Old Vienna

I was in Chapter's chatting on the phone to my Mum. I was in the cookbook section and browsing through the various books. I listened with half an ear as I tried to decide if I really did need a receipe book all on brownies, "say Mum, what about this one?" As it was about the sixth book I'd asked her about, she took a deep breath, "Where exactly are you going to put all these books and when are you going to find the time to make the recipes? Get out of the section!" I sighed, the pictures were so pretty. She did have a point. I wandered out of the section.

I was recently in a used book store, a posh one, and I started browsing the cookbook section. There was a lovely thick, blue hardbacked book with gold left on the front, "Gourmet's Old Vienna Cookbook." I cracked it open and started flipping through it. Various recipes caught my eye. Interesting . . . but I did not need another cookbook. Besides, if I was to be honest with myself, I had no idea what Viennese cooking encompassed. I put it back. Then just before I left the section, I pulled it back out. I opened it again and landed on the most amazing recipe for chicken. It was called beautiful chicken. Reading the recipe, I became absorbed in the incredibly lengthy and complicated process. Yet it all sounded so easy and absolutely delicious. I read the next recipe. It too sounded amazing. The pictures were few and far between. Today's cookbooks have lots of glossy pictures because the recipes are rather boring. This book had no need for pictures. The recipe was enough. I flipped to the front cover. $20. For $20, I could dream that I would one day have the patience and the skill and more to the point, the time, to make these types of recipes. And the friends that would truly appreciate what they were eating, without bringing up their latest diet.

I present "A Beautiful Chicken" or "Schone Poularde"

Wash, dry, salt, and truss a 5- to 6- pound roasting chicken and place it in a deep kettle. Pour over it 1/2 cup warm brandy and set the spirit aflame. When the flame dies down, pour over the chicken 3 cups chicken stock, and add 1 carrot, 2 onions, and 2 stalks of celery, all cut into pieces. Simmer the chicken, covered, until it is a little more than half cooked, about 45 minutes. Remove the chicken and keep it warm.



Strain the stock and reduce it somewhat. Add 1 cup red wine and continue reducing the liquid until there is only 1 cup. Melt 2 tablespoons butter, blend in 2 tablespoons flour, and cook the roux, stirring, until it is brown. Stir in the chicken stock and wine, add 1 teaspoon tomato paste, and season the sauce to taste.



Remove the skin from the chicken. Spread the chicken with 1/2 cup goose liver pate and sprinkle it with salt and pepper. Roll our pie dough into a sheet large enough to enclose the chicken. Spread on the dough 1/4 pound button mushrooms, chopped and sauteed in butter. Wrap the dough around the chicken and press the seam firmly. Paint the top of the dough with 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water. Cut a vent in the dough and bake the chicken in a buttered roasting pan in a hot oven (400F) for 30 minutes, or unti lthe crust is golden brown.



Halve 6 hard-cooked eggs and mash the yolks with 1/2 cup goose liver pate. Add salt and pepper to taste. Press the mixture into the egg whites through a pastry bag fitted with a fluted tube. Place the "beautiful chicken" on a platter. Arrange the warm stuffed eggs around it and garnish the platter with water cress. Serve the hot sauce separately.



I know. Amazing isn't it? I have a 600 page recipe book jammed with recipes designed to make you drool. You try and leave that on the shelf of the store.