French Chicken Albufera (Poulet Albuféra)
One of the grand-daughter sauces of classical French cuisine, this luscious paprika sauce drew influence from Valencia, Spain - the perfect silken sauce for roast chicken and seafood.
Named after the Albufera National Park near Valencia, ‘Sauce Albuféra’ a grand-daughter sauce in classical French cookery. It’s considered a daughter to the ‘suprême’ sauce, which is daughter to the ‘velouté’, a French ‘mother’ sauce consisting of a light stock (such as chicken or fish) thickened with a flour-butter roux. The ‘suprême’ sauce is a 'velouté’ that’s simply enriched with cream, and the ‘albuféra’ is a ‘suprême’ that’s flavoured with red pepper purée and paprika. That’s the family tree! The original Spanish version of this sauce - a ‘fumet’ - was originally a mixture of chicken/seafood stock boiled with butter and saffron. Later, paprika (pimentón) was often added. This sauce was then, and still is, used to enhance rice dishes like paella. Today we’re dusting off this Franco-Spanish sauce, long-confined to the French cookery manuals, and making it a weeknight-friendly, modern table sauce to enjoy with chicken or grilled fish. Here I’ll show you how to prepare it with chicken thighs, a wonderfully economical way to enjoy crispy chicken, plus it’s a generous giver of tasty juices to enrich the Albufera sauce. A beautiful relationship in cookery. Let’s go!
