Chicken with cider and tarragon

We had this last Friday night and it worked – I think because the chicken is part poached, part roasted.

1 chicken (happy natch)
3 smallish onions
2 cloves garlic
bunch of tarragon
2 bay leaves
Sprig of lemon thyme
1 lemon (or it might have been two, can’t remember)
Can of cider (think it was strongbow but again can’t remember – really ought to type this up immediately after the event)
Chunk of butter
Double cream
More tarragon

Preheat the oven to 180ish.

Put the chicken in an ovenproof large pan or casserole. Bruise the tarragon stalks (but gently, not aggressively – eek, sound like I’m getting dangerously into domestic violence territory) and stuff them inside the chicken along with the lemon thyme, bay and the lemon chopped into two but not squeezed at this stage. Chop the onions into quarters or eighths depending on their size. Chop the garlic into very small pieces. Plonk these around the chicken. Rub butter into the chicken skin, especially over the breast. Pour over about half of the can of cider. Put it in the oven. You’re going to cook it for whatever the appropriate roasting time for the weight of bird is. After about a third of the cooking time, baste the bird and give the onions a good stir. You might need to add some more cider. Do the same after about two thirds of the time. When the chicken is done (check juices clear etc), take the pan out of the oven and put the bird onto a carving plate and cover it with foil to keep warm. Add any remaining cider, squeeze the lemon halves from inside the bird into the oniony sauce and remove any thyme sprigs or bay leaves that have escaped. Put the pan on the hob and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and add a tablespoon or two of double cream and more freshly chopped tarragon.

I served this with some new potatoes tossed in a bit of lemon juice and curly parsley. I have a vague feeling there may have been a green vegetable but neither Edward nor I can remember for sure. Pudding was apple, blackberry and elderberry crumble with yellow cream, yum yum.

x

Thomas’s Chicken Tagine

Thomas in Morocco via Paris and Clerkenwell:

“You need a chicken, one or two pickled lemons (Waitrose do sell them), half a jar of black olives, powdered ginger, saffron, plenty of parsley and fresh coriander. You sweat an onion in your tagine, then add a teaspoon of powdered ginger, a bit more of saffron, some garlic and salt and pepper, and half a pint of water or more. You salt and pepper the chicken, and then turn it well in the mixture, and leave it to simmer for an hour (as very often with north African recipes, you don’t brown it), turning it a few times. You do a strange manœuvre with the olives in which you blanche them three times in boiling water for thirty seconds (running under the cold tap each time): this seems to soften the taste a bit. Scoop out and discard the insides of the pickled lemons, and cut the skins into strips, and chop up the parsley and coriander. Add all this fifteen minutes before the end. You want to end up with lots of juice to be soaked up by the couscous. The recipe I had said to cook the whole thing in a casserole and transfer to the tagine once it was all cooked, but this seemed like cheating, and I couldn’t really see the point.”

Grand’mere’s Quails with Grapes

Thomas emailed this so I shall quote him verbatim:

“Our main course was dictated to me in a series of rather confusing answerphone messages, but I liked it as a chic alternative to the rough, Nigel Slater-ish ways of cooking quails that I normally like. For this one, you brown the quails, flambé them in brandy (this step doesn’t appear in the recipes, but, as Grand’mere said, it can’t do any harm), then braise them for 20 minutes or so in grape juice and a glass or two of white wine, adding a good number of real grapes for the last ten minutes. The proportions I had involved two pounds of grapes (half juiced, half for the pot) for six quails. I overcooked it (we had drunk quite a lot of champagne), which did the quails no harm, and meant I had a nice brown reduced sauce.”