Name: Chicken with Garlic Pearls in Sauternes (Poulet aux Perles d’Ail Doux et au Sauternes)
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: France
Ingredients: 1 bottle (750 ml) Sauterne(s), or other sweet white wine such as a Semillon blanc or Johannisberg Riesling; ½ tablespoons olive oil or rendered poultry fat; 1 leek, split, well washed, and thinly sliced; 1¾ cups thinly sliced onions; Salt and freshly ground pepper; 1 whole chicken, preferably organic free-range, about 3 pounds, with its neck and giblets; ⅔ cup crème fraîche; 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley; 3 tablespoons unsalted butter (optional); 1 to 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, or more to taste; ⅓ cup heavy cream; 1½ teaspoons sugar; 1½ teaspoons unsalted butter; 2 good-sized heads of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled; Herb bouquet: 3 sprigs parsley, 2 sprigs thyme, 1 leafy celery top, and 1 imported bay leaf tied together with string; 1½ cups unsalted chicken stock (storebought or homemade); 1⅔ cups thinly sliced carrots; 2 pounds meaty veal neck bones or riblets, cut into 1-inch pieces

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

The Cooking of South West France

By Paula Wolfert

Published 1987

About

The original way to prepare this old Gascon dish is to rub a tasty barnyard hen with garlic and then stuff it with many garlic cloves. The hen is then cooked slowly so that the cloves become soft but do not lose their shape. Later the pan is deglazed with Sauternes, which has a high concentration of sugar, and the garlic cloves are pulled out and left to caramelize in the pan juices. The following recipe is a sophisticated adaptation conceived by