Poulet Sauté Beaulieu

Poulet Sauté Beaulieu (chicken browned briskly in butter with hazelnut potatoes, artichoke bottoms, and black olives) teaches the first law of a sauté: the fond is the sauce. Brown the bird without scorching the butter, and three spoonfuls of white wine, a touch of lemon, and one spoonful of veal stock will lift that copper glaze into something bright, glossy, and complete.

The book assumed a sauté pan, a separate earthenware cocotte, a saucier to deglaze the first while the chicken waited in the second, and veal stock never off the fire. At home, one wide flameproof casserole does both jobs, and a measured spoonful of prepared veal stock replaces the stockpot. The separate transfer was brigade scaffolding, so it goes; the ten-minute covered oven finish, equal five-ounce measures of potato and artichoke, exactly twelve olives, and the final five-minute simmer stay because they are the dish. I have fixed the elastic “few spoonfuls” of wine at three tablespoons and the “little lemon juice” at one teaspoon, enough to lift the fond without flooding it.

This is one cook, one stove, one evening, and the finished chicken comes straight to the table in its pot. The step that decides everything is the browning: keep the fond copper-brown, never black.