CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Does the world really need another chicken cookbook? Well, poultry is currently the most popular animal protein on the planet. Over 2 million chickens were eaten on a daily basis in 2020, and its appeal as a nutritious, versatile, and easily accessed food grows exponentially every year. But there are already hundreds of books about cooking fowl out there -- from “The Chicken Bible” to “Fifty Shades of Chicken” -- with specialty volumes like “The Chicken Cutlet Cookbook ‚” “The Chicken Soup Manifesto,” “Wings and Things,” and my current favorite, “Drinking with Chickens,” which isn’t even a cookbook, but a compendium of cocktails inspired by the author’s bibulous afternoons in her Southern California garden, with her free-range chicken pals at her side. Most of these books are gathering dust on a multitude of kitchen shelves around the globe.
But if your interest is even slightly piqued, and it should be, then pull up a chair and we’ll discuss the many, many chicken delights of this book by Mireille Sanchez, a French culinary columnist and cookbook author who spent seven years traveling and researching to compile this impressive work. First, you should know that “Chicken A-Z: 1,000 Recipes from around the World” won the prestigious “Best Book of the Year” award at the 24th Gourmand World Cookbook Awards last year as “Le Poulet Voyageur” (The Traveling Chicken). It is perhaps the better title, as the book, beginning with a recipe for Hyderabad Biryani, and ending with one for Chicken and Potato Soup is not arranged alphabetically. It is, however, impressively encyclopedic. In the 830 pages between the complex casserole and the simple soup, there are over 1,000 recipes, glorifying gallus gallus domesticus’s starring role in almost every world culture.
It all began approximately 8,000 years ago in India, when a wild fowl walked out of the jungle into backyard domestication and somehow managed to find its way to almost every part of the world in the many years since. The book reflects its subject’s universality, and the recipes below are representative of its global reach. They include a richly flavored Malaysian Ayam Masak Merah (Red Chicken with Honey); a delicate, white-sauced French Vol-Au- Vent de Poulet, the still-delicious throwback to ladies luncheons of long ago; and North Carolina Oven-Fried Chicken, with a big crunch outside, but still moist in the middle.
Along with the recipes, there’s a wealth of additional chickeniana. You could earn a PhD in poultry, or win big in Jeopardy, just by glancing through the “asides” as Sanchez calls them, with icons identifying general knowledge, history of a chicken variety, and complementary recipes that accompany many of the lead entries.
What it does not have is a user-friendly index of recipes. Rather, the book’s index is divided into continental sections and then further into countries (for the United States and Canada, it’s further divided into states and provinces). This makes it easy to find, say, signature recipes from Sri Lanka, Samoa, Singapore, Senegal, El Salvador, or Saskatchewan. However, a hankering for chicken salad will send you searching through the contents of six continents of chicken recipes to find one, or more likely, seven or eight.
It’s hard if you’re in a hurry. “Chicken A-Z” is just not that kind of book. But perhaps you can see yourself whiling away some snowy afternoons this winter, paging through the warm aromatic stews of Latin America, or mulling over pungent masalas of southern India. And perhaps you can also see the book, the ultimate authority on all things chicken, replacing some of the tired old tomes on your newly dusted cookbook shelf -- at the ready for quick culinary reference or a serendipitous recipe you had never thought to cook before. I happily have it on mine.
A richly flavored Malaysian Ayam Masak Merah (Red Chicken with Honey), made from the recipe in “Chicken A-Z: 1,000 Recipes from around the World” by Mireille Sanchez. (Photo courtesy of Rizzoli New York)
Malaysian Ayan Masak Merah (Red Chicken with Honey)
Marinade
1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder 1 tablespoon ground mild chiles
1 teaspoon sugar
2 bone-in chicken thighs (about 12 ounces), halved
2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 white onion, sliced 2 cloves garlic, chopped 2 tablespoons crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon sambal oelek
1 teaspoon sriracha
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt
Make the marinade: Combine all the marinade ingredients (except the chicken) in a large bowl. Add the chicken and coat well in the mixture. Marinate 30 minutes.
Heat the oil over medium heat in a pot. Remove the chicken from the marinade and add to the pot. Cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add the remaining marinade, onion, and garlic, and cook 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, sambal oelek, sriracha, and 1⁄2 cup water. Stir to combine, cover, reduce the heat, and simmer 20 minutes. Remove the lid, add the honey and salt, and stir to combine. Cook 15 minutes to allow the sauce to thicken. Serve with white rice.
