Recipes
Marengo Chicken A variation of the recipe
May 17, 2011
Ingredients
Cleaned and flamed chicken
1
00 wheat flour
5 tablespoons
Dry white wine
1 glass
Meat broth
1 glass
Butter
to taste
Olive oil
to taste
Salt
to taste
Lemon juice
1/2
Garlic
1 clove
Pepper
to taste
Nutmeg
to taste
Proceedings
Cut the chicken into eight pieces, flour them and brown them in a saucepan with olive oil and butter and a clove of garlic; season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with nutmeg.
When they have turned a nice golden color, douse them with dry white wine and let it evaporate.
Now add a cup of broth, cover and cook.
ete over a high but not violent flame until fully cooked.
Arrange the chicken pieces on a serving platter and drizzle them with a gravy made by mixing the cooking juices with the juice of half a lemon.
Serve hot, garnished with baked new potatoes.
Curiosities
This dish is said to have been served on the evening of the Battle of Marengo to General Bonaparte, who later emerged victorious.
It is said that the supplies of the French troops were at an exhaustion: but a chicken can also be stolen, in war. It is still said that it was fried in oil and drizzled with Madeira.
I consulted the sacred texts of post-Napoleonic Piedmontese cuisine, which are those of Chapusot (1846) and Vialardi (1854), but I found no trace of Madera.
Chapusot, then, also puts tomatiche, or tomatoes, in this sauté, approaching chicken cacciatore.
The reader-cook, at this point, wonders why there is a Marengo-style chickennear Alessandria, in La Morra.
In an article in the “Popolo nuovo” of July 3, 1958, mentioning the Belvedere restaurant in La Morra, then run by Settimio and Giuseppina Roggero, the chicken alla Nerone with cognac is extolled, without, unfortunately for us, reporting the recipe.
Such a chicken is definitely sautéed over the flame and sprayed with alcoholic vapors-I thought of Marengo-style chicken as a similar recipe.
I think Septimius and Josephine would also agree, if they were still alive.
Photo credit: Rowena
