Chicken with mushrooms and lardons, with crushed new potatoes and spinach
Chicken with mushrooms and lardons, with crushed new potatoes and spinach, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.
Time to actually post something on the poor neglected blog again, I think.
This is one of those essentially French kind of dishes that has lots of variations. I suppose you might call it Chicken Chasseur, or if you used red wine it would be Coq au Vin.
This used a glassful of Noilly Prat.
I started off by sautéing some button mushrooms in butter and olive oil and then setting them aside. Then I sautéed some bacon lardons in the same oil, adding finely chopped onion and garlic and deglazing the pan with the Noilly Prat.
While I was doing this, I sautéed some jointed chicken pieces, coated in seasoned flour, in another pan, in olive oil. The reason I did this is that surplus flour can burn in the oil, spoiling the finished dish.
I added finely chopped and seeded tomatoes to the onions with a lot of fresh thyme and added in the browned chicken pieces. I added some hot water (you could use stock or white wine) and simmered the dish until the chicken was cooked through.
I removed the chicken and stirred in some crème fraiche, adjusted the seasoning with some more salt and pepper and returned the chicken to the pan to keep warm.
I served this with crushed boiled new potatoes and steamed spinach, but you could equally serve this with tagliatelle or rice too.
