la buona cucina americana: Pasticcio di Pollo Americano

Once upon a time there were only a few Europeans scattered along the eastern coast of the United States and Canada, and those few were all British or French. There was no pasta, there was no pizza, for that matter there were no stoves. Everything they ate had to be cooked over an open fire and made from the few things they’d carried across the Atlantic and what they could find where they were. Slowly, slowly, the toughest among them survived and were joined by more adventurers from back home, and slowly, slowly what they ate became something not quite like home but not at all like the food of the native population, either. Something in between. That is still true today. [photopress:Logo_cucina_americana.jpg,full,pp_image] Italian food is not quite the same as it is in Italy, nor is Chinese nor French and after almost 400 years, even the original American food is very changed from what it was. The advent of the stove, the oven, the refrigerator and the microwave has widened the possibilities. Modern science has brought new techniques and chemicals into the mix. It’s not all bad, but it equally is not all the kind of progress we were promised.

The foods that our early settler ancestors made were easy to cook, cheap and practical. As more ethnic groups came, their foods came with them, and more flavors, more spices, more herbs became ordinary. American food marched across the centuries farther and farther from those early British and French peasant roots, so that even the oldest New England family ate things that would have puzzled its antecedents. As Americans grew richer, they ate more meat and sauces and separate vegetable courses, but the backbone of the kitchen was still the one dish meal made of ingredients that were cheap and easily available. The potpie is only one of those dishes and it represents the idea very well.

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By now there are a couple of generations who might think that Chicken Potpie comes from the freezer, mostly in single serving size, nestled in an aluminum dish. In truth, pot pies of all kinds are one of the more successful frozen foods. If they are made with good ingredients and if the manufacturer doesn’t rely on monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup for flavor instead of meat and vegetables and herbs, it’s a product that it would be safe to rely on. I can’t tell you whether there remains a single brand that has a clean label, but don’t buy one without checking.

Even better, make your own at least once so that you know what potpie should be. Certainly any Italian readers will have to do that, because potpie, frozen or otherwise, is rarer than caviar in Italy.

When I made this potpie, it was at least thirty-five years since the last time. I really don’t remember when I last made it. I do remember making lobster potpie for Christmas Eve one year, quite another kind of thing with puff pastry and sherry and cream involved. Potpie originally was a way to use leftovers. Mum would make chicken stew or chicken fricasee and then the leftovers some days later would become potpie. The crust on top made the meat stretch farther so that half a chicken could serve five or even six. The crust might be pastry, like mine, or it might be biscuits baked on top of the bubbling casserole. I like both. As a matter of fact, I discovered that I love potpie. As soon as I finished eating this one, I started to remember beef potpies, meatball potpies, pork potpies and fish ones. I quickly put that out of my mind and photographed a serving for posterity. The calorie load in potpie is ideal for a teenager who is just in from practicing football.

Why is it so good? It’s the gravy. If you go to the trouble to get the stock reduced enough and seasoned enough, you will make a splendid gravy and your potpie can’t fail. So how does that happen? Pick the right fowl and cook it long enough. That’s it.

You may be surmising that you can buy cooked chicken and use instant broth—cubes, powder, canned or “Better than Bouillon”. Wrong. To get the depth of flavor that really pays off, you must really reduce the broth. All those purchased broths are too salty to reduce much. In the end it would taste way too salty.

The right fowl is a stewing hen or an old rooster. A mature fowl has many times the flavor of a young one. I don’t know what happens to old roosters in the United States. There are not so many of them as there are hens, and the hens aren’t so easy to find either. In Italy I can walk into any supermarket and find a whole or a half hen. She has spent her life making eggs and will finish it making soup. When I was in the US I used sometimes to find them frozen, but even more often I had to use a roasting chicken, which isn’t right, but is better than those juvenile fryers. They also run about 5-7 pounds, so you only need half to make this potpie, and you can roast the other half if you like. Ask the service man at the meat counter to cut it in two for you.

Potpie isn’t something I make all in one day, but like the generations before me, I make the meat and broth one day and the pie another day. It does cook for a long time, but almost all of that time you are ignoring it as you go about your day. I even went grocery shopping while the chicken simmered away on the cooker, and she didn’t mind a bit.

Chicken Potpie
For 6 servings

.
Stewed chicken

2-3 pounds of stewing hen or roasting chicken
1 leek, cleaned and sliced or one onion with 2 cloves tuck into it (if you use a yellow one, leave the papery skin on)
1 leg of celery chunked
1 carrot chunked
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves or 3 teaspoons fresh
1 teaspoon salt
3 peppercorns
water to cover
Put all of those ingredients into a large pot and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat so that the surface moves gently, but does not bubble or boil. Simmer gently for at least two hours, checking to be sure the water covers the chicken, until the meat is tender, then remove the meat from the broth and allow to cool a bit. I use surgical gloves so that I can handle the meat quicker, but you don’t have to.

Remove the meat from the bones, fat and skin. Put the bones, fat and skin back into the simmering broth. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces and chill.

Continue to cook the broth until it is reduced by at least half. Taste the broth to see if it is strongly enough flavored of chicken, and if it is, salt it to your taste, then strain all the pieces out using a fine mesh strainer. You can now put it into a container and chill it.

