Chicken Marengo: recipe for Napoleon (created on the battlefield)

welcome back everyone my name is Stefan and this is the French cooking Academy it is still Movember as you can see I'm growing a mustache and today we're doing the famous pool a mango or chicken Marengo a recipe that very simple recipe was invented on a battlefield and was one of the favorite of Napoleon it consists of simple pieces of chicken that's going to be pan-fried deglaze with cognac a bit of chicken stock and cooked with garlic and tomatoes when the dish is finished it is served with the pan-fried cotons and fried eggs sounds very interesting anyway before we start the recipe a little bit of history about its famous battle let's go so let's have a look at this origin and the origin of that recipe why was it called the pool a mango chicken mango because of this what you see on your screen the battle of Marengo it's a battle that took place the 14 of June eighteen hundreds in us more near the small village of Marengo in northern Italy so it's not in France on the right hand side you had the French army and led by the general Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon and on left inside the enemy was the Austrians and this is the battle plan as you can see here so shortly after of course they went to battle and it will look something like that and until media the French were badly losing against the Austrian had had much more firepower because they had fifty cannons fortunately for Napoleon his dear friend does say which is a you know another commander general I'm not sure ok movies cavalry and joined forces in a minute to kind of wipe out the austrian army and they won the battle when the battle was finished of course everybody was kind of hungry and especially Napoleon because he was really someone that loved a few things in love the first thing was actually horses he had a collection of thirty noses and the one you see here is the one that was he was riding during the battle in a name that horse which is an Arab Stadion he gave the name mango and that was his official name after the battle and it was a you know the horseshoes one what's that was just a little skeleton here but anyway the other things he learnt in life was eating and especially chicken hence well we have this recipe today the orders is kind of officers and to make the cooks let's say to go and prepare some chicken the because he was hungry you know it was a you know the big bottle of make him hungry so they wanted to make something but it was nothing at for the enemy kind of stole everything and it was really nothing so The Dispatch free guy is in the countryside and they came back with a chicken or few chickens apparently tomatoes garlic some eggs some bread and apparently some sweet water crayfish the cook decided to borrow some cognac and that you can see here from Napoleon and I decided to make a dish and this is where the recipe kind of came about a very very simple and rudimentary chicken with garlic tomatoes and cognac and this is what we're going to try to recreate today I'm not going to do the modern version because there's too much addition of new ingredients I'm gonna try to use these simple ingredients and these pans because they were always saying that they had no pans at all like some guy managed to find in a nearby farm some old pans like that that's what they have so bit of fun today and let's try to recreate that battlefield recipe and here we are on the battlefield and let's imagine I'm using a cast-iron skillet the cuisenaire chef of the time is called dunno is originated from Switzerland and he has to make that dish with very few ingredients do you know was an experienced cook and he knew that by putting a little bit of oil in his pan olive oil and using the bones he could make an instant mini stock chicken stock let's say like a brunch chicken stock so the first thing is gonna do is to brown its chicken caramelize the juices and add some water to make that stock okay so after a good 10 minutes on medium to high heat you got some brownish color on here and what he's gonna do here is just add a little bit of water because there's nothing else and that water here as you can see is going to allow us to really really detach all the juices from the chicken and get some kind of very basic stock but that is very important and so when I leave this to reduce just a little bit and then reserve it to reserve the juicy is take a small container you're gonna get rid of all the bones first next take all this these juices out of my pan and that's what the book was saying that you own did did a stock and then discard it and put it on the side our first step we've got a stock we're now able to start cooking the actual chicken so what you want it again a bit of olive oil that's what what they had and they're gonna put the chicken in so we can now add chicken pieces in on a medium heat maybe I do skin first time this a bit of color and again it says on the book it with with an addition of salt and pepper a bit of salt in there and a good amount of pepper that's all we had ready after cooking your chicken pieces for five minutes on one side you gonna turn them over you get a bit of color here and another five minutes on the other side after five minutes our chicken is now precooked or first cook shall I say so you're gonna remove it and reserve it on a tray and we're gonna start our sauce we're going to be using a substantial amount of cognac you can use wine instead if you want to do this turn your heat off first to make sure there's no flame it's not a flambe and