In mon pays, when a girl marries and leaves her mother's home for her own, she always takes with her at least one sauteuse, the shallow, black iron pan that, we call a skillet, or frying pan. Without it, how could she manage to prepare the poulet sauté or côtelettes de porc or escalopes de veau, which her good man expects to find on his table? How could she cook the fish he catches? What would she do with the thin minute steaks which thrifty French women make a virtue of, for lack of the thicker cuts more suitable for broiling? Evidemment, no French cook could possibly manage without a sauteuse.
So you see why I was so shocked to read recently that American women are being urged to throw away their frying pans. It would be better, I should think. that they learn how to make proper use of them so that they, too, can produce the wonderful plats sautés for which France is famous. Sautéing is particularly popular in France because it is a type of cooking which can be done on any stove and with a minimum amount of any fuel, that commodity so scarce in France even in the best of times.
My mother's sauteuses had sides that flared a little and very long handles, because they had been passed down in her family from the rime when most cooking was done in open fireplaces, and long-handled pans were essential. Generations of use with fat and heat had seasoned them well, and seasoning is important to iron pans, which rust easily and do not cook so well when they are new.
There are many dishes prepared in a sauteuse, or skillet, but the most important of them—and one which every good cook should be able to make—is the poulet sauté.
Many a poulet sauté my mother and my grandmother used to cook, usually in the simple à la française style, and I learned much from them. But it was on my first job. at the Hotel du Rhin in Paris, that I learned all the chef's tricks—how to fix the leg and second joint so that they lie flat in the pan and brown evenly, how important it is to cook the skin side first, and what dreadful fate befalls the sauces if the chicken or its juices are allowed to scorch even faintly.
M. Gaunard, the chef saucier at the Hôtel du Rhin, was my teacher, and a kind, if exacting, master. I remember my first poulet sauté florentine. I was so anxious for it to be perfect that I must have washed the spinach nearly a hundred times, and I ate pounds of the stuff, chewing the leaves to make sureno sand lurked there. I put my heart into that dish, and when M. Gaunard tasted the sauce and pronounced it good, I felt for the first time that I could see the higher rungs of the ladder I wanted so desperately to climb.
What I learned from M. Gaunard I taught to hundreds of chefs during my years at the old Ritz-Carlton, and many a fine poulet sauté in this country owes its good flavor and succulence to lessons learned in that roomy old citchen below-Stain at Madison Avenue at Forty-sixth Street.
To Prepare Chicken for Sautéing
Clean and singe a young chicken. Remove the legs and second joints in one piece and dégagéz—that is, loosen—the skin at the end of the leg and push it back a bit so that the bone protrudes. This prevents the drying of the thin layer of meat at the end of the bone. Lay the chicken skin side down on a board and with the dull edge of a large knife blade crack through the cartilage between the leg and second joint. Remove the second-joint bone by pulling it out at the exposed end. Make an incision down the underside of the leg. The whole piece will then lie flat in the pan and will cook more evenly. Cut off the wings. Remove the breast meat in three pieces, one from each side and one from the front. Leave the back in one piece: It doesn't offer much to ear, but it flavors the sauce and makes a support against which you can arrange the legs, breasts, and wings on the serving platter. Dry each piece of chicken thoroughly and season it with a little salt and pepper. Dredge the pieces in flour, if you like, but be sure to shake off the surplus Hour, or the loose bits will scorch in the pan and spoil the appearance and flavor of the sauce.
A heavy metal pan is essential for the even browning and cooking that marks a well-prepared sauté. A light pan is apt to burn the food. The kind of fat used for sautéing depends upon personal preference. In fine cooking, butter is preferred, but it is always clarified first—the butter is melted, and then poured off, leaving the milky sediment which settles in the pan. Some cooks like to use salad oil; others prefer fresh drippings. But if either of these is used, the oil or fat must be poured off when the chicken is almost cooked, and butter added to the pan to complete the cooking and to make the sauce. One trick in sautéing chicken is not to have the fat too hot. At the Ritz we often put the chicken on clarified butter spread in a warm pan and moved the pan away from the hot part of the range. On a home stove the heat should be turned down or an asbestos pad put under the pan. And finally, always cook the skin side first to a perfect, appetizing brown. Then turn the chicken and continue to cook until it is tender. The underside may be a little pale, or perhaps slightly overbrown; it won't matter because that side is nor seen when the chicken is served.
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