Chicken with spring vegetables and herbed cream
This is a plain but luxurious dish that really shows off the best of spring. It isn’t difficult, but you need very good ingredients, both chicken and vegetables. It has one drawback: you should ideally use homemade stock, made from raw chicken (get bones and wings from your butcher) not a cooked carcass. It’s important that the broth is nice and pale but full of flavour. Stock made from cooked carcasses is darker.
Ingrediënten
FOR THE SAUCE
- 15 g ½oz unsalted butter
- 1 shallot very finely chopped
- 2 tbsp vermouth
- 1 tsp plain flour
- 150 ml 5fl oz double cream
- juice of ½ lemon
- smidgen of Dijon mustard
- salt and white pepper
- leaves from 4 sprigs of tarragon chopped
- 2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves chervil is even better, if you can get it
- 3 tbsp crème fraîche
FOR THE CHICKEN
- 150 g 5½oz peas, podded weight
- 150 g 5½oz broad beans, podded weight
- 18 skinny carrots in a bunch
- 18 baby leeks
- 500 ml 18fl oz chicken stock
- 6 good-quality skinless boneless chicken breasts about 175g (6oz) each
Instructies
- For the sauce, melt the butter in a smallish saucepan and gently cook the shallot until soft but not coloured.
- Add the vermouth and cook until it has almost disappeared.
- Sprinkle on the flour, stir, then add the cream.
- Heat to a simmer, then add the lemon juice; the mixture will thicken considerably.
- Don’t panic.
- Add the mustard, salt and pepper, then add the tarragon, parsley and crème fraîche.
- The sauce will become thinner when you add the crème fraîche.
- Check the seasoning, it’s really key.
- Heat through; the herbs will flavour the cream as it heats.
- Set aside.
- Boil the peas and broad beans in separate pans for four minutes.
- Drain and run cold water over them while they are in the sieve.
- Once the broad beans are cool, slip the skins off.
- Trim the green tops from the carrots leaving a couple of cm (about 1in) of greenery.
- Carefully wash them, especially around the green tufts, to remove any soil.
- Trim the tops from the leeks, remove any discoloured outer leaves and trim the bases, but leave the bases intact so the leeks don’t fall apart.
- Put the carrots in a steamer or into boiling water and cook until tender.
- They should be ready in about 15 minutes but can stay in the steamer (or water), covered and off the heat, once they’re ready.
- Pour the stock into a sauté pan and bring to the boil, then reduce to a very gentle simmer.
- Add the chicken and poach for 12–13 minutes.
- Back-time your leeks to be ready with the chicken; steam them for four minutes, until just tender.
- Put the peas and beans into boiling water to heat through for a minute.
- Drain.
- Quickly reheat the sauce, adding water to let it down.
- Bring to the boil, then immediately take off the heat.
- Put the vegetables – carrots, leeks, broad beans and peas – into broad soup plates.
- Put the chicken breasts on top, sliced or left whole, and spoon the broth from the chicken round the breasts.
- You don’t want a soup, but the vegetables should be in broth.
- Spoon some sauce over the chicken and serve.
