Cooking With the French Chef: Chicken Breasts and Rice

Welcome back to Cooking With the French Chef, in which I review episodes of Julia Child’s original show, cook out of the new edition of the French Chef Cookbook and share the results with you. Past posts can be found here.

How often do we cook thee, Chicken and Rice! Let us count the ways. And the countries, because every country, and every region of every country has their own take on this perennial favorite (Incidentally, here’s a Spanish chicken recipe I found recently. Rather pungent, but so, so good, and it’s superb with Spanish rice.).

Anyway, without further ado, here’s Julia’s take on Chicken and Rice, or Suprémes de Volaille á Blanc et Risotto. This episode was the eighth installment of Season One and first broadcast on April 1, 1963.

It seems very straightforward, although if I had my ‘druthers I’d take thighs instead of breast meat because breast can get dry, but I decided to give Julia’s method a chance. Since the cutlets were so thin, they might have a fighting chance at cooking in six minutes at four hundred degrees, and anything cooked in butter is going to be decadent anyway.

First of all, here are the ingredients, and after Julia’s paella these looked very simple and manageable indeed:

The first thing that came to mind when I saw Julia’s recipes was that I should start with the rice because that would take the longest, and Julia had the same idea. I have to say, French risotto is awfully low-maintenance.

Melt the butter…

Brown some minced onion…

Toast the rice…

Add chicken broth with salt, pepper, and a bouquet garni of parsley, bay leaf, and thyme…

While the rice merrily simmered away, I prepped the lemons, parsley and chicken, the latter of which got salted, peppered, and lemon juiced.

Next it was time to melt butter in my trusty Pyrex casserole, dredge the chicken in the butter, put a bit of waxed paper on top, and pop on the cover. Into the oven it went, and six minutes later we had beautifully cooked chicken. It feels funny not saying more about this but it was really that uncomplicated.

Before long the rice was done as well and absolutely scrumptious. I couldn’t resist taking nibbles now and then. For quality control, obviously. 😉

Things were clicking along. Could it be that I had finally found a Julia recipe that was actually quick and easy? Only a half-hour had gone by and I was already in the home stretch. All that remained was to make a sauce in the casserole dish and we were set.

Simplicity was once again the byword. Add some beef broth and vermouth to the butter, reduce, then add heavy cream, salt and pepper, and more lemon.  Once it thickened, dinner was served.

Butter and chicken juices…

Beef broth and vermouth…

Well, I got through two of the three steps, anyway, but that reduction turned out to be the last thing my trusty casserole would ever do. When I added the heavy cream, the dish exploded. Yeah. The casserole dish that I’ve had for over twenty years was now in pieces big, medium, small, and microscopic. Glass clear across the kitchen and sauce everywhere, not to mention some had bounced off of me, leaving me with a couple of tiny scratches and a gash about an inch long on my shin. Thank God no glass got in my eyes.

And no, I didn’t take a photo. I was a bit preoccupied with the blood trickling down my leg. I wish I were kidding, but I’m really not. The place looked like a crime scene. I ended up tossing the chicken and the prepped ingredients because there were tiny glass shards in the lemons and I was afraid there would be more, so playing it safe seemed best. The rice, which had been sitting covered on a trivet, was fine, so I stowed it in the fridge.

We spent the next several hours cleaning both the room and me, and I’m extremely grateful that my husband, who has first responder training, did the lion’s share of the work. He told me to keep my leg up for a while, to which I obliged, but it felt funny not helping so I joined him in the kitchen twenty minutes later.

After a trip to Raley’s the next day to get more chicken breast, I tried again. I opted for what I thought were cutlets and was pretty stoked that they only cost five dollars and seventy-five cents. These days, with inflation and shrinkflation being so ridiculous, this seemed like a total score.

Naturally, some new parsley, lemons, and butter were needed, only this time there was a special guest. I didn’t want to open another can of beef broth, so Better Than Bouillon came to the rescue. And obviously we needed a new vessel for the chicken, so I pulled out my very versatile and familiar Dutch oven.

Meanwhile the pieces of my erstwhile casserole sat solemnly in repose under all the towels, Clorox wipes and Swiffer pads we cleaned the room with, and I regarded it with a twinge of pragmatic mourning as I worked to redeem Julia’s creation.

This time everything went exactly as planned. Actually, the chicken looked pretty darned amazing if I do say so myself.

Simple, straightforward, and completely gourmet, with just enough lemon flavor. It was like a fancier chicken piccata, and the sauce was a huge hit. Seriously. I could have happily made a meal off of a few spoonfuls. As it is, I’m thinking about putting it on pork or shrimp. It’s really that tasty.

The only problem is there wasn’t enough chicken. Those cutlets I thought I had bought were actually six skinny chicken TENDERS. No wonder they were only five dollars and seventy-five cents. Kind of a dirty trick, Raley’s, but I digress. Julia said suprémes are supposed to be dainty and delicate, so we certainly succeeded in that regard.

Nothing is simple in Julia’s world, although we came pretty close this time, but what we get is always fabulous. I can safely say I will be making Julia’s Suprémes de Volaille á Blanc et Risotto again, preferably sans detonation.

Chicken is definitely a thing this month on Taking Up Room, and in tomorrow’s paid post we’re going to talk about what might possibly be Dracula’s favorite food. Besides hemoglobin, of course. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

The French Chef Cookbook, The French Chef, Volume One (DVD) and The French Chef, Volume 2 (DVD) are available to own from Amazon.

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