There’s nothing better than cooking to warm up the mood. This Sunday, poultry seasoned with herbs, prepared by Stéphane Reynaud, one of the great chefs of bistro cuisine.
It’s a greens stand at the end of our favorite market. Salads, plenty of herbs (sage, flat-leaf parsley, cheese onions, chives, spring onions…), you can’t resist the pleasure of falling in love every day with one of these natural bouquets grown in Ile-de-France. The infirmary is full of them, but they’re all sources of inspiration for stir-fried vegetables, a mixed salad or roast pork tenderloin with sage.
So this weekend try the “chicken confit with herbs” found in that Rabelais bible that is Bistrotier, the book of red cheeks and saucers by Stéphane Reynaud, illustrated with photographs by Marie-Pierre Morel (1).
You need a beautifully reared 1.5kg Label Rouge chicken; a bouquet of herbs of your choice: basil, coriander, tarragon, sage…; 8 cloves of garlic; 10 cl of olive oil; flower of salt.
Mix two stalks of the bouquet with a peeled clove of garlic and olive oil. Clean the herbs from half the link. Preheat your oven to 150°C.
Carefully peel the skin off the fleshy part with your fingers, slide the leaves between the skin and the fleshy part. Place the rest of the bouquet inside the chicken with the seven whole cloves of garlic and seal it all up with a toothpick. Polish the chicken with herb oil using a brush, salt. Bake for an hour, then increase the temperature to 200°C for a final quarter of an hour to crisp the skin.
Serve with quality puree, sauteed potatoes, garden vegetables…
Stéphane Reynaud advises: “It takes twenty-five minutes per pound to cook a chicken properly, for quality chicken, of course. You need to retain some texture to keep the chicken a real chewy meat.
(1) Ed. Chêne, 2021, €39.90.