Chicken with Morels & Vin Jaune

This is the kind of cooking that reminds me how wonderful French food still is. It comes from Alex Jackson's lovely book Frontières which has recipes from all the regions of France that border other countries or, in the case of the south, North Africa.

Although it includes hard-to-find vin jaune it does make the dish. I suspect you could use fino sherry but it wouldn't taste the same.

If you can't face making it yourself it's often on the menu at Noble Rot, Soho where Alex is head chef.

Alex writes: "A classic dish from the Jura, where the chicken would traditionally have been the most expensive part of the meal – the morels foraged for free in spring and the vin jaune (yellow wine) an affordable local wine.

Nowadays the opposite is true, unless you happen to have a patch of morels in your garden. Vin jaune is a rather special thing; a slightly oxidized wine made from the Savagnin grape, with a flavour not unlike dry sherry – well worth tracking down if you have a pretty penny to spare.

When this is served in the Jura the chicken comes swimming in a vat of cream sauce: c’est correct, as the French say. This will feel luxurious, although it is really a very simple dish: use the best ingredients you can get your hands on and it’s sure to be a winner.

A little trick to boost the vin jaune flavour in the sauce is to splash in a little extra wine at the end, along with some butter and perhaps a squeeze of lemon.

This is traditionally, and best, served with a simple rice pilaf. At the restaurant where I work we add a few crispy curry leaves to the top of the rice – most untraditional, of course, but something that pairs nicely with your glass of vin jaune on the side."

Chicken with Morels and Vin Jaune

Serves 4

For the stock:

500g/ 1lb 2oz chicken wings

An uncooked chicken carcass

½ shallot

½ celery stick

1 bay leaf

1 sprig of thyme

A few black peppercorns

1.5kg/ 3lb 5oz chicken, jointed (you can ask a butcher to do this for you)

Oil and a knob of unsalted butter, for frying

30g/1oz/ 2 tbsp unsalted butter, plus 15g/1oz/1 tbsp (cold, cubed) to finish the sauce

1/2 shallot, finely diced

At least 20 morels – fresh when in season, or dried ones soaked in cold water until soft

A small glass of vin jaune, plus an extra splash at the end to finish the sauce

1 litre/ 1¾ pints/ 4 cups good chicken stock (preferably homemade)

150ml/ 5fl oz/ ¾ cup double cream

Lemon juice (optional)

Salt

Preheat the oven to 200°C fan/220°C/425°F/gas mark 7.

First, make the stock. Put the chicken wings and the carcass in a large roasting tin. Put in the hot oven and roast until a light golden brown. Transfer the wings and carcass to a large stockpot (leave the chicken fat in the tin) with the remaining ingredients and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, skim well, then reduce to a simmer for 1½ hours, skimming periodically.

Strain through a sieve, then reduce the liquid by half – you want 1 litre/1¾ pints/4 cups. Set aside while you prepare the chicken.

Season the chicken pieces with salt. Heat a little oil in a large saucepan and brown the pieces on both sides, adding a knob of butter towards the end. When the pieces are golden all over, remove to a plate and pour off the excess fat in the pan.

Melt 30g/1oz/2 tablespoons of butter, then add the diced shallot and a pinch of salt. Cook slowly until the shallot is very soft.

Halve the morels if they are large but leave any small or medium ones whole. Add the mushrooms to the pan and fry gently until they have softened and absorbed some of the butter – season them lightly with salt. Add the vin jaune and simmer until reduced to a syrupy consistency.

Reintroduce the chicken pieces, skin side up, and add the chicken stock – you might not need it all – to almost cover the chicken but leave the golden skin sitting above the liquid.

Half-cover with a lid and cook for 30 minutes at a simmer. The sauce should reduce until it tastes powerful and delicious but bear in mind that the aim is to have a lot of it, so don’t reduce too far (add a little more stock if you think it needs it). Now, pour in the cream and swirl the pot. Simmer slowly for a further 15 minutes or so, until the chicken is cooked and the sauce has thickened slightly.

Remove the chicken to a serving dish that will also hold the sauce. Taste the sauce for salt and finish by whisking in a good splash of vin jaune, the cold cubed butter and maybe a little squeeze of lemon juice. