again try my hand at the Vinegar Chicken a.k.a. Poulet Sauté au Vinaigre therein.

A friend made Vinegar Chicken for me a few years ago and I’ve never been able to make the dish quite as good as hers...but sometimes, that’s just the way it is. Nevertheless, Vinegar Chicken is still pretty tasty and wonderfully fragrant. 

I’m sure you will at least have better luck making this chicken than Jeremy Garnet (the hero in Love Among the Chickens) had in raising scads of them, after being suckered into the scheme by his dear friend Stanley Featherstone Ukridge, a most unreliable flibbertigibbet and one of Wodehouse’s popular protagonists. 

At this point in the story, things aren’t going so well for Jeremy...

“Personally, I feel as if I should never move again. You have no conception of the difficulty of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having no proper place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them in the cube sugar-boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just occurred to me that they ought to have had perches to roost on.”

Don’t worry if you don’t have any cube sugar-boxes, a perch, or a basement in which to place your chicken—if it has been properly dispatched, a flame proof casserole will do just fine!

Poulet Sauté au Vinaigre

From Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham

Ingredients 
4 LB chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
Salt and pepper
4 oz butter
2 TB olive oil
6 very ripe tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped
Half pint best-quality red wine vinegar
Half pint chicken stock
Two heaped TBS chopped parsley (or tarragon!)

Method 
Season the joints of chicken with salt and pepper. Heat 2 ounces of the butter and the olive oil in a flame proof casserole until just turning nut-brown. 

Add the chicken and fry gently, turning occasionally, until golden brown all over. 

Add the chopped tomatoes, and carry on frying and stewing until the tomato has lost its moisture and is dark red and sticky. 

Pour in the vinegar and reduce by simmering until almost disappeared. 

Add the stock, and simmer again until reduced by half. 

Remove the chicken to a serving dish and keep warm. 

Whisk the remaining butter into the sauce to give it a glossy finish. (My suggestion, add a teaspoon of vinegar at the end!)

Add 1 TB chopped parsley, pour over the chicken and the sprinkle with the remaining parsley. 

Serve with plain boiled potatoes.