Roast Chicken with Green Beans

Boulestin's ideal is a young chicken roasted on a spit with tender flesh and crispy skin.

To achieve a similar effect in a domestic kitchen he wraps the chicken in thin bacon fat and cooks it standing on a grill in the baking dish, basting often. When it's finished, remove the bacon fat and allow the skin to colour. Just before serving, pour melted pork fat through a paper funnel and set it alight as it comes out so drops of burning fat fall on the bird. The burning fat gives a slightly charred taste and appearance, he writes, "that crispness which is so appreciated in birds roasted in front of a wood fire".

Boulestin doesn't mention flavourings, but I put an onion, four garlic cloves, parsley and thyme in the cavity.

Serve with a watercress salad seasoned with salt, pepper and a little vinegar or lemon juice. Or, in this case, with roasted potatoes and green beans.

The gravy is simply a little water added to the roasting pan, and reduced. I poured off the pan juices into a glass, put it in the freezer for a few minutes and spooned off the fat before returning the juices to the baking dish and adding the water with a little salt and pepper.

Episode 7 - Murder in Montparnasse

With Phryne's flashbacks to Paris after the Armistice in November 1918, Bert and Cec's adventures while AWOL for 24 hrs at the same time, and the contemporary - 1928 - narrative centering on the (fictional) Cafe Anatole in St Kilda, the menu for Murder in Montparnasse just has to be French.

I'm finding it hard to resist Phryne's cafe lunch of French onion soup "made with cognac, with real Gruyere cheese melted onto real baguettes", quenelles of pheasant poached in broth, "poulet royale with French beans", and, to finish, vanilla souffle, a glass of cognac and a cup of coffee.

Slight problem: Boulestin doesn't have a recipe for "poulet royale". Is it "Chicken a la King", an abomination devised in the 1890s or early 1900s, most likely in Philadelphia, involving steamed chicken, sauteed onion, red, green and yellow capsicums and mushrooms, a white sauce and finally - if you follow the Women's Weekly Original Cookbook from 1970 which is a little bit fancy - three egg yolks, lemon juice and celery salt?

Or has Cafe Anatole adapted to local tastes and concocted an Australian "Sauce Royale", the recipe for which appeared in the Burnie (Tasmania) Advocate in April 1938? It will surprise no-one, I think, that the Burnie Sauce Royale is based on white sauce to which is added: 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons vinegar, salt and pepper to taste and a little mustard. It is apparently delicious served with grilled meat of any kind.

But a reference later in the novel to "poulet reine" suggests that "royale" may have been a slip. Poulet reine is a size of chicken: a 1-2 kg roasting chicken.

The main course will be poulet rôti, from Recipes of Boulestin, with roast potatoes and green beans (rather than watercress salad) and a short gravy made by adding a little water to the roasting pan and reducing it. On this point Boulestin is quite firm: "There is absolutely no reason why you should have out of a bird a sauceboatful of gravy, and the addition of meat stock will simply make it taste like soup and spoil the dish altogether."

The menu for Murder in Montparnasse:

French Onion Soup with Gruyere and Cognac

Roast Chicken with Green Beans

Vanilla Souffle