Pastry

1 cup regular flour
.5 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup lard or 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2 tablespoons ice water

Cut the fat into the flour and salt until it looks like peas, then sprinkle the water over and using a fork, mix until it gathers together. Pull it into a ball shape using your hands, then press it firmly together. Wrap in plastic and chill until ready to roll it out.

To make the pie

If you made a stew, you will already have what goes into the potpie. If you did not, you must now cook the vegetables that go into it.
For 6 people, pare and chunk 6 medium potatoes, pare and slice 4-6 carrots, clean and slice 2 legs of celery and clean and quarter 2 medium onions. Cover them all in water in a pot of the right size and bring them to a boil. Add 1.5 teaspoons of salt to the water and cover, allowing it to simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain, then toss in the pieces of meat that you saved after the stewing. Add a handful of fresh or frozen peas.

The gravy

In a frying pan, melt 2 tablespoons of the fat that rose to the top of the broth you chilled. Add 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) of flour, stirring it in as it foams and bubbles. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly, slowly, whisk in 2.5 cups of the reserved broth, making it smooth. Cook for a minute or so over low heat. Taste and correct for salt and pepper. It should need little because you reduced the broth considerably. If your other ingredients are not already hot, you can heat them now in the gravy. If you’ve just cooked them, they should already be hot.

Heat the oven to 425° F. (220° C)

Choose a deep casserole that will hold 3 –4 quarts/liters. Measure the top diameter. Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out to that size. Unlike dessert pies, it doesn’t need to be very thin and is nice thickish. At this point I also cut vent holes into the pastry—this time I made them shaped like leaves, reserving the shapes that I remove from them.

Put the mixed meat and vegetables into the casserole, then pour the gravy over it. Add the pastry over the top, trimming to fit, then add the decorative shapes as you like.

Put it into the oven and cook for 25 to 35 minutes, until golden and bubbling hot. It will fill six mouths with flavors not often tasted in the last 40 years.

In Italiano

Di solito quest’ é un piatto fatto dei resti di un altro piatto di pollo in umido o stufato. La vera cucina americana era da secoli una cucina povera, e questo piatto pratico conteneva le calorie e le vitamine che ci vuole per il lavoro duro che hanno fatto tutti, dal bambino al papà. Ha tutto il gusto ricco che domanda un giorno tempestoso. Provatelo!

Pasticcio di pollo americano
Serve 6 persone
Un piatto unico

La gallina
1 gallina di circa 1.5 chili
1 porro pulito e tagliato a fette
1 gamba di sedano in pezzi
1 carota in pezzi
3 file di zafferano
circa 1 cucchiaino di sale
2 chicchi di pepe nero
1 cucchiaino di foglie secche di timo (o 3 di fresche)
acqua di coprire tutto

Mettete tutto in una tegame grande a portatelo a prebolle. Abassate il fuoco e lasciarelo cuoce molto lentamente almeno 2 ore, controllando che rimane abbastanze acqua per coprire la carne. Quando é cotta la carne, toglietela a una ciottola e seperate la carne dagli ossi e la pelle. Tornate la pelle e gli ossi al brodo. Continuate la cottura del brodo fino a é ristretto almeno la metà. Assagiatelo e coreggiate il sale. Passatelo tra una rete fine in un contenitore e mettetelo in frigo per rinfrescare.

La pasta

130 g farina 00
75 g strutto
.5 cucchiaino sale
circa 2 cucchiai di acqua ghiacciata

Tagliate lo strutto nella farina con due coltelli da tavola, e quando somiglia piselli, aggiungete l’acqua, qb per fare una pasta abbastanza compatta. Fatela in pellicola e mettetela in frigo per almeno 30 minuti.

Il Pasticcio

Riscaldate il forno a 220° C

6 patate spellate e tagliate a pezzi di circa 3-4 cm
4-6 carote sbucciate e tagliate a fette
2 gambe di sedano a pezzi grandi
2 cipolle medie, tagliate a 4 pezzi
1.5 cucchiaino di sale

In una tagame, fate bollire tutti le verdure fino alle patate sono tenere. Sciogliete l’acqua. Aggiungete i pezzi di carne avete preperato prima.

Aggiungete una mancia di piselli freschi o scongelate.

Scieglete una casseruola addata al forno, capacità 3-4 litri e misurate il diametro. Togliete la pasta dal frigo e distendetela alla misura del caseruola. Fate delle bucche per scappare il vapore nella forma di foglie, mettete aparte le foglie.

La salsa

In una padella larga, sciogliete su un fuoco medio 2 cucchiai del grasso di pollo dal brodo freddo. Aggiungete 4 cucchiai di farina, mescolando bene bene. Togliete la padella dal fuoco e aggiungete man mano circa 625 ml del brodo, mescolando in continuo per fare una crema liscia. Tornatela al fuoco basso per circa un minuto. Questa é la salsa, e tutto la bontà di questo piatto dipende della salsa.

Mettete la carne e le verdure nella casseruola, aggiungete la salsa. Aggiungete la pasta sopra e poi le foglie riservate.

Infornatelo per 25 – 35 minute fino é colorato oro biondo ed é bollente. Servitelo caldissimo.