Chicken Française – Brazilian Style

Hi all,

Whenever you travel, you encounter differences. Goes without saying I guess. However, often it’s the little things that you stumble over. Take the time I tried to make dinner for my host.

Raquel is a friend of a friend. I stayed with her on a sweeping tour through Brazil a couple years back. To thank her, I told her that one evening I would make dinner. She of course thought this was a great idea.

I’m no stranger to the kitchen, and can prepare a few dishes quite well – when I have the utensils and ingredients required. And, as you have no doubt already surmised, in this case I did not. So read below about what happened to me when I tried to make Chicken Française here in Brazil.

Chicken Française, Brazilian Style

“Unbelievable,” I said aloud in English at the supermercado, to no one in particular. “Brazil produces every kind of fruit imaginable, but not lemons? How am I supposed to make chicken française without lemons?”

Raquel and I were standing in the produce aisle at a grocery in Macaé, on the coast a few hours north of Rio de Janeiro. Raquel, a friend of a friend, had graciously offered to let me stay with her a couple of days as I sojourned through southeastern Brazil. To express my thanks, I had offered to make dinner.

It’s rare in Brazil that a man cooks for a woman, and Raquel had pounced on the offer.

Chicken française is an old standby of mine. Everyone seems to like it, and it isn’t difficult to make – typically.

Raquel thought the dish sounded like a good choice. I ran through the list of ingredients with her to determine what she already had at home and what we’d need to pick up.

In the basket now were everything on the list except for lemons – which I could not find anywhere in the store. And when I asked Raquel about bottled lemon juice, she just gave me a confused look.

It turns out that while limes abound in Brazil – they are, after all, a key ingredient in the national drink, the caipirinha – lemons, known locally as “Sicilian limes”, are as rare as hen’s teeth.

But we’d gathered everything else on the list, and Raquel was in a hurry to pick up her son from futeball practice, so I took the only course available: I grabbed a handful of limes and headed for checkout.

After all, I rationalized in the car as we headed to Raquel’s place, there’s not such a big difference between lemons and limes. A cook has to learn to improvise on occasion.

Then, as we were nearing Raquel’s home, she mentioned offhandedly that she is a vegetarian.

Now I was beginning to become concerned. The dish, after all, is called chicken française.

Was Raquel testing me? I wondered. I determined to rise to the challenge.

After depositing my bag in the spare room and getting acquainted with Raquel’s son, Gabriel, I reconnoitered the kitchen. It turned out to be reasonably well equipped, but every kitchen is different and presents its own challenges.

Not wanting any further surprises, I decided to set out all ingredients and utensils before commencing. This proved to be a good idea.

For those of you who’ve never made chicken française, it’s generally an easy enough dish to prepare. You dip chicken breasts in egg, flour them, and brown them before simmering them in a sauce of white wine, chicken broth, and lemon juice spiced with garlic, onion salt, and black pepper. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices and serve over rice. Though most recipes don’t call for them, I like to add sauteed mushrooms to mine shortly before serving.

Already I was working with limes rather than lemons. Fine. Raquel didn’t eat meat, but she did eat mushrooms, and she had some of those (albeit in a jar), so we should manage.

Now I found out that, no, actually, she didn’t have any chicken broth, despite earlier reassurances to the contrary. She wasn’t even sure that you could buy it at the market. When I tried to describe “bullion cubes”, she again looked at me quizzically. Perhaps sensing my mounting frustration, she asked innocently if the broth really weren’t just water and salt anyway?

At this point, I decided to crack open the wine, even though it wasn’t yet chilled. As Raquel drinks only occasionally, there was (of course) no corkscrew in the house. My stubborn Scottish nature now coming to the fore, I found a long-handled wooden spoon and gently forced the cork down into the bottle (a la sophomore year of college) without ejecting over-much onto my shirt.

Her pots and pans looked like something from colonial times. They were cast iron and nearly a quarter-inch thick. Turning my attention to her gas stove, I found that the burners seemed to have settings only of “Flickering out” and “Flamethrower”. Getting chicken, rice, and asparagus all ready at the same time was going to require constant monitoring and no small amount of luck.

I took a long pull of wine, which was a surprisingly decent sauvignon blanc. “Surprisingly,” because Brazil, despite having many people of Italian descent in the South, doesn’t generally produce very good wines. Brazil is more of a beer and cachaça country. (Cachaça is a liquor distilled from sugar cane, somewhat akin to a strong white rum.) Surveying the counter, I wondered briefly if I could make chicken française with cachaça. Another time, perhaps.

Having reached the point of no return, I dipped the chicken in egg and flour and set it to browning. By the way, if you ever find yourself cooking in Latin America, do not assume that every kitchen will be stocked with wheat flour as a staple. Corn or manioc flour are more common in many locales.

Turning my attention to the sauce, I took down a large mixing bowl and began. Wine we had – although I was careful to ensure that I held out plenty to drink. A little extra wine has made many dinners taste better than they truly were.

I sliced two limes and squeezed their juice into the bowl. As for the chicken broth, well, I’d do as Raquel had suggested and use water and salt. After all, there would be chicken simmering in the pan, so what was the big deal?

Checking the array of spices, I decided we would have to get creative. No, Raquel told me, she did not in fact have any of the promised salsa (parsley) either. She had been sure that she had some. Her bad! (Now I was pretty sure she was messing with me for fun.) But hey, parsley is mostly for color anyway, I thought, taking another sip of wine. Should have bought another bottle of this stuff.

Well, we had garlic and salt, which Brazilians tend to use very liberally, so we’d rely heavily on those. On impulse, I threw in some laurel (bay leaves) – and even these looked different here. And though Brazil, apart from Bahia, isn’t known for spicy cuisine, Raquel declared that she liked spicy food, so I shook in lots of black pepper. And I went heavy on the mushrooms, since she likes those and, hey, we actually had some of them, albeit in a jar.

About an hour after beginning my ordeal, Raquel and I sat down to our piping plates of “chicken française”. Gabriel ate leftovers from lunch. Smart kid.

After trying a couple bites, Raquel got up to scurry around the kitchen, returning to the table a few moments later with olive oil, some sort of grated cheese, and hot sauce, all of which she proceeded to add to my creation. I tried not to cringe.

But after sampling the new and improved version, Raquel pronounced it a success, and cleaned her plate. And, I had to admit, with enough wine, it wasn’t too bad. When in Macaé, do as the… locals do, whatever they might be called.

Reflecting after dinner on my surprising recovery, I decided that I had survived 1) because Raquel had never had chicken française and therefore had nothing to compare it to, and 2) she probably just appreciated the effort (and the opportunity to mess with my head).

In the end, Raquel was pleased. And that, after all, was what the whole meal was really all about. If she was happy, why shouldn’t I be?

But I still intend to check the market next time before offering to make dinner.

Adieu,

Jean

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