Recipe Details

Cooking Recipe Preparation time

• Preparation : 1 h 15 min.
• 6-8 hours for the lemons
• Cooking: 50 min

Cooking recipe preparation instructions

1. This recipe is a special "Backoffen" version, which the Alsatians traditionally consume in the cold winter time. Backoffen means "baker's oven". A long time ago, when the housewives would leave the house to do the washing in the morning, they would pass by the bakery, bringing along a terrine filled with a mixture of leek, onions, pork, lamb, beef – all this depending on the products they would dispose, of course. They marinated everything with a tip of garlic and thyme. Then, they let the pot slowly cook in the baker's oven. At noon, when returning home, they only had to pick up the pots and serve them directly to their families!
2. Very important: You have to hermetically close the terrine. Prepare a dough ahead of time using flour, warm water (to make the dough elastic) and an egg. Thus, you can easily stretch it over the edge of the terrine.
3. Before starting, make sure to have prepared the preserved lemon, because this requires between 6 to 8 hours.
4. First of all, prune the tomatoes. Then, cut them into quarters. The garlic must simply be peeled. Put the small artichokes in a frying pan with a little oil. Do the same with the grated potatoes in order to colour them lightly. In doing so, you obtain much more taste than by letting them crude.
5. Now, salt the chicken with some salt. Then add pepper. Distribute the potatoes and artichokes around the chicken. Add the small onions, the cloves of garlic and the tomato. Dispose all this around the fowl, according to your own taste, remembering the preserved lemon and the two rosemary culms. Add the equivalent of a good glass of Alsatian white wine, the same quantity of fowl stock and, last but not least, the fowl gravy. Close the terrine with a lid. Wrap the dough once around it.
6. After 50 minutes, take it out of the oven and detach the dough. The dish is ready to be served!

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