A restaurant named Coppa’s in San Francisco in the early part of the 20th century invented “the most delicious way chicken was ever cooked,” according to Clarence Edwords in his 1914 book, Bohemian San Francisco: Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes. In light of his ringing endorsement, I included the recipe in Vintage California Cuisine, and it was one of the first that I decided to test and photograph for this blog.
- Most Delicious Chicken Recipe Ever?
To be sure, I took Edwords’ hyperbolic description with a grain of salt. A former newspaper reporter, he was a booster by profession at that point in his career, as an employee of the California Promotion Committee, an organization formed by railroads, developers and other business groups in Northern California to promote growth in the region.
San Francisco’s many unusual and exotic restaurants, then as well as now, were one of the city’s major draws. “Here have congregated the world’s greatest chefs,” Edwords exclaimed, making San Francisco a “Mecca for lovers of gustatory delights.” A generous expense account reportedly came with his job, enabling Edwords to graze at leisure through the menus of the city’s most notable restaurants. In his estimation, they included the Viticultural, famed for its marrow on toast and broiled mushrooms, Hoffman Saloon, where in a lavishly appointed back room, “guests were served with the best the market afforded, by discreet darkeys,” Bonini’s Barn, where Italian fare was served in “a room that has all the appearance of the interior of a barn, with chickens and pigeons strutting around,” the Poodle Dog, a top choice for diners who “do not care to count the cost,” and Coppa’s, home to that supposedly unsurpassed chicken dish. Here’s the recipe he collected for his book:
Chicken Portola a la Coppa
Take a fresh cocoanut and cut off the top, removing nearly all of the meat. Put together three tablespoonfuls of chopped cocoanut meat and two ears of fresh, green corn, taken from the cob. Slice two onions into four tablespoonfuls of olive oil, together with a tablespoonful of diced bacon fried in olive oil, add one chopped green pepper, half a dozen tomatoes stewed with salt and pepper, one clove of garlic, and cook all together until it thickens. Strain this into the corn and cocoanut and add one spring chicken cut in four pieces. Put the mixture into the shell of the cocoanut, using the cut-off top as a cover, and close tightly with a covering of paste around the jointure to keep in the flavors. Put the cocoanut into a pan with water in it and set in the oven, well heated, for one hour, basting frequently to prevent the cocoanut’s burning.
It firstly endeavors to inhibit the PDE 5 enzymes as well as supports cGMP to give harder erections. canadian pharmacies cialis It also repairs the damaged nerves and tissues to attract more blood during sexual arousal and cause fuller and stronger erection for pleasurable lovemaking with your beautiful female. buy generic cialis https://unica-web.com/archive/2005/films2005.pdf Trivia surrounding Kamagra is interesting that originally created to increase blood flow to cheapest generic cialis unica-web.com the heart and solving other cardiovascular illnesses. It also boosts sperm count and semen volume to enjoy intense pleasure with your female. generic sildenafil indiaSource: Bohemian San Francisco (1914)
The first challenge facing anyone following this recipe verbatim is apparent at first glance. Edwords refers to “cocoanut” in the singular, as if all of the ingredients he proceeds to list — including six tomatoes, the kernels from two ears of corn and one entire spring chicken, bones and all – could be tucked into the shell of one coconut. That is patently impossible. So in my first departure from the original recipe, I used boneless chicken — two breast halves and four thighs — cut into pieces. Secondly, three tablespoons didn’t seem to be nearly enough coconut in proportion to the other ingredients, so I used a heaping half cup instead. That amount of chicken and coconut, added with the rest of the ingredients in the amounts called for in Edwords’ book, yielded enough of the mixture to fill three of the largest coconuts I could find in a local market, with enough left over to fill a small casserole dish. Although Edwords’ recipe suggests that raw chicken should be stuffed into the coconuts along with the other cooked ingredients, I stirred the chicken pieces into the pan of stewing vegetables for a few minutes to give the meat a head start on cooking.
For guidance on how to open a coconut, I turned to YouTube, where I learned a nifty trick. Five or six sharp whacks with the dull side of a heavy knife around the circumference towards the top end of the coconut will produce a hairline fracture that encircles the nut. Holding the coconut over a bowl to catch the coconut water, wedge the tip of the knife into the crack, twist the knife, and the cap will neatly pop right off. The recipe calls for sealing the crack with paste. For that purpose, I made a paste with flour and water and slathered it onto the crack, which formed a nice seal.
The resulting dish, by all accounts, was very good, unusual and exceptionally presentable. But the “most delicious ever?” With all due respect to Edwords, each of the half dozen friends and family members of mine who tasted it had no trouble recalling other chicken dishes that they liked better. Me, too. In fact, the recipe in Vintage California Cuisine for chicken in a sauce of almonds, pineapple and chorizo sauce handily beats Chicken Portola a la Coppa for the top spot in the chicken category in my book. I think it would be better if the sauce were made thicker, perhaps by pureeing the stewed tomatoes, mincing instead of slicing the onions and stirring some flour into the olive oil in which the onions are sautéed. Some of the corn could also be pureed. And to infuse the sauce with more coconut flavor, I might try adding some canned coconut milk. I’ll experiment with some of those approaches next time I try this recipe, and I just might be able to push this dish back towards the very top of the chicken recipe rankings.
