Chicken stewed with apples or “Hungarian Capon in Pottage”

The two part cooking of chicken is for two reasons:

1. Chickens humours are of a dry humour and you need to simmer them to add moist to balance them, and
2. it insures that the chicken is cooked through so it won’t make someone who is cooking without reliable heat, or meat thermometer, ill.

I used chicken legs but this recipe calls for Capon, which is much more expensive.

The apples are cut into quarters, this could mean that you should have chunks of apples when the sauce is done cooking, or that the cook knows they will cook long enough to thicken sauce. Or both!

I think the flavour from the pine nuts helps balance out the sweetness of the other sauce ingredients. If you needed to remove the pine nuts I’d try dried mushrooms or toasted almonds to give a umami, or savoury taste.

One of Jeff”s apples

Step 1

Frying apples and onions together

Bring to boil

Finished product

Hungarian Capon in pottage. Take a slightly cooked capon, cut it into quarters, & fry in butter a little, that it is not at all black: then take onions cut into slices, & apples cut into little quarters, & fry in butter, & cast it on the capon in a pot: then put therein a little broth & wine, & let it boil again, & put herein saffron, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, pine nuts, & make stew well until it is well cooked, & serve. Ouverture de Cuisine
(France, 1604 – Daniel Myers, trans.)

Ingredients

• 6 chicken pieces
• 1 tbsp & 1 tbsp salted butter
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 apples, peeled, quartered, cores removed
• 1.5 cups broth
• 1/2 cup wine
• 1 pinch saffron
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 cup pine nuts**

DIrections

1. Heat a deep cast iron frying pan on medium. Add chicken pieces and 1 tbsp butter, fry until chicken is brown. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.
2. Add 1 tbsp butter to chicken pan* with onions and apple pieces. Fry until onions soften.
3. Gently place chicken back to pan, cover with broth and wine and then bring to a boil.
4. Stir in remaining ingredients and reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until chicken falls off bone or is well cooked. Your kitchen will smell wonderful.
5. Serve chicken with cooking liquid.

*It is a different instruction from the original but I like using one pan when I can instead of two. If pressed for time fry apples and onions in a second pot as you are browning chicken pieces.

**Costs more than the chicken did.

Cabbage with Beef Marrow now for less than $66!

So I heard on cbc radio that Neiman Marcus was selling frozen collard greens for $66. Well if brassica is the new trendy food I could totally blog about that! Send me the royalty cheques!

It turns out I already have blogged about wortes before so I can’t nerd about about those collard green recipes again, bringing down the Neiman Marcus coolness factor like only a history nerd can.

However I have a head of cabbage so I move forward. The following recipe is a lovely, calorically dense, winter cabbage stew.

It is flavoured with marrow which is cooked to release it from the bones in the broth. Beef marrow is very creamy and has a deep, earthy flavour rather than the sharp, salty notes of bacon fat, or butter. You can get beef bones from your local artisanal butcher or in the frozen meat section of a low end grocery store and lots of places in between.

This recipe calls for parboiling the cabbage and draining it really well before cooking it in the broth. This would mean that the strong cabbage flavour won’t overwhelm the dish. It also shrinks the leaves before trying to fit other things into a full pot.

Caboges. Take fayre caboges, an cutte hem, an pike hem clene and clene washe hem, an parboyle hem in fayre water, an thanne presse hem on a fayre bord; an than choppe hem, and caste hem in a faire pot with goode freysshe broth, an wyth mery-bonys, and let it boyle: thanne grate fayre brede and caste ther-to, an caste ther-to Safron an salt; or ellys take gode grwel y-mad of freys flesshe, y-draw thorw a straynour, and caste ther-to. An whan thou seruyst yt inne, knocke owt the marw of the bonys, an ley the marwe .ij. gobettys or .iij. in a dysshe, as the semyth best, and serue forth. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (1430)

Ingredients

• Head of cabbage, cored and sliced into large pieces
• 8 cups of broth (any kind)
• 4 beef bones with marrow intact
• 2 cups dry bread crumbs, or leftover oatmeal made with beef broth
• pinch of saffron
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Place cabbage pieces into a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water to a boil on a high heat. Remove pot from heat and strain cabbage. Rinse with cold water and then press the water out of the leaves by hand. Chop cabbage into bite sized pieces and return to pot.
2. Cover cabbage pieces with broth, then add bones. Cover pot and bring to boil on a high heat, then reduce heat to low and simmer until marrow is soft, and almost falling out of the bone, approximately 1 hour.
3. Remove bones from pot and slide out the marrow using a butter knife. Set marrow aside.
4. Add saffron, salt and breadcrumbs to cabbage mixture. While stirring gently, let mixture simmer for 5 to 10 minutes on medium-low heat, until thickened.
5. Serve cabbage stew hot, with a garnish of marrow, dividing the marrow among the servings.