A week night mistake come good – this is a great chicken fricassee recipe to serve to the whole family for an informal lunch or dinner, lots of sauce and plenty of tasty!
Serves 4 – Ingredients:
Few glugs of Olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
12 chicken pieces on the bone, skin on (breast is OK aswell)
8 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
3 bay leaves
4 sprigs of rosemary finely chopped (remove stalks)
4 sprigs of thyme (leaves stripped from stalks)
330ml of good quality dry cider
Knob of butter
1 large tomato roughly chopped
Handful fresh parsley chopped
Method:
Heat the oil on medium heat, season the chicken and lay skin side down in the oil; fry for about 8 minutes until golden, turn and fry for a further 8 minutes. Pour off the fat (much of this will be rendered chicken fat).
Add more olive oil to the pan and throw in the garlic, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme and season well. Turn up the heat to high and add 90% of the cider saving just a couple of glugs, add the chopped tomato and cook for a few more minutes to reduce and cook out the alcohol (you could at this point add a tin of butter beans if you don’t want to serve any sides and have a light dinner) you want the sauce to be the consistency of single cream.
Finish with a few decent knobs of butter and pop in the oven at 180 for 10 minutes. Taste for balance of flavours – if too buttery add the rest of the cider, if too acidic add more butter or dash of water. Finish with fresh parsley and a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper.
