Gastrique

I don’t regularly watch American cooking programs and competitions, although occasionally I come across them on TV here in France, dubbed (Version Française, or VF), which makes them less interesting to watch. And I don’t go to those cooking vacations where chefs come and cook for guests on tropical islands because, frankly, I’m never asked. (Although unbelievably, I did just get an email from a public relations person, which contained links and photos to one of those food festivals, asking me to write a post on my blog about it…even though I wasn’t there.)

So I decided to spare you a post with someone else’s photos about an event that I didn’t even go to. But while everyone else was frolicking on the beach sipping tiki cocktails with their favorite chefs, I was at home, reading. One thing that caught my eye in the newspaper was an article about Bobby Flay – who often appears on television and probably gets to go to those food festivals – regarding a new restaurant he is opening in New York after a hiatus from restaurant cooking.

Unlike writing about faux vacations, I was much more intrigued by a recipe forChicken with Roquefort cheese that accompanied the article. So I went to the market and came home with a big hunk (unfortunately, not the guy from the Auvergne who sells sausages and terrines, with the dreamy smile..) of the blue-green veined cheese that happens to be the first AOC designated food in France.

(The AOC designation was enacted in 1925, and was meant to control and protect production and quality standards. See how much more important reading and researching is, rather than sitting at a bar by the ocean, drinking rum cocktails with warm sand under your feet?)

It remains one of my favorite cheeses and it’s hard to find a bad example of it in France. One thing, though, that is hard to find are bone-in chicken breasts. There are whole chickens, plenty of thighs and legs, and boneless breasts aplenty. But I’ve never seen a bone-in chicken breast in Paris, so decided to go with their more flavorful counterparts; the leg and thigh portions.

You could tell the recipe was a “restaurant recipe” because it called for a lot of butter. I don’t have a problem with butter, but a whole stick (115g) mashed together with a generous chunk of Roquefort, created pretty unappetizing leftovers: the butter had firmed up in the container into a deep, waxy, yellow pool. It reminded me of the time I bought beef bones to roast for making stock. I pulled out the marrow midway during the roasting and let it sit in a bowl, thinking I would go back and eat it later. But it had solidified into a rather uninviting mass, and I’ve only been able to eat marrow once since then. I don’t want to give up on butter entirely, so I became one of those “swap it out” folks, and decided to rework the recipe from the ground up.

via:http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2014/03/gastrique-recipe-sauce/