Catalonia · Main
Pollastre amb Escamarlans
- Advanced
- 55 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, a floral thread lifting the aroma, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 1 free range chicken, 1.6 kg, jointed into 8
- 8 langoustines, or 8 large head-on prawns
- 250 g sofregit
- 100 ml vi ranci, or a dry oxidised white wine
- 300 ml chicken stock
- 60 ml olive oil
- 1 bay leaf and 1 sprig of thyme
- 40 g toasted almonds
- 20 g toasted hazelnuts
- 20 g dark chocolate, 70 percent cocoa
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 slice of bread fried in olive oil
- a pinch of saffron, dried and crumbled
- salt and black pepper
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · shellfish · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Salt the chicken and brown it hard in the oil, skin down and unmoved, until the skin releases itself from the pan and is the colour of mahogany. Set it aside.
- Sear the langoustines in the same fat for 40 seconds a side, just until the shells redden, and lift them straight out. They finish in the sauce later.
- Pour off half the fat, add the sofregit and the herbs, then the vi ranci, scraping the base and reducing until the pan no longer smells of alcohol.
- Return the chicken with the stock, cover, and simmer gently until the thigh meat pulls away from the bone at a fork, about 35 minutes. 35 min
- Pound the almonds, hazelnuts, garlic, fried bread, saffron and chocolate to a paste with a ladle of the sauce, stir it in and simmer 10 minutes, until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. 10 min
- Slide the langoustines back in, cover, and leave them off the heat 3 minutes, until the tail meat is just opaque to the middle. 3 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Searing: the hard crust 141 recipes
- The pan keeps a hard, steady sizzle from the moment the food lands and does not fall quiet; silence within the first half minute means the pan lost its heat and the surface is now steaming rather than browning.
- It releases itself when tested: slide a thin edge under and it lifts without tearing. Anything that grips the pan has not formed a crust yet and is not ready to be moved.
- Deep even brown across the whole face, edge to edge, when it is turned under the light: no pale ring left around a browned centre, and no black patches that taste bitter on their own.
- The pan floor carries a dry browned layer that dissolves and lifts the moment liquid hits it: not a wet grey film, and not black flecks that stay put and stay bitter.
- Cut into it: the browned band is thin, a few millimetres at most, sitting straight on top of correctly cooked interior; a thick grey collar under the crust means the heat was too low for too long.
Where it goes wrong The pan was not hot enough, or too much went in at once, so the food released its water and sat in it: the surface goes grey and steams, it sticks when moved, and the crust that eventually forms arrives over an interior already cooked through.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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