We're making comfort food. A fricassée (pronounced 'frik-a-see' by English-speaking people or 'frik-a-say' by French-speaking people) makes me think of an Alsatian grandmère in a farm kitchen cutting her chicken, fresh from the coop, into pieces with a sturdy knife while her petite-fille watches on a stool next to her ready to help. Although there's not much to help with in this recipe.

Fricassée is lighter than a stew and perfect for Spring. It turns out Abraham Lincoln loved chicken fricassée, and I'm a fan now too.

After cutting up the chicken, you sauté the meat in olive oil and brown the meat on both sides. Then, add the garlic (without bothering to peel them as I did) and let the garlic soften a bit. Sprinkle everything with salt, pepper and sliced sage and add the wine. The wine helps deglaze the pan and scrape up all the tasty bits stuck to the pan. Let the wine come to the boil and then throw it in a 400˚F oven to stew for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, cover for another 15-20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Strain the sauce, making sure to push all the softened garlic through the strainer (leaving the garlic peels behind), and reduce by half.

Recipe: Fricassée de Poulet à l'ail et à la Sauge (Chicken Fricassée with Garlic and Sage)

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1 cup dry white wine

This is a stew to celebrate Spring, but we're deep into Fall now in Eastern Canada. So I've mixed the celebrations and used a maple syrup sap bucket to show off the stew and placed autumn leaves around its base.

We're still focusing on braising and stewing this week, and true to French cooking form, everything is cooked and seasoned separately and then assembled together at the end. Doing this adds a depth of flavor and ensures every element tastes its best at the end, although it requires more dishes than just one crockpot!

Lamb
The recipe calls for lamb. Lamb meat is the meat from a young sheep (less than 12 months of age). A mutton is a sheep older than 1 year old and has a more gamey, strong flavor. Instead of mutton, get a lamb shoulder and cut it into cubes. Preferably, get a Spring lamb: "a milk-fed lamb, usually three to five months old, born in late winter or early spring and sold usually before July 1st". (Wikipedia) I cheated and found lamb shoulder already cut into cubes and trimmed.

Sear, Roux, and Stew
Last week we made a stew too, but it was a white stew (which meant it was blanched first). This week, it's a brown stew so the meat is seared first. When searing, you should see the bottom of the pan so that the meat browns and doesn't poach.

After searing, I let the lamb have a bit of a rest on a plate. Then, to the hot pan I added the butter, onions, and garlic and then sprinkled it with flour, and cooked this mixture for a couple of minutes, scraping up the lamb fond left from searing. (Like a roux, the flour helps to thicken the juices.) Then I added the seared lamb back in with water to cover, plus some tomato paste and aromatics like thyme, bay, salt, and pepper. Like a stock, you're adding flavor to the base. After I brought this to a boil, I reduced the heat and let it simmer for 25 minutes. Now, the "stew" work was done.

Vegetables
Next were the vegetables. This dish has a ton of veggies. Each needs their own pot! Get the dishwasher empty and ready for dirty pots!

First, the carrots, turnips, and potatoes had to be turned. Of course, if you're doing this just for fun, you don't have to turn them, but if you want to pretend you're at culinary school, you must turn them. So turn them, I tried. Then, I popped them each into their very own pot, covered with cold water, a dab of butter, and a sprinkle of salt pepper and they were ready to glaze: boil, reduce heat, and simmer until water has evaporated.

The green beans and peas are blanched, separately, each in their very own pot, of course.

The potatoes got to share the pot with the stew for 30 minutes at the end of the cooking time.

Finally, all the vegetables are allowed to swim together in the stew for 5-10 minutes. Season and this stew was ready to serve.

Recipe: Navarin d'Agneau Printanier (Lamb Stew with Spring Vegetables)

You can find the recipe for Navarin d'Agneau Printanier (Lamb Stew with Spring Vegetables) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) or here. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with this week's recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
I love how the vegetables are prepared separately from the stew (notwithstanding all the dishes!). In most stews, the vegetables are a limp, inedible mass at the end of stewing, so this was a treat (especially for someone like me who doesn't like lamb!). At least there was something for me to enjoy about this stew. The lamb was nicely tender and flavored, but lamb is just a tad too gamey for me. I still remember all the hamburgers and meat pies I ate in Australia that had a slight taste of lamb. They put lamb meat in everything {well, almost}. But the techniques of searing, stewing and preparing the vegetables separately are my takeaways from this recipe.

[Skipping a week] Next Posting Week (October 15)
Some things have come up at home, so I'm taking a week off. I will be moving the schedule out a week. If you're following along, feel free to do a rewind for next week or take a vacation too!
• Merlans Colbert (Deep-fried Whiting with Tartar Sauce) pages 290-291

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $817.60 + $34.96 = $852.56

Butter used so far: 8 pounds, 4 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index