TRUFFLED CHICKEN COOKED IN HAY AND TRUFFLE RISOTTO

or the day I dreamed, and just dreamed, of replicating the half-mourning hen of la Mère Brazier

Wow, wow, wow. What a dish!!!

I wished I had better pictures, but first, I forgot to take pictures at the crucial moments (too busy…) and second this is a dish, or in fact two dishes which might not be visually spectacular, but are based on the incomparable taste of the truffle, and in this particular case, the summer truffle or tuber aestivum, aka Burgundy truffle or Champagne truffle… Champagne, Burgundy… there are worse pedigrees. As you may have guessed, it is found in Summer (hence, its other, other name, the Saint-John truffle), unlike its “sister”, the black truffle or Périgord’s truffle, which is found in Winter. Although it doesn’t have an aroma as strong as the black truffle, it has a very subtle taste and aroma that I love.

The half mourning hen of la Mère Brazier

When I got those truffles, a French friend of mine suggested me to cook the poularde en demi-deuil, which approximately translates by half mourning hen… This is an old traditional dish popularized by Eugénie Brazier, aka La Mère Brazier (Brazier Mother), an iconic Lyons female chef who trained and/orinspired a generation of chefs, including the most famous one Paul Bocuse.

Why half mourning? Simply because the poultry is dressed in black, as slices of black truffle are slotted under its skin. To make it very, very simple, the mourning hen is then put into a pork bladder and poached/basted for 6 hours in a vegetable broth… A bit demanding and challenging indeed, and I am not only talking about finding a pork bladder…

From Brazier to Passard, truffled chicken cooked in hay…

Then, and this is what I really love about cooking, I had this idea or illumination to “recycle” the hay chicken recipe (poulet au foin) of Alain Passard that I feature soon on this blog. As a matter of fact, both techniques are similar in the sense that, in both cases, the poultry is cooked in a confined and airtight environment, enhancing all the aromas of the truffle and keeping the poultry very moist.

So here, I slotted many slices of truffle under the chicken skin (see pix) and I place the bird on a hay nest arranged in a cast iron pot. Salt and truffle oil drizzles before putting the lid on and sealing it with a cylinder made of flour and water. Cook almost 2 hours at 360, let rest for another hour WITHOUT breaking the seal, and just broil for 5 minutes with the lid off to color the skin…

Truffle risotto…

This is a more traditional dish, except that, following a very relevant advice, I had infused my Arborio rice during 1 week with truffle. Then normal risotto, except that I used truffle oil, a homemade chicken broth, and that, instead of butter at the end, I used some foie gras fat that I was preciously keeping in my fridge…