Chicken in cream and tarragon

CHICKEN IN CREAM AND TARRAGON

When we used to visit my family in France, this was a great signature dish that my Auntie Sophie used to do. And the great thing is, it is really easy to double up ingredients if you have more mouths to feed.

Ingredients (to feed 4)

4 chicken legs

1 pint of chicken stock

A decent hand full of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

10 baby button mushrooms

50-80g of peas (up to you really)

1 teaspoon of mustard

4 tablespoons of creme fraiche

2 table spoons of finely chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon of corn flour

25g of unsalted butter

Half a glass of white wine

Freshly ground sea salt and black pepper

The Cooking:

Start by melting the butter over a medium heat in a large, deep frying pan. Once it is foaming, lay your chicken legs in and fry in butter on all sides until the skin is brown and starting to crisp. Approximately 6-7 minutes on each side. Increase the heat and before the butter gets a chance to burn, add your white wine and let the liquid reduce down to about half its original content. Then transfer everything to an oven proof dish. Add in the flour, thyme and bay leaf, pour over the liquid from your frying pan and your chicken stock (just enough to cover the chicken), then cover with a lid and place into an oven, preheated to 180 degrees C. Cook for approximately 2 hours, so that the chicken is virtually falling off the bone. Check it every 20 minutes or so, to make sure that the stock is not drying out (if it is add more wine or stock). Give it all a good stir every time. 30 minutes before the end of your cooking time, take your casserole dish out of the oven. Lift out the chicken legs and place them on a baking tray or roasting tin and return them into the oven.

Gently fry your button mushrooms in butter. Be generous with plenty of ground pepper. While they are browning, add the creme fraiche and the tarragon to the liquid in the casserole dish and with a  wooden spoon, give it all a good stir until all the liquids are combined into one smooth sauce. If you are using a heavy dish like mine (rather than a glass one) best results are achieved if you do this bit over a hob on  a low heat, as it thickens the sauce nicely. Add the mushrooms and the peas into the sauce. Retrieve the chicken legs and put them back in the dish with everything else, season with salt and pepper, pop the lid back on and return to the oven for the final 30 minutes of cooking. Giving you the perfect amount of time to do any accompaniment you may fancy.

Serve up on a bed of rice and may be some vegetables Julienne.

Fusili Afredo

Fusili Alfredo

One of the staples I used to exist on when I was student. And my kids absolutely love it and make it now they are students. Really simple, very rich and creamy, and even though I have been making it for years, I have always just "thrown" everything together up until now. It is only the discipline of writing this blog that has got me to think about the actual proportions needed. In other words, this is another classic Italian dish you can't really go wrong with. So don't get too anal about the measurements below.

Ingredients (serves 2 - takes about 20 minutes to cook):

30g Softened Unsalted Butter

200g of pasta (any pasta really, but long varieties such as spaghetti, fetuccini or linguini are most commonly used. Frankly I had run out when I made this one which is why I went for fusili)

50ml of Single Cream, slightly warmed

A Tablespoon of Mascarpone

30g Grated Mild Cheddar

50g Grated Parmessan

100g Button Mushrooms Quartered

100g of Bacon Lardons (or Pancetta cut into cubes)

30g Garden Peas (or Petit pois)

Small Hand full of Chopped Parsley Leaves

Freshly Ground Black Pepper Corns

The Cooking:

In a pot of boiling water, cook your pasta through in the usual way. In a separate pan, on a medium heat fry your lardons/pancetta in a knob of butter for about 7 minutes (chortle! chortle! I said "knob" Fnar! Fnar!). Once it starts to crisp up, add your mushrooms (which will mop up what ever fat is in the pan). Dry fry and stir for another 2-3 minutes so they brown up. Then add your 30g of softened butter, cream and mascarpone. Blend together thoroughly. Once combined add your grated cheeses a hand full at a time, stirring until thoroughly melted. I generally do this with a whisk to ensure you end up with a very smooth finish. Once all the cheeses are melted and smooth, add your peas and stir in.

You should now be left with a thick, smooth, creamy sauce (with pancetta/lardons, mushroom bits and peas floating in it). Drain off your cooked pasta and add it to the pan with your "Alfredo"sauce. Mix thoroughly and allow the pasta to absorb some of it by cooking on a low heat for a further minute or two. Stirring continuously so it does not stick or burn.

Serve up, sprinkled with some parmesan and seasoned with ground black pepper and chopped parsley.

A nice variation on this theme that also works well - instead of cheddar, use St Agur blue cheese. Mega! 

Tagliatelle With Salmon and Prawns

Tagliatelle With Salmon & Prawns (serves 3)

Ingredients:

2 Salmon fillets

100g of peeled prawns

2 slices of lemon and juice of half a lemon

25g Unsalted butter

Handful of Fresh Chopped Parsley

4 small chalottes (or 2 big ones) finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped

2 Table spoons of creme fraiche

Grated Parmesan

3 hand fulls of Tagliatelle, linguine or spaghetti

20ml of white wine

The Cooking:

In a pan, add a tea spoonful of vegetable oil and melt half your butter and on a low heat. Add you salmon fillets, spray with freshly squeezed lemon juice and pop your lemon slices into the pan. Gently fry your salmon fillets for about 10 minutes each side (until all the flesh has turned from orange to peach). Remove from the pan and rest on chopping board for a few minutes. Take a fork and break up into flakes. 

Meanwhile, in a separate pan, pour in boiling water and add your pasta. Cook for about 12 minutes or until soft.

While the pasta is cooking, put the remaining butter into the pn you used for the salmon, add your shallots, parsley and garlic and in them gently fry your prawns for a couple of minutes on each side. If they are raw when you start cooking them, they should turn from grey to pink when cooked.Turn the heat up, add the wine and let it reduce down. Then add your flaked salmon back into the pan, drain your pasta and add that, and the creme fraiche. Turn down to a low heat and stir the lot together for about 3-4 minutes. Until the cream has covered everything and the pasta has absorbed the butter from the pan.

Season, dish up and sprinkle with some grated Parmesan.

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.