Pilaw de Volaille à la Parisienne

Pilaw de Volaille à la Parisienne (Parisian chicken pilaff) teaches the discipline of absorption: the broth must be sufficient to cook the rice and no more, because the promised finish is dry, separate grains carrying chicken, tomato, bay, and butter. The one true thing to know before touching the pan is this: cover the rice with broth, not the chicken.

The original entry assumed a fowl cut for fricassée, white broth and veal stock never off the fire, a saucier with tomato sauce already made, and enough pans to brown the bird and rice separately. At home, one small chicken, good chicken stock, prepared veal stock or diluted veal demi-glace, and one wide ovenproof pan do the work. The source proportion stays intact, 3½ ounces of rice to the bird. Browning the rice in the chicken pan merely removes brigade scaffolding; butter, tomato concass, bay, the very hot oven, the veal-stock finish, and the separate sauceboat all remain because they are the dish. One cook, one stove, one evening.

After twenty-five minutes, the chicken should be burnished, the broth gone, and the rice loose under your fork rather than swollen into porridge. The deciding moment is the liquid line before the pan enters the oven: let the broth rise just above the rice between the chicken pieces, then stop pouring.