Chicken in white wine, mustard and cream

Chicken in white wine, mustard and cream

I have mentioned before, that my inspiration for a lot of the recipes in this blog come from me having spent my summer holidays as a boy, with my mother's family in the Charolais region of Burgundy in France (the gastronomic capital of the world!). This dish is especially typical of the fantastic food my auntie used to cook for us when we stayed with her. And it consists of a lot of the great, local ingredients Burgundy is famous for: Chicken from Bresse to the east, white wine from the Maconnaise to the south, mushrooms from the Auxerrois to the north east, mustard from Dijon in the north and cream from the famous cows of the Charolais itself.

Ingredients:

2 fresh chicken breasts with the skin on

A hand full of small, closed cup button mushrooms

50ml of white wine

25ml of cream

Dessert spoon of Dijon mustard

100ml of boiling water

1 chicken stock pot or cube

2 tea spoons of corn flour

25g of butter

Preparation:

Preheat an oven to 200 degrees centigrade. Prep your chicken breast by giving them a swill under the tap, then lay them on a chopping board skin side up. Pour a drop of sunflower oil into your hand and massage it into your chicken breasts. Then break about 1/4 of your stock pot off from the rest and also rub that into them. Then season with salt and pepper. 

Warm a deep pan on the hob, and once ready, place your chicken breasts into it, skin side down and seal on a medium heat. Occasionally give them a prod with a fork to stop them from sticking. Once the skin side is golden brown and crisp, turn them over and seal the meaty side so it is golden brown as well. Then place your chicken breasts into your pre-heated oven and bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Make sure you test that they are properly cooked before serving up by prodding a skewer or pointy knife into the fattest part of the breasts to be sure that the juices run clear. If it is pink, pop them in for a bit longer, but not so long they dry out. 5 minutes tops should do it.

10 minutes before your chicken is due to come out of the oven, get started on your sauce by mixing what's left of your chicken stock pot with the 100ml of boiling water to make your stock. Then, melt your butter in the pan you sealed the chicken in, on a low heat. Once it is melted scoop in your corn flour and stir to make a roux (the base of your sauce). Turn the heat up, still stirring, so the mixture starts to froth in the heat, then add your wine. This should make the mixture coagulate. Don't panic about it. Just keep stirring until it is smooth. Add your stock and whisk until the sauce is smooth. Turn the heat down and add your mustard and your cream and continue to whisk. The sauce is meant to to be about as thick as a standard gravy. If your mixture is a lot thicker than that then add more wine (a little bit at a time) until you have the desired smoothness. If it's too runny, keep the heat turned up for a bit longer until it thickens. If nothing happens, add more butter. This should still leave you 4 -5 minutes to quickly fry your mushrooms in a knob of butter.

When you take your chicken from the oven, plate it up either on a bed of rice or with chips (as you will want something to mop up this sensational sauce) and I would recommend some french beans and asparagus if its in season. Pour what ever liquid is left in the roasting tin that the chicken came out of, into your sauce and stir it in. place your mushroom on top of your chicken breasts and smother with sauce. It is not a decision you are ever likely to regret!

French apple tart (Tarte aux pommes)

French Apple Tart (Tarte aux pommes)

When I was growing up, my family and I would stay in a gite somewhere near  Honfleur or Coutance for a week every Spring. One thing I always looked forward to on these holidays was a trip to the boulangerie - patisserie in the nearest village where we would invariably buy a Tarte aux Pommes (the regional speciality, or "specialite de la region" as they say), along with our croissants for the morning. And we'd take it back to the gite, to have as a dessert after dinner. Having grown up with this as the pinnacle of treats, imagine my surprise when I found out that this rather impressive looking, and fantastic tasting tart is so easy to make, although it does need a bit of time, so not something you can throw together in an evening after work I'm afraid. But none the less, it is yet another classic example of how simple "peasant food" can be as good as it gets.

Ingredients:

175g plain flour (and more for dusting, rolling and a couple of spoonfuls for the frangipane)

250g butter (I know!!)

1 egg

2 egg yolks

100g caster sugar (and a bit more for sprinkling)

1 dessert spoon (or a cap full) of calvados (Normandy apple brandy) or brandy

100g ground almonds

3 tablespoons of water

5 table spoons of apricot jam

3 or 4 large cooking apples

The cooking:

Start by mixing together the flour, half your butter, one of your egg yolks and the 3 tablespoons of water and mix to a dough that you can knead with the ball of your hand. If it is really sticky to the touch then you might have added a whole egg rather than just the yolk? Duh! I know because I've done that before! But if you have not made this school boy error but still find it overly sticky, just add a bit more flour. If it is so unsticky, it is not picking up all the dry mixture in your bowl, then add a tea spoon more of water. Once you have a dough ball, wrap it in cling film, and put it in a fridge for about half an hour (or until it firms up).

While that process is under way, make your frangipane. You need to soften up the other half of your butter, by cutting it into small cubes, then popping them in a small, oven proof mixing bowl and in to the micro wave for about a minute. Once soft, pour in the cater sugar and with a wooden spoon and some muscle, stir together into a creamy consistency. Leave that to one side and beat together your remaining egg yolk and an egg in a bowl. Now gradually, bit by bit, add your beaten egg mix to the creamed sugar and butter, stirring furiously after each drop to keep the mixture creamy, otherwise it will curdle and separate. Once your eggs have gone in, add your calvados (or brandy will do if you haven't go any). Once it has all been blended together, pour in your ground almonds and add a couple of tablespoons of flour as well to give the mixture some weight, and stir the whole lot together until it is all perfectly blended.

