I made this one last Friday for Alberto and I. Very tasty, lovely and creamy with the bite of the tarragon. It’s a little different from the chicken tarragon pasta dish I detailed a while ago. It’s a little more complex than the other recipe and the sauce has a couple more stages in it. It’s from the Food of France cookbook that Alberto got me a couple of years ago. Typical French recipe – cream and booze! The recipe says to use a whole chicken but because I was only making it for two of us I went for a chicken leg each and a chicken thigh each. I accompanied it with roasted new potatoes and asparagus. Yum.
1½ tablespoons of chopped tarragon leaves
1 garlic clove, crushed
50g of butter, softened
1 chicken (or legs and thighs, as above)
Olive Oil
170ml of chicken stock
2 tablespoons of white wine
1 tablespoon of plain flour
1 tablespoon of tarragon leaves
170ml of double cream
Preheat the oven to 200.
Mix together the chopped tarragon, crushed garlic and half the butter. Season with salt and pepper and place inside the chicken cavity. (As I wasn’t using a whole chicken I smeared the butter over the bottoms of the chicken pieces and squeezed it in between the bits. Use your imagination!)
Heat the remaining butter with the oil in a large flameproof casserole dish. (I don’t have a large, flameproof casserole dish so I started everything off in a frying pan and then moved it to a ceramic oven dish for cooking in the oven.)
Brown the chicken on all sides. Add the chicken stock and wine. Boil briefly.
Transfer to the oven, (or to a casserole dish and then the oven.) cover and bake in the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes. (I cooked it for slightly less time as I wasn’t cooking a whole chicken.)
Once the chicken is done remove it from the dish, draining all the juices back into the dish.
Cover the chicken with foil and leave it to rest.
Skim a tablespoon of surface fat from the cooking liquid and place it in a small bowl. Mix with the flour to form a smooth paste.
Skim the rest of the fat from the surface and throw it away.
Quickly whisk the fat and flour paste into the remaining cooking liquid. Stir over a moderate heat until the sauce boils and thickens.
Strain the sauce into a fresh saucepan and add the tarragon leaves.
Simmer for 2 minutes then stir in the cream and reheat without boiling. Season with salt and pepper and spoon the sauce over the chicken.
cookingwithneil 