Of Morilles, Poularde and cream of chicken with forest mushrooms

Poularde de Bresse Aux Morilles is an interesting dish, that gives me a chance to introduce two very French food culture.

First is the Morel (or Morille in French), a very tasty but expensive mushroom popular in French cuisine. I remember buying a small bottle, say 20g for 20 euros a couple of years back. It is small compared to the big button or portobello mushrooms that we're used to, but just a little is enough to give a distinctive taste to your dish. So it's common to mix them with other cheaper variety of mushrooms.

And mushroom picking is perhaps unique to France, an autumn 'hobby' which I have unfortunately not had the chance to participate in yet. It is a convenient marriage of their love for hiking and food (They also have season for plucking wild berries). So a typical French household would have a book on mushrooms to help them identify edible and poisonous mushrooms. If in doubt, ask the local pharmacists. They are supposed to be trained to identify poisonous mushrooms as well.

Local knowledge is also essential in determining where are the best places to find mushrooms, and what is permissible by law so that one does not intrude into other people's private property. And not everyone is lucky, as there are about 30 deaths a year from eating the wrong mushrooms. Read more about this peculiar French hobby here.

A poularde, I learnt today from this blog, "is a fatty chicken that is grown in a particular way to avoid that it reaches sexual maturity. It consists of a young hen which is raised free range for the first part of its life and fed with corn, cereals and milk. Then just before it reaches sexual maturity, it is placed in a cage and maintained in the dark to be fattened for few weeks. In this way, the young hen do not reach sexual maturity, resulting in a very meaty bird (around 1.8Kg), covered of an important layer of fat, with a very tender, moist and milky flesh, but slightly on the bland side". Another distorted French way of rearing poultry, like what they do to geese for foi gras. The Bresse region of France is famous for poulardes.

I found this recipe of cooking "poularde from Bresse region with morels" in Camille's cookbook of classic French dishes. The word poularde caught my eye, because it is somewhat different from poulet, which is a "normal" chicken, and also because the recipe asks for a "beautiful" poularde. Weird isn't it? Maybe it's just a stupid French romanticism for their food.

Me and Remi have cooked this dish several times in Singapore to great compliments. And of course, we use a normal chicken, or chicken thigh pieces, to be precise. Having morels certainly helps to enhance the taste, but an assortment of dried forest mushrooms (which may be found in Carrefour or Cold Storage, though we had "imported" our mushrooms from France then) can be used in place of the morels.

I translate below the original recipe from Camille but give the dish another name more befitting what a non-French would understand and cook according to.

Cream of chicken with forest mushrooms (Poularde de Bresse Aux Morilles)

1 beautiful poularde from Bresse (or a young hen), cut into pieces
200g fresh morels (or use an assortment of forest mushrooms, fresh or dried, or just simply button mushrooms)
30g butter
glass of yellow wine of Jura region
200ml fresh cream
salt and pepper

In a frying pan, heat the butter and cook the chicken pieces without browning them.

Add salt, pepper and cover. After about 15 minutes, drizzle with the wine, cover again and simmer for 20 minutes.

Put the cleaned mushrooms in the pan with cream. Simmer half covered for 10-15 minutes until the broth has been reduced. Serve immediately, with rice or potatoes.

And trust me, despite the crappy picture above, this dish is easy to make, very tasty, even if you do not use chicken from Bresse, or wine from Jura, or mushrooms from Paris (button mushrooms is incidentally known as champignons de Paris).

Tips:
- To prepare mushrooms, cut the foot and plunge them for 10 minutes in cool water to remove sand.
- If using dried mushrooms, soak in warm water for 30 minutes. As the water is bursting with the flavour of mushrooms, you may add them in together with the cream.
- For a proportion of about 6-7 drumsticks, I finished my 30g bottle of dried mushrooms.
- Yes, yellow wine does exist, although a Singaporean friend of mine has been sneered by a French lady for saying that. It is unique to the Jura wine region of eastern France. Can use white wine in place of the yellow one.
- The suggested proportion in the recipe is just a guide. Adjusting the amount of cream, mushrooms, wine and butter according to your own instincts works too.