Poularde à la Grecque

Poularde à la Grecque (rice-stuffed chicken gently roasted in butter) teaches the cleanest lesson in sauce work: arrowroot cannot create flavor. The stock must be reduced until every spoonful tastes unmistakably of chicken before it is bound, because this glaze has no roux, cream, or mother sauce behind which to hide.

The entry assumed a finished pot of Riz à la Grecque (No. 2253), a saucier on staff, stock never off the fire, a deep poëling vessel, and a salamander ready if the skin needed color. Your home equivalents are one plump chicken, a snug lidded cocotte, excellent unsalted stock infused in the roasting pot, and the broiler only if necessary. The separate saucier and bulk stockpot are brigade scaffolding and can go. The prepared rice, the dry butter cooking of Poëlings (No. 250), the stock's contact with the buttery matignon, the hard reduction, and the arrowroot binding must stay. They are the dish.

Cook gently without adding liquid, then uncover the bird so it bronzes while the rice reaches a safe, tender heat at its center. The moment that decides the plate comes later: taste the reduction before the arrowroot goes in. If it tastes thin, keep reducing. Thickness is not concentration.