Mignonnettes de Poulet

Mignonnettes de Poulet (little chicken fillets) teach the discipline of cooking something delicate without making it timid. The one true thing to know before touching a pan is this: chicken tenderloins have no time to forgive you. Shape them carefully, keep them cold, and poach them only until they are done. Their pale tenderness is the point, not a lack of ambition.

The brigade recipe assumed a saucier tending the Suprême sauce, white stock never off the fire, mushroom cooking liquor saved from another preparation, a mortar and sieve for the chicken purée, and enough matching fillets to fill a grand platter. At home, eight bought tenderloins, a small batch of mushroom liquor, a food processor, and prepared Suprême sauce do the same work for four. Making gallons of each component was brigade scaffolding and can go. The contiser, the ring shape, the artichoke pedestal, the stiff white purée, and the five- to six-minute poach are the dish and must stay. No salamander is needed because the fillets are poached, not glazed. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Done properly, the platter is pale but never dull: butter-gold artichoke bottoms, ivory chicken purée, curved fillets punctuated with black truffle and rosy tongue, and a sauceboat of Suprême beside them. The poaching is the step that decides everything. Watch the temperature rather than waiting for colour, because colour will arrive only after the chicken has gone too far.