Basque Country Chicken Recipe ( Poulet basquaise)

welcome back everyone Stefan here back for another episode on the French cook Academy and this is recipe number 2 on how chickens are' the recipient the day is the Poulet Vasquez in French or called in English a chicken or so the chicken cooked in a Basque Country style the Basque Country is the small region in the southwest of France the extreme southwest near the Spanish border and this is where this recipe originated so the original recipe used two flagship ingredients mainly the Jean bonbon which is like a prosciutto ham and a specific pepper coming from the little town of Esprit of course I cannot get these ingredients here so I'm gonna use some bell peppers instead and some prosciutto ham not the interesting thing about that recipe is the way it's made and on one hand you're gonna have to cook tomatoes with bell pepper some smoky spices plus the ham and make some kind of a confit of vegetable very low cooking on the other side you've got some chick and that's simply sauté in a pan and when it's done you mix everything together at some wine some stock and boom you get an amazingly flavorful recipe now let's cook now the reason why I choose that recipe to do this because we have to make a chicken stock with a tomato intonation something we haven't seen and that links to this talk I did on on stock on Tuesday now for the ingredients it will be listed in the video description otherwise it takes too much time to tell everything but that part here nice for the recipe so I've got chicken thighs here I've got onions the bell pepper garlic some canned tomato I will explain why later this is some white wine and that is the star of the show a big slab of prosciutto ham that we're gonna dice to make some prosciutto bacon imagine that this is all dedicated for the stock so look how simple half a carrot 1/2 an onion a small bouquet garni with bay leaf times and parsley stock a tablespoon of tomato paste about seven or eight chicken wings I've chopped up and hopefully we'll have stock easy let's make this talk first and now to make a brown chicken stock now this method will show you how to make a tasty brown chicken stock in a minimum amount of time you start with one tablespoon of oil I'm using peanut oil and I'm using some chicken wings very high heat and we're gonna Brown all this meat now just turn my chicken to the other side so I turn them over and that's the color you need I wanted to show you so when we say brown it's brown it's not that color it's not a light fish blonde color you want something brown otherwise your socks will not have enough faith and now we're talking look at that that's what you want you see the brown here as soon as you got that boom you get your garlic half a carrot half an onion I'm gonna make gently wave the chicken you're gonna leave this to cook for five minutes beautiful after 5 minutes we're gonna add how to mate opaque then put a bit more the best basically like a tablespoon and just mix it around so it's gonna cook a little bit and then we're gonna add the stock stock back stock after minutes take your half liter chicken stock and it's 2 cups and boom in there and the reason why I'm not using much and that's just 2 cups of chicken stock in here is because it's gonna take less time to reduce and get that concentration we've talked about because if you put a lot you're going to be staring at your pan for ages you can even have a candlelight dinner with it and we'll still be in front in two hours so you don't want that to ruin what I know is that stock so anxious back to the quietness now I've changed my heat I'm gonna take a very small one because that means you gonna simmer it reach the boil and the last step is to usually add a bouquet garni in the a lot of people have been asking me what do I do if I don't have that well what do you do is this few tweaks of time or maybe a half a tablespoon of dry time put that in there and 1 bay leaf bay leaves that fall under the rule of less is more and as well something I've been learning more and more with with this cooking 1 bay leaf can actually flavor up to two and a half maybe more liters of water which is absolutely a lot so keep this in mind when this is done you're gonna cover your your stock and leave it to simmer for 30 minutes and now to start the real recipe because the stock in effect can be made before I do you want to make the stock beforehand so you don't have to go through all that see that was just the demonstration we're gonna start by making how bacon or prosciutto bacon and we need to do this by the book so that means we need to blanch the dice prosciutto first I've diced everything and little pieces here and we need to add water cold water first and bring it to the boil that the technique is always you start putting the meat always you don't know how much water you need and then you slowly add your water once the water is in put the heat on high and you bring this to the boil as soon as the water boil we're going to take it out rinse it into a sieve and it's ready to be used all right so now let's see where we are let's slow down a little bit and do a bit of a checkpoint so the prosciutto I was just boiling is here as you can it's change color and it's now ready to be used these are all the ingredients I'm gonna need to make my confit of tomato onion and capsicum it's gonna happen in this pan and this is my stock so it was ready I've just transferred from that pan I pass it through a sieve and this is basically what I guess you see it's a nice brown stalks got a nice color and you notice there's no salt because you never put salt in a stock so now let's start the confit of edge tools and now for the basket garnish or the confit which doubles it starts always on low heat and you sort of the prosciutto so make sure you use it always the low heat huh and you're gonna leave this to mingle in the olive oil over at 2 tbsp of olive oil good quality and you're gonna stir this for just a minute now a minute or so later the flavors have transferred into the pan into the oil and this is when you add your onions you're gonna leave them in there just a few minutes should we did get the cooking started and mingle the flavors again as soon as the only nuts start to cook now we're gonna add our garlic and the same thing again leave that to start to cook for a few minutes you are usually do one or two minutes that's about the time it takes and finally when you know when the smell from the the bell pepper start to emerge as you can release it start to smell good you can add you you bouquet garni in there and all of the tomato I'm using cherry tomato in can you can use fresh tomato but I prefer this one because they're really tasty and you get a lot of flavor out of it so from here you break your tomatoes if there's not enough juice you can add a little bit of water or a little bit of tomato sauce but not too much and we're going to leave this on a very very low heat to simmer until most of the liquid is gone and that take maybe 15 even perhaps 20 minutes so very little and now for the chicken now my vegetables are simmering here the forget to mention you need to add a lid on there while simmering nicely on the side so that's here and for the chicken cast-iron pan it needs to go in the oven because we're gonna cook this in the oven after so pre-heat your oven to 360 Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celsius and I've got my toys ears now the salt and pepper on it skin first I'm just gonna lightly Brown them the technique used is the saute chicken nothing fancy we're just cooking pieces of chicken in the pot just a little bit of color after a few minutes your chicken should have a bit of coloration turn it over and just lead to another few minutes in there and then we're going to finish to cook it for 10 minutes in the oven you can note that here on the side I put my stock to boil that can thicken a little bit and reduce further hold on I'm gonna now cook this in the oven for 10 minutes with a lid on and the reason it's only 10 minutes is because after when we take it out we need to finish the sauce and continue to cook it for 5 minutes with the vegetables so keep that in mind so chicken is cooking let's check these vegetables all right looks decent look at that good a nice color there's still a bit of juice so we need to leave it to reduce I'm going to leave the lid open now until the chicken is all done to make sure we lose a bit of liquid gonna discard that and the bouquet garni because it's been there you know alright so the chicken is out of the oven nice and Terra's not finished - to cook with you Reiser is on a try ok and then you're gonna remove the excess of juice in that pan not everything but you do a little bit I'm gonna make the sauce and it's gonna be right and now for the sauce making that this is an important part it goes fast so you may start to feel really like a cook here because you have to be ready the very first step in every sauce in French cooking is to caramelize whatever leftover meat juices you have in a pan that's what I'm doing here medium to high heat things have to sizzle usually high heat is preferred you leave this to reduce until the oil disappears a little bit and this brown stuff here starts to appear and caramelized once you get a nice brownish color but not burned a whisk is preferred half a glass of white wine to deglaze and with your whisk you're going to detach [Applause] everything as I said things goes fast so again reduction very important you're going to leave that point to cook and reduce until it's almost gone and then we're going to add the stock ok Don so reduction took me about five minutes and look at this there's really not much in there so that's what two or three tablespoons maximum the big mistake everybody makes all the time is to live way way too much wine in there so when you reach that stage it's time to add the stock not too much same thing you leave to reduce until we get a napping consistency all right done so that reduction took me three minutes and what do we mean by napping consistency take a spoon and this is the the stock turn you spoon over finger you see that trace it shows you that the sauce basically sticks to the spoon so that's reduced enough we can now add the best-case vegetable now let's add all these lovely vegetables in there that's cooking and that's it guys we've done it look at this sauce huh it's not too liquid it's not too thick and you got a nice combination of liquid against the hard elements you know so you can see it's it's well balanced final step take your chicken let's put it back in with the pieces and you're going to finish to cook the chicken gently for minutes and then we're going to serve [Music] okay hold on guys I've set up the tables and the question is now how do you serve that kind of southwest of France some of the best key is chicken and the chicken from the Basque Country well basically this dish is a style called bodega the bodega from the Spanish name is a kind of a tapas bar it's a low-key bistro style thing with a Spanish intonation but it's still French and does kind of setup you will have bit of rice a simple glass you know and the dish would come in a table looking like this you have the chicken and you can really feel that kind of Spanish intonation here for the plate what basically you're gonna get something like that very small plate and then the waiter is gonna come or you're gonna have this just straight with a little bit of that that's sauce on top you know so very generous and big strong flavor it's bold its rustic it's really good to finish off of course you've got the bodyguard lassies always a bit of vino in there yeah bit of white wine never hurts and then you're done you're ready to be enjoying that dish this is how I personally would serve have a party it's a great little dish and great flavor and look at that sauce I mean just plain amazing look at this look at this little pieces so this is the the prosciutto pieces the prosciutto bacon mm mm thickness of the sauce it coats absolutely everything and you got these intonation smokiness pepper a bit of saltiness the wine the stock it all comes together but I really think that the prosciutto is the one thing you cannot do without because it's really give that special taste but anyway that's it for the video of the week guys I hope you enjoy it's a bit of a long process but made properly it's a really good one thank you by the way to all the new patron something almost forgot it's been amazing it just started and you really responded very well I will do a special video on these dedicated on the sides who do not worry for the rest I see you all on Tuesday for high regular light-hearted video enjoy [Music] you

Channel: French Cooking Academy

Views: 155,527

Keywords: french cuisine, french food, french recipes, French Cooking Academy, braised chicken with peppers, braised chicken with cured ham, braised chicken and cured ham, french basque chicken, chicken basque recipe, chicken recipe with ham, chicken recipe with tomatoes and onions, food from french basque country, chicken basquese, how to cook basque chicken, how to basque chicken, poulet basquaise recipe, how to make poulet basquaise, pepper and tomato chicken stew

Id: GjBciv1otuE

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2018