"Capon" with orange #blogjune Day 30

Week 2 of my FutureLearn course on Royal Food and Feasting saw me looking at Elizabethan food. This recipe is for "capon" with oranges and herbs and spices. As I had no capons available (castrated roosters), I cooked it with a chook.  The oranges and spices would have been significant additions to the dishes in Elizabethan times as they would have had to be imported and expensive additions to impress. The original recipe called for 6-8 oranges but, as they are not a luxury to me, I thought that four were enough. The oranges in the original were also peeled but I left the peels on as I think they provide a great taste. I also didn't add the sugar as suggested.

So what did I think?  The process of cooking was quite long, but the chicken tender and imbued with the flavours.  I put bread-crumbs in the sauce for the last part of the cooking but didn't find that it thickened the sauce much. That was a slight disappointment but maybe I didn't use enough bread-crumbs or else I was thinking that the sauce would thicken differently? Or I should have added the bread-crumbs earlier? I would have liked to have eaten it with gnocchi again, but as I didn't have any on hand I used organic wholewheat noodles, again rather an anachronistic addition.




Ingredients

1 1.4k free-range chicken
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups red wine
4 Navel oranges
Thyme
Rosemary
Parsley
Mace
Cloves
Cinnamon sticks
Nutmeg
3 heaped tbs white breadcrumbs

Mode

Heat stock in pan
Add chicken and bring to boil
Reduce to simmer and simmer for 45 minutes
Take off two ladles of the stock and mix with wine
Add wine and stock to chicken
Slice oranges into quarters and then half the quarters
Add oranges to pan with chicken
Tie together sprigs of thyme, rosemary and parsley and add to the pan
Add mace, cloves, cinnamon sticks and mace to the pan
Raise the heat and boil to reduce
Just before serving add breadcrumbs, stir to combine and continue boiling until sauce thickens.