Poussins à la Piémontaise

Poussins à la Piémontaise (Piedmont-style young chickens) teaches orchestration: the birds, the rice, and the final glaze must arrive together. The one true thing to know before touching a pan is this: the Rizotto à la Piémontaise (Piedmontese risotto) must be finished, hot, and supple when the browned birds enter the cocotte. Cold rice makes the oven reheat supper instead of completing it, and the delicate poussins pay the price.

The original assumed a saucier on staff, stock never off the fire, a salamander waiting overhead, and enough little birds for individual entrée portions. Those extra hands are scaffolding. At home, two poussins split after cooking make four generous servings, a separate finished batch of Rizotto à la Piémontaise supplies the rice, and an ordinary broiler provides the fierce top heat. The referenced rizotto remains a finished preparation, exactly as the book keeps it; only the brigade and its equipment have been reduced. One cook, one stove, one evening.

What remains is the dish itself. Each bird still receives one and one-half ounces of white Piedmont truffle pounded with an equal weight of very fresh pork fat, then it is trussed, fried hard in butter for ten minutes, partly enclosed in rizotto, glazed with Parmesan, and finished with beurre noisette (hazelnut-brown butter). None of that is decorative. Before the butter meets the pan, set the hot rizotto beside the empty cocotte; that timing decides the dish.