Didn't do much cooking for the past few days as it was the new year weekend. There were people to meet up with for lunch, and generally, I was too lazy to cook when I have just spent the whole day outside, wandering the shopping streets. Incidentally, we discovered a pretty good pizza and kebab takeaway. So the only serious cooking I did was this French dish, Chicken fricassee. According to my French cookbook, a fricassee is a classic dish in which poulty or meat is first seared in fat, then braised with liquid until cooked. I modified the recipe as I wanted more vegetables in it, the celery and carrots are not in the recipe itself.
Anyway, to cook it, first sear chicken portions with butter over medium heat till they are golden in colour. Sprinkle with flour and turn the pieces to coat. Cook over a low heat for around 4 minutes. Pour in white wine, bring to the boil and add chicken stock. Push the chicken pieces to one side and scrape the base of the casserole, stirring until well blended. Bring the liquid to the boil and add bouquet garni and some fresh rosemary. [At this stage, I added the chopped carrots and diced celery] Cover and simmer over a medium heat until the chicken is tender. During this time, fry mushrooms with butter and 1 tsp of lemon juice over a medium high heat in a separate pan until the mushrooms are golden. Remove the mushrooms and add water, sugar and onions to the pan. Mix well. [The recipe actually requires small white onions but I am not a fan of eating whole onions so I decided to just dice a shallot for this] Simmer the onions, water and sugar for 10 minutes and pour the mixture over the mushrooms. When the chicken is cooked, remove it from the pan and discard the bouquet garni. Add the cooking juices from the vegetables to the casserole. Bring the boil and whisk cream into the sauce and cook for 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and onions and cook for a further 2 minutes. Adjust the seasoning and pour the sauce over the chicken, sprinkle with parsley and serve.
Instead of having this with pasta, M made dumplings (from a packet mix) and added them to the casserole while the chicken is simmering. Thats the four lumps you see in the picture.
2 comments:
Nice! I wanna make! What's bouquet garni?
Nisha
Taken from wikipedia:P
The bouquet garni (French for "garnished bouquet") is a bundle of herbs usually tied together with string and mainly used to prepare soup, stock, and various stews. The bouquet is boiled with the other ingredients, but is removed prior to consumption.
There is no generic recipe for bouquet garni, but most recipes include parsley, thyme and bay leaves. Depending on the recipe, the bouquet garni may include basil, burnet, celery leaves, chervil, rosemary, savory and tarragon. Sometimes, vegetables such as carrot, celery, celery root, leek, onion and parsley root, are also included in the bouquet.
Sometimes, the bouquet is not bound with string, and its ingredients are filled into a small sachet, a net, or even a tea strainer instead.
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