Suprêmes de Volaille Georgette

Suprêmes de Volaille Georgette (poached chicken breast fillets on shrimp-filled baked potatoes) teaches architecture before it teaches heat. A suprême is the fillet of the chicken breast, and here each one rests on its own pomme Georgette. Before you touch a pan, match every potato to its suprême. If the foundations are too small or uneven, the crown slips, and no flourish can persuade it otherwise.

The original instruction assumed a saucier to hold the roux-bound shrimp filling, stock never off the fire, a salamander for gratiner, and enough hands to assemble a brigade's portions at once. At home, one small saucepan builds the filling, good unsalted chicken stock supplies the poach, and the oven broiler replaces the salamander. I have reduced the crown to four portions and cut the separate holding pans and batch work, which were brigade scaffolding. The matched potatoes, shrimp filling, gentle poach, centered truffle, and crown arrangement stay. They are the dish.

When it is right, the potatoes are deeply golden at their edges, the suprêmes remain pale and tender beneath a sheen of butter, and each black truffle slice sits exactly at the center. One cook, one stove, one evening. Choose the potatoes against the chicken before cooking anything. That first comparison decides the whole plate.