Beethoven In Trance - Episode 39

One colleagues of mine brought in some Hungarian dish she made this morning. She herself is polish, but I think she did a good job making this dish. I enjoyed so much that I wrote a review of her dish as my appreciation.


Sandra's Chicken Popercosh
- Home made food at its best

Critics' Rating: 9
Eater's Rating: 10

Review:
A good dish is a marriage between fine ingredients and the accurate execution of a recipe, and Sandra's chicken popercosh is a great example of this culinary truth. It's so easy to pick on a chicken dish. It's an easy ingredient, and yet, because it's so easy, few people actually get it
right. Typical restaurants serve chicken breast that are sliced then grilled and topped on the salad, or whole piece of chicken breast smudged in the mushy roux. Dinners often end up with chicken either too dry or too bland.

Fortunately Sandra's chicken popercosh stayed away from the above course. The selected cut of this dish is chicken thigh (probably the only piece of muscle a bird will use nowadays). This is also a much tolerable cut of a bird, meaning there is less chance of overcooking. The skin is left on to
preserve flavor, and the rich sauce is seasoned just right. A biscuit is on the side while it's not a traditional approach, but for a non-polgarian, this is a fine replacement of the dumpling.

The dish has a non-apologizing and concentrated flavor throughout. The sauce is not as smooth as a typical roux, but the texture matches beautifully with the biscuit on the side. The chicken thigh is cooked perfectly, juicy, tender and full of flavor. The sourness in background of the sauce helps cutting down the grease and enticing the appetite. The sauce is blended with the chicken perfectly. One can tell it's not one of those dishes that the sauce is poured on a precooked chicken at the end.

As an eater, I rate this dish a 10. It's a straight forward dish with great flavor, great cut of the meat and a full body sauce. Unfortunately, it's not an easy dish for restaurant to adopt because of the bone. If replace with skin-on chicken breast, this dish will lose its texture and flavor. If de-bone the thigh, this dish will incur high labor cost and a flat piece of meat with irregular shape which poses challenge to the presentation. Unless one replace the bone with roasted red bell pepper slices, but the labor cost will be unbearable.

As a food critics, I took total one point off from presentation and flavor. This dish calls for more color for garnish. A few slender stems of chive or few tiny sprigs of parsley will certainly brighten up this dish. The sauce of this dish is great on its own, but I would like to push you for more creativity. How to set the flavor apart from any other popercosh? Where is the 'Sandra's touch' in this dish? These are the questions for all of us, and therefore, there will be very few, if any, dishes that I will give a 10 for.

Finally, I am grateful as an eater and delighted as a critics. I would very much like to have the recipe please.


Mark Liang
Eater and Food Snob