Now might be a good time to preheat an over to 200 degrees centigrade.

When your 30 minutes on your dough ball in the fridge is up, take it out of the fridge, dust a surface with some flour and roll it out until it will fit into 30cm pie tin. Grease your pie tin with butter, then lay your pastry into it, pushing down into the corners and sides and prick all over with a fork. Then pop it back into the fridge for another 15 minutes or so.

When your base has firmed up in the fridge, take it out, and use a spoon to evenly spread your frangipane into it. Then peel, core and slice you apples, laying the slices in a spiral pattern on top of your frangipane base. Start from the outside and work inward, making sure at least one edge of each apple slice is buried into the frangipane.

Put your pie tin into your preheated oven for 20 minutes then drop the temperature down to 180 degrees. After 10 minutes, take the tart out of the oven and sprinkle liberally with sugar and then return to the oven for another 10 minutes. Meanwhile scoop your apricot jam into a ramekin (or anything small and oven proof really), add a couple of spoon fulls of water (to help liquidise it) and put it in the oven to warm up as well.

When the 10 minutes is up remove your tart and remove the ramekin with the jam in it.  Give the jam and the water a good stir to mix together so it is a runny liquid, then with a pastry brush, brush the jam solution all over your tart to give it a nice, golden glaze. Then  put it back in the oven for the final 5 - 10 minutes, or until the edges of the apples have just started to catch and the rest of the tart topping is golden all over.

Take it out of the oven and cool it on a wire rack.

When it's at room temperature, serve it cut into slices, with a posset of really thick cream (clotted cream would be ideal) on each plate, and dust with a sprinkle of icing sugar. 

Get you you debutante!

Gratin Dauphinoise

Recipe for Gratin Dauphinoise

Now this is a totally self indulgent accompaniment to any dish. It is one inspired for me by the small village restaurants where my parents and I used to eat when I was little, and we would spend weeks and even months at a time with my Mum's family in Burgundy. I remember one place in particular on a cross roads of two roads that went to nowhere in particular. From the outside, it looked more like someone's house than a restaurant. And when you went in, it still looked like someone's house. Except there was small bar that was being propped up by a farmer with blue over-alls, a ruddy complexion, clutching a glass of red wine. He mumbled something at us through his bushy moustache, drained his glass and then stumbled out to his tractor which he had left with it's engine running outside.

My other over riding memory of this particular place was that there was a TV mounted on the wall in the kitchen (which was in clear view from the restaurant) which was showing an episode of "Starsky & Hutch" dubbed into French. And I will never forget the shock of hearing the bloke who was voicing the dub for Huggy Bear. He had a really deep, sophisticated French accent and from the moment he started speaking I could not focus on anything else as it just seemed so wrong.

Preparation and cooking time:

Allow 20 minutes prep and and hour for cooking.

Ingredients:

500g potatoes (preferably Roosters, Desirees or Rudolphs) peeled

100 ml of double cream

1/4 pint of full fat milk

25g unsalted butter cut into tiny 2mm cubes

A small garlic clove, peeled and cut in half

100g of mild cheddar or Gruyeres cheese grated

Preparation:

Pre-heat your oven to 150o C. Take a deep dish (the one I use is 20cm X 13.5cms square and 13.5cms deep) and rub the two halves of your garlic clove, cut-side-down, all over the base and sides as this will secrete the juice of the garlic, and will infuse the dish as it cooks. Then grease the dish with butter.

Next you will need to cut your peeled potatoes into wafer thin slices. If you've got the knife skills to do that then good for you. If not, a kitchen mandolin is a great tool that achieves what you want quickly and easily. And if you don't have one of those, you've probably got a cheese grater with different cutting edges on different sides. In which case the side with the wide slice cutters does the job just as well. Lay your wafer thin potato slices in over lapping rows along the base of the dish until the whole of the bottom is covered. Then sprinkle your tiny butter cubes, dotting across the rows, sprinkle a bit of your grated cheese sparsely over the rows, drizzle with a bit of cream and lightly season with salt and pepper.

Then repeat and start on the next layer of potato wafers. Once you've finished that layer, before sprinkling your butter, cheese, cream, salt and pepper, just push the whole surface of your new layer flat with your fists. Add your bits, then continue until you either reach the top of your dish, or you run out of potatoes. When you reach your top layer, as well as the butter, cream, salt and pepper, also chop up your what's left of your 2 halves of garlic clove into tiny bits and sprinkle that over the top. Then pour your milk over the layers until it comes to just below the level of the top layer. Then sprinkle all the cheese you have left over the top. If you don't have enough left to make a proper crust, grate a bit more to make sure you do. Put your dish on a baking tray and place it in the middle of your oven and leave it in there for an hour.

And that's pretty much it. Serve with a rare steak and salad.

Dauphinoise can be prepared the day before you are going to actually serve it. Just make sure you let it cools thoroughly before covering it in cling film and popping it in the fridge. You can then just heat it up at 180o for 20 minutes. If anything, it actually tastes better the next day.

Now my family have always described this potato accompaniment as "Gratin Dauphinoise". Something I have continued unquestioningly. But I have heard those arguments from others who say that this is not a "true" gratin. So to those people, let me just say "bollocks! It bloody is! Right!" and let that be an end to the matter.