Jura chicken with vin jaune and morels
The reason this gets a place in the feasting chapter is that it’s expensive to make and the ingredients are hard to find. It takes effort, but it’s one of the most glorious French dishes I know and well worth it for a special meal. Morels are in season in the spring. If you can’t get hold of fresh morels, or prefer not to splash out, dried wild morels are fine (more than fine, in fact!) Buy the best chicken you can afford.
In the Jura region of France they produce a strange dry white wine called vin jaune. It’s difficult to find here, but dry sherry is a good substitute.
Ingrediënten
- 300 g 10½oz fresh morel mushrooms (or a mixture of morels and cultivated mushrooms), or 40g (1½oz) dried morel mushrooms
- 75 g 2¾oz unsalted butter
- 1.8 kg 4lb skin-on chicken, jointed into 8
- salt and pepper
- 300 ml ½ pint vin jaune or dry sherry
- 200 ml 7fl oz double cream
- juice of ½ lemon or to taste (optional)
- chopped chervil leaves if you can find it to serve, or finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
Instructies
- If you are using fresh mushrooms, gently clean them (if you have a little brush that’s great, otherwise go carefully with kitchen paper).
- If you are using dried mushrooms, put them in a bowl and add enough just-boiled water to cover.
- Leave these to soak for 30 minutes.
- Heat half the butter in a sauté pan and, working in batches, brown the chicken over a medium heat.
- Be careful not to burn the fat.
- Season.
- Remove the chicken to a dish as each piece is ready and set aside while you work on the others.
- Add the remaining butter to the pan with the mushrooms (drain if you’re using dried mushrooms and keep the soaking liquor) and sauté briskly for five minutes.
- Add the wine, stirring to dislodge all the lovely juices that have stuck to the pan and bring to the boil.
- If you have soaking liquor from dried mushrooms, add that too, avoiding any gritty bits at the bottom of the bowl.
- Return the chicken to the pan, reduce the heat to low, cover and cook gently for about 40 minutes, or until cooked through.
- Take out the chicken pieces and put them in a dish in a low oven while you make the sauce.
- Skim excess fat from the top of the cooking liquor.
- Bring the cooking liquor to the boil and reduce by about one-quarter.
- Add the cream and return to the boil.
- Cook until you have a sauce that will just coat the back of a spoon, not too thick and not too thin.
- Taste for seasoning.
- Sometimes the elements of a dish can be ‘lifted’ by a squeeze of lemon juice so add this if you think it needs it; the lemon will also thicken the sauce slightly.
- Taste again for seasoning.
- Return the chicken to the pan and heat it through.
- Scatter the chervil or parsley on top and serve from the sauté pan.
