In Burgundy your cockerel will be served in wine-dark sauce surrounded by little glazed buttton onions [zilveruitjes], mushrooms and cubes of salt pork, with a bottle of Chambertin to drink. Is it a little over-sung, this dish, I sometimes wonder? In Lyon there will be dark patches of truffles slipped in between the skin and the flesh of your poached poularde de Bresse. In Normandy the sauce will be compounded of thick white cream and Calvados. In Provence olives, tomatoes, oil, garlic and the aromatic herbs of the sun-baked hillsides will go into the pot with your chicken. In Touraine as well as in the modest Paris restaurant, ten to one it will be flavoured in some way or other with tarragon. Perhaps it is the best of all.
