Chicken, soft spring onions and baby potatoes
As an Irish girl I love spring onions (we call them scallions), as our beloved ‘champ’ contains nothing more than mashed potatoes, butter and chopped scallions cooked in milk. A sandwich of white bread, butter and chopped spring onions was a favourite childhood snack. But I had never cooked any other dish in which they were dominant. Until this. It’s spring-like, with a lovely muted oniony flavour. You can add peas (fresh or frozen, just stir them in towards the end of cooking) and shredded soft lettuce is good, too, just wilting a little in the heat. It’s a light, simple sauté, but doesn’t seem at all old-fashioned.
Ingrediënten
- 8 large skin-on bone-in chicken thighs or a mixture of joints
- 400 g 14oz baby waxy potatoes (no need to peel)
- 10 g ¼oz unsalted butter
- ½ tbsp olive oil
- salt and pepper
- 450 g 1lb spring onions, roughly chopped
- 200 ml 7fl oz dry vermouth
- 3 –4 tbsp chicken stock or water
- 5 tbsp crème fraîche or double cream
- 1 tbsp chopped chervil leaves or parsley leaves, though aniseedy chervil is perfect here
Instructies
- Trim the skin from the chicken thighs so that there are no ragged bits.
- If the potatoes are any bigger than a walnut, cut them in half.
- In a shallow broad pan (such as a sauté pan, something that will hold all the chicken pieces in a single layer) heat the butter and olive oil, season the chicken and brown it over a medium heat until coloured on all sides.
- You are not trying to cook the chicken through, just colour it.
- Lift the chicken joints out and put them in a bowl.
- Pour off all but 3 tbsp of the fat from the pan.
- Add 400g (14oz) of the spring onions and cook over a medium heat until they are glossy.
- Add the vermouth and stock or water and bring to the boil, scraping up all the bits that have stuck to the pan.
- Put the potatoes into the pan and reduce the heat to medium.
- Return the chicken, with its juices, cover and cook at a gentle simmer for 20 minutes.
- Remove the lid and cook for another 20 minutes.
- The liquid will reduce and the chicken cook right through (you can check by piercing the flesh near the bone with a the tip of a sharp knife; there should be no trace of pink).
- If you have a lot of liquid left, then remove the chicken and boil the juices to reduce them, but you should have just about enough to give everyone some chicken and a spoonful or two of juice.
- Stir in the crème fraîche and the rest of the spring onions.
- Heat through for a couple of minutes, then scatter the chervil on top and serve.
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