put your exhaust fan off if you have any and you're gonna start with the caramel is juices usually you use onions or shallots in this case we're just gonna put garlic that's all they had at the time and David in the oil to get this taste going okay so I've got garlic in there there was two garlic cloves just for a few seconds and to reach the flavor and I'm now gonna add a lot of cognac it's not a flambe and we're not from there anything we're just gonna deglaze that's the order of the sauce aromatic first and first deglazing with an alcohol of your choice usually its wine it can be spirits as well like what we have here as you can see it's already reduced and now we can add the second thing which is that stock we had okay all the stock in and we're gonna put the heat back on and leave this to reduce a little bit as soon as the heat is on look what's happening it's reducing nicely and look at the juice we've got here beautiful it's nice and brown and let me taste that you see it's reducing we got this nice alternation of like brown chicken the garlic in the background and that cognac kind of edge on the side it's honestly pretty good but what's missing here the tomato half a can of beautiful diced tomato to really add some further taste into this so mix it well and then we're gonna add our chicken back we can now add back our chicken and what we're gonna do is some kind of braised chicken ready you know we're gonna put this on low heat and basically this is the beginning of your Marengo recipe which is basically chicken in a beautiful garlic and cognac tomato sauce it's now time to leave your chicken to cook for 10 maybe 12 minutes until it's cooked so I'm gonna do five minutes on that side and then turn them over and by then it should be ready now we can prepare the other garnish but we're waiting while we're waiting for the chicken we're gonna pan-fry some mushrooms bit of salt and bit of pepper like what we had before that's it alright as soon as you get a bit of a golden color turn the heat off and you're reserving mushroom in a container now the other garnish and that was serve of the pull a mango chicken mango is Hootin large pieces of fried bread and it is baked in olive oil again so we're just gonna color this breads and they're like large pieces and we'll cut them into as soon as your lovely Kooten are nice and golden like that you're gonna take them out and reserve them on the side last thing we need to do is a fried egg my chicken is now cooked I've turned the heat off let it rest a little bit and the last thing we need is a fried egg at a time they were really overcooking the eggs because it says they were cut in quarters so I've put lots of olive oil again I'm just gonna kind of almost shallow fried an egg in there until it's all cooked so what I'm doing here to defy the odds of the time you to have that almost poached egg basically you know babies with that audio in there and we're gonna make a souffle egg as I call it have just invented that word but I don't know what that is and here we are imagine do you know and that cook have to serve Napoleon's up so to make a makeshift table so how do we really serve that you know that the chicken in here so I'll just try to do one serving and so from here you will have some extra sauce that's we're gonna cover with a little bit of of the sauce next I think you know remade these new these these mushrooms instead of of the crayfish so a few mushrooms in there and nepali only wants to eat something is kind of hungry and basically that was served with a Kooten which is that kind of fried bread on the side like that you know very rustic with that Freud Hague on top hmm and I'm just gonna put some sauce on the side and to finish of course I like everything maybe a little bit of salt a little bit of black pepper because that was really the only thing they had in the battlefield and there you go a Napoleon may be the crow it would be of parsley they surely had some wild parsley somewhere there a bit of parsley here and there being a bit of rustic and that was it the dish was born the chicken Marengo it's not something special but what I thought Napoleon really likes is these things you know because these Kooten when you mix that with a layer of mushrooms tomato sauce any mind imaging a bite of egg and chicken Wow ah the oiliness of the olive oil cotton with that sauce and the mushrooms is already amazing mix that with chicken you are flying to heaven honestly simple dish but very effective but that's it really guys look at this what we've done the filled recipe from do you know served to Napoleon here it is it will really look something like that which is quite amazing it actually tastes really good so if you also tried at home do not hesitate it's a really good fun to make it's a bit of a challenge and I really enjoyed it today well that's it for the video guys as always if you liked it give it a thumbs up drop me a comment subscribe to the channel if you want to subscribe to my patron page want to be calm do remember it's helping the channel a lot as for me I leave you with that picture and as usual on my next French cooking video have fun bye bye [Music]

Channel: French Cooking Academy

Views: 140,046

Keywords: french cuisine, french recipes, French Cooking Academy, recipe for napoleon, battlefield recipe, battlefield napoleon recipe, marengo battle recipe, chicken marengo recipes, french food (cuisine), chicken marengo, marego chicken, cognac, battle of marengo, tomatoes, garlic, chicken

Id: hkp3cFqzYWw

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 16 2018