poulet basquaise - les halles

Chicken. It's probably the most popular bird in the US. Whether it's fried, poached, sauteed, or roasted, it's a delicious and versatile meat. For the third entry of my Les Halles series, I decided to make poulet basquaise - which pretty much translates to Basque style chicken.

Looking through the ingredients, this dish closely resembles the Italian chicken cacciatore. And you know what? They taste pretty similar too. The ingredients are slightly different but the preparation and the flavor profiles are similar. That being said, poulet basquaise is just as easy to make as chicken cacciatore. Sweat down veg, add tomatoes/wine/stock, throw in seared chicken and simmer for awhile until it's done. Easy stuff right? Let's get started.

(mise en place - chicken, sliced onions, sliced red/green peppers)

The vegetable prep doesn't take too long but breaking down the chicken may take awhile if you've never done it before. There are several methods to cutting down a chicken into 8/10 pieces and I use a hybrid of Gordon Ramsay and Hung Huynh's techniques. Chef Ramsay does a great job of explaining the process and it can be seen here on YouTube. Just make sure the chicken is patted dry when you're butchering it for your own safety. But why even bother buying a whole chicken instead of the already cut ones? You can and I'm not against this particular "Semi-Homemade" method (no you may NOT buy presliced vegetables) but the free-range, organic birds are often only available whole. At about $2 - $3 a pound, these organic birds are definitely affordable even during these tough economic times.

 (make sure you get the chicken browned and leave the skin on!)

After your chicken is all cut up and seasoned, add olive oil + butter and when the foam from the butter has subsided, brown the chicken skin side only in batches. Remove the chicken to a separate plate to rest and add in the vegetables to your pot. Caramelize the vegetables for 10 minutes until soft and then add in the plum tomatoes. Tony (Bourdain) really has a thing for Italian canned plum tomatoes in his book but I imagine you could substitute for the diced variety. After the liquid from the tomatoes reduce by half, deglaze with the white wine and also reduce by half. Make sure to scrape off the good, brown stuff (known as the fond) at the bottom! After the wine's reduced, pour in the chicken stock, return the chicken and any of its juices to the pot and simmer under low heat for 25 minutes until the chicken's cooked through.

After the 25 minutes, the chicken is removed and the heat is cranked up to high for 5 minutes to reduce the sauce. While this is going on, chiffonade the parsley to add into the sauce at the end. That's chiffonade knuckleheads not chopped away and bruised like fine, molecular particles! (sorry I have to add a little Bourdain here and there) Toss the parsley in at the end and spoon over the chicken to serve. The book suggests serving it over rice so I followed suit but a piece of toasted, rustic bread would be an excellent accompaniment as well.

Another easy and tasty dish. See? What did Tony tell us at the beginning of the book? This stuff doesn't have to be hard and complicated. Once you get past the prep and the cooking time for some of these dishes, it's almost as easy as making Krap...I mean Kraft out of that blue box. Next time though, I think I'll cut the chicken breasts in half to get good sized portions. It's a little riddiculous how big the chicken breasts are compared to the other pieces...not that you'd go for the breasts right? All the good stuff's in the thighs and legs! Also, make sure you get a really good sear on the chicken because once they simmer in the liquid, the brown color starts to fade away.