September 22, 2005
Creamy tarragon sauce
So the other day I decided to try eating something other than ready meals and takeaway — I made chicken and bacon in a creamy tarragon sauce, to a recipe made up pretty much as I went along. It was quite nice, though not the greatest meal I've ever tasted, but I'm recording the recipe for posterity so I can tweak it next time. It's dead simple, so if you try it and like it I'd be interested to hear. If you try it and it's vile, or it gives all your friends food poisoning, contact my lawyer instead
Ingredients
- Some chicken breasts, boneless and skinless. About 1 breast per person is about right, but adjust according to size and appetite. Accordingly, I cooked 1.
- A couple of rashers of bacon, or a few slices of ham would work just as well.
- A small tub (I didn't notice the size on it, but it was the smaller of 2 sizes available in Sainsbury's) of créme fraiche. Bear in mind this is just about all the volume of the sauce, so you need as much cream as you want to have sauce!
- Some tarragon.
- Other herbs essentially at random. I think I threw a bit of basil and "mixed herbs" in, but not a lot. Salt and black pepper too.
- Pasta! (Or rice, if you like)
Method
- Cut the chicken into chunks, maybe 1-2cm3 or so. Small mouthfuls. I recommend doing this with a decent pair of kitchen scissors rather than faffing about with a knife. The lazier may wish to buy pre-diced chicken, I guess.
- In a deep frying pan, or broad saucepan (is this what a skillet is?), fry the chicken in a little bit of oil. Don't worry about it being cooked through at this stage, just make sure it's sealed. If you're using bacon, throw that in at some point, and make sure it's nice and crispy, then turn the heat down to cook the chicken through.
- Pour (well, scoop) in the cream. Stir. Cook gently for as long as it takes to sort the pasta out. If you're using ham instead of bacon, add it now.
- Add lots of tarragon, ideally freshly chopped. Then add other herbs as desired.
- Keep the heat low and stir often, while you cook the pasta.
- Serve, with a bit of parsley sprinkled on the top for the look of the thing.
Next time, I'm going to bear the following things in mind:
- It tasted quite watery, which might be the fault of the half-fat creme fraiche I picked up. Would something like double cream have improved this? Or not cooking the cream for as long? I've never used cream to make sauce before, generally I use milk and flour to make white sauce, so I'm new to all this. I might go back, but at least cream doesn't have lumps of uncooked flour :-)
- I actually added a couple of sun-dried tomatoes, but don't bother. Really.
- The dish is shockingly lacking in vegetables. Maybe some onions in the sauce, or a spot of garlic, wouldn't go amiss?
- You could do this with pre-cooked chicken, say what's left on the carcass after a roast dinner. In which case, I'd say fry the bacon first, add the cooked chicken to that to warm up, then add the cream and continue as normal.
Posted by James at 01:36
| Comments (2)
| TrackBack
Tags for this entry: cooking
food