Poulet au cidre et aux pommes

Yesterday, for my birthday dinner, I cooked a chicken in cider with spiked with apple brandy (calvados), apples, and crème fraîche. I based it on two or three recipes I found on the internet. I bought a Label Rouge farm-raised chicken at the supermarket. It came from a farm near the town of Saulges in the Mayenne département, about 100 miles northwest of Saint-Aignan and near the towns of Laval and Le Mans. That's the southern part of Normandy, or it at least borders on southern Normandy, which is famous for apple cider (I used cidre brut) and apple brandy (calvados, which is like cognac but distilled from apple juice instead of grape juice.)

Don't be confused by the names Maine (on the chicken's label), which is the name of a historical French province that the U.S. state of Maine was named for, and Mayenne, which is the name of a present-day French administrative entity (a département or "county") as well as of a town in the region.

Anyway back to the chicken, the cider, and the calvados. As you can see, the chicken was pretty good-looking. The cider was good too, and I say that as somebody whose doesn't drink much cider. It was sparkling hard cider (brut means dry in this context). As for the calvados, I have long been a fan. Fifty years ago, I lived in Normandy for a year and developed a taste for the local apple brandy.

To prepare the chicken for cooking, there were several options. I could have cut it up into pieces (breast, thighs, drumstick, wings, etc.). I also thought about cutting the bird in half and cooking one half while putting the other half in the freezer for later. Finally, I decided to go all way and cook it the whole chicken. I "butterflied" it. In the U.K., they call that "spatchcocked" and in France it's en crapaudine (because it makes the chicken look a little like a crapaud, or toad. What you do is cut out the bird's backbone and then break the breast bone so that the chicken will lie flat for cooking.

I browned the chicken in a hot oven first, with some onions, garlic, allspice, salt, and pepper. When it was golden brown, I poured nearly half a bottle of cider and a splash of calvados into the baking dish. When all that looked done, I took the chicken out of the pan, added some crème fraîche to the cooking liquid, and let the sauce reduce by about half. Meanwhile, I cooked some wedges of apple in butter in a frying pan, splashed on some calvados, and let the apples brown a little. When they looked pretty much done, I put the chicken and the apples in the baking dish, poured on the sauce, and put it all in the oven for a few minutes to finish cooking and to heat through. Above you can see what it looked like.

The weather was sunny and mild yesterday afternoon,
so I went out for a good walk in the vineyard with Tasha.