Recipe for Chicken Hash served at the midnight buffet of Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in NYC in 1966.
Taittinger Champagne
Lauren Bacall, Catherine Graham, Lee Radziwell, Jackie Kennedy
Seasonings for hash include sea salt and white pepper to taste.
California Sparkling Wine Ratings – most wine connoisseurs list them:
1) Domaine Carneros Estate Brut (Walmart $31)
2) Domaine Chandon Brut (Kroger’s $21)
3) Mumm Napa Brut Prestige (Kroger’s $18)
In 1966 Truman Capote was at the top of his career he had just had great success with his novel In Cold Blood in November of that year he staged the party of the century at the Plaza Hotel in New York City it was called the black and white ball and only
The top of the social calendar was allowed to come to this so everyone wanted an invitation and the few of the chosen included Lauren Bacal and Katherine Graham and let’s see Lee Radziwell was there Jackie didn’t show up I think she must have been on the yacht
With Onassis doing something or another near Scorpios so for this festive dinner he spent a fortune on Taittinger champagne and the midnight buffet turned out to be chicken hash with spaghetti so today I want to show you that original recipe for the chicken hash on
The luxury part of Truman’s black and white ball centered around that Taittinger champagne you can get that of course but I have to confess this is mum and it’s mum’s Nappa Valley which is just as good if not better than the French mum there’s all this talk about that
Method champag I think it’s méthode champenoise meaning the grapes have to be grown in Champagne to have the name however in France there’s a shortage so they import them from Bordeaux and everywhere else if you’re going to do that you might just as well have California
Champagne grown by French vintnors that know what they’re doing in a better climate with better results this is mum from California the pecking order of the California wines tends to be mum followed by um well on top of that a little bit better is Chandon and then the top
One is made by Taittinger it’s domaine canernos that’s what it is anyway Walmart sells that hint hint the Lower Class part of the midnight buffet is chicken hash and this recipe comes directly from The Plaza Hotel there is one that Ina Garten came up with which is much more healthful but it’s
Not the original this is the the way it was done and so here it is you begin with Béchamel sauce which is there heavy cream and your diced cooked chicken goes in this needs to cook down until it
Um loses a little bit of the moisture that may be about 5 to 10 minutes so we’ll do that this is simmering down as you can see it’s really just about there in the 60s they didn’t worry too much about uh butter fat or cholesterol they just smoke cigarettes and that made them
Keep their weight down anyway there it is and the next step is to add some Sherry so in goes the Sherry and then this is going to go in the oven for about 10 minutes and while we’re doing
That I’ll make a Hollandaise sauce which is the last little bit of it wasn’t Rich enough yet of course here is the hash hot out of the oven and I have some Hollandaise sauce which I will just
Beat into this stir all of that up together and it’s to be served immediately so this was the midnight Buffet I don’t think that’s actually so lower class with all the cream and Hollandaise
In it but anyway that was the point and so it’s ready and I think since we’ve been using all this Lalique we’ll put it in a Lalique bowl you might want to garnish that with just a little bit of
Parsley since that’s was kind of de rigeur in the 60s and open another bottle of [Music] [Applause] champagne [Music]