Serves 2 Preparation 10 minutes + marinating 30 minutes. Cooking 45 minutes
Ayam Kampung is the free-range chicken of Malaysia. Its name is Malay for “village chicken” and designates indigenous chickens that are raised outdoors by almost all village households. These chickens descend from wild crosses between “jungle red” chickens — the local birds from this part of Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia) — and chickens brought over in the nineteenth century by British colonists.
The delicate, white-sauced French Vol-Au- Vent de Poulet is a delicious throwback to ladies luncheons of long ago. Made from a recipe in “Chicken A-Z: 1,000 Recipes from around the World” by Mireille Sanchez. (Photo courtesy of Rizzoli New York)
Alsace Vol-Au-Vent De Poulet (Chicken Vol-Au-Vent)
1 whole chicken (3 pounds) 2 bay leaves 3 leeks, sliced into rounds 5 carrots, sliced into rounds 2 onions, peeled + chopped Salt + ground black pepper 1 cup Sylvaner or other white wine
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound button mushrooms, sliced
1 cup crème fraîche
½ to 1 tablespoon cornstarch 4 puff pastry shells
Put the chicken in a pot and cover with water. Add the bay leaves, leeks, carrots, onions, 1 teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper. Bring to a boil, add the wine, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer 2 hours. Remove the chicken from the pot. Strain the broth and set aside. Allow the chicken to cool, remove and discard the skin, and cut the chicken into small pieces.
Heat the oil in a pan. Add the mushrooms and cook. Add the chicken and crème fraîche, and season with salt and pepper. Add enough of the reserved broth to cover the chicken, and simmer to lightly thicken the sauce, adding cornstarch as needed.
Preheat the oven to 300° F. Fill each puff pastry shell generously with the chicken mixture, then bake 5 minutes. Serve immediately.
Serves 4 Preparation 30 minutes. Cooking 2 hours 20 minutes.
Legend claims that the vol-au-vent was invented by Antonin Carême (1784–1833), who ostensibly replaced the typical pastry shell with a puff pastry so light it would have quite literally floated on the wind—thus the name vol-au- vent, which means “flight on the wind.”
Reviewer’s Note: Frozen puff pastry shells are available in the freezer section of grocery stores throughout Cleveland.
North Carolina Oven-Fried Chicken has a big crunch outside but still moist in the middle. This one is made from a recipe in “Chicken A-Z: 1,000 Recipes from around the World” by Mireille Sanchez. This chicken is the essential ingredient of a make-it-yourself sandwich. (Photo courtesy of Rizzoli New York)
North Carolina Oven-Fried Chicken
4 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 ½), flattened
Salt + ground black pepper 2 cups homemade breadcrumbs
½ cup all-purpose flour ¼ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley ¼ cup finely chopped basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano 2 teaspoons Hungarian sweet paprika
2 large eggs A few drops Tabasco 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Season the chicken with salt and pepper on both sides. Combine the breadcrumbs, flour, parsley, basil, oregano, and paprika on a sheet of wax paper. Beat the eggs with the Tabasco in a bowl. Dip the chicken into the egg mixture, allowing the excess to drip off, then coat well in the breadcrumb mixture. Set the chicken on a baking sheet and refrigerate about 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Heat the oil in a large pan over medium- high heat until hot. Add the chicken and cook about 2 to 3 minutes per side, until golden brown, turning delicately with a spatula or tongs and adding more oil as needed. Transfer the chicken to a baking sheet and place on the lower level of the oven. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden on both sides. Allow the chicken to rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Serves 4 Preparation 15 minutes + chilling 30 minutes. Cooking 25 minutes + resting 10 minutes.
Reviewer’s Note: This chicken is the essential ingredient of a make-it-yourself sandwich that is so much better than the fast-food phenomenon that launched a million blog posts in 2019. Just add good mayonnaise mixed with hot sauce and a little smoked paprika, sliced dill pickles, some coleslaw, and a bit of cheese sauce. Sandwich inside a fresh soft brioche bun.
‘Chicken A-Z: 1,000 Recipes from around the World’ by Mireille Sanchez
Rizzoli New York, 2021, pp. 864 US $55.00
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