Chicken messina
A chicken version of the classic Italian veal dish vitello tonnato. You can poach a whole chicken for this instead of breasts, but poaching breasts means the dish is neat and easy to serve. You absolutely must get good canned tuna for it (such as Ortiz). It’s a great, easy summer dish and not that well known.
Equipment
Ingrediënten
- TO POACH THE CHICKEN
- ½ onion
- 1 celery stick including the leaves
- small handful of sprigs of parsley
- 6 black peppercorns
- 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts about 200g (7oz) each
- FOR THE SAUCE
- 125 g 4½oz mayonnaise, bought or home-made
- 4 tbsp single cream plus more if needed
- 90 g 3¼oz canned tuna, drained of oil and flaked
- 5 canned anchovy fillets drained of oil and chopped
- 1 tbsp capers rinsed of salt or brine
- finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
- salt and pepper
- FO SERVE
- 1½ tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
- lemon wedges
Instructies
- Fill a wide saucepan or sauté pan with water.
- Add the onion, celery, sprigs of parsley and peppercorns and bring to the boil.
- Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
- Add the chicken, making sure that the poaching liquid covers it.
- Reduce the heat and poach very gently for eight minutes.
- Take the pan off the heat, cover and leave to stand for 20 minutes.
- To test whether the chicken is fully cooked, remove one of the breasts and slice it through the middle, cutting it at an angle.
- It should be firm but moist with no trace of pink.
- Lift the chicken breasts out of the liquid and put them into a shallow dish.
- Spoon some of the poaching liquid over them to keep them moist and cover.
- For sauce, mix all the ingredients except the salt and pepper.
- Taste, then season (the anchovies and capers make it salty).
- It should be spoonable not stiff, so you may need more cream.
- Either serve the chicken on separate plates, or on one platter.
- Slice the chicken breasts across and spoon some tuna sauce on top.
- Sprinkle with chopped parsley and put lemon wedges alongside.
- Serve with a lightly dressed watercress and black olive salad (make sure to get good wrinkly olives; you don’t need to stone them) and Italian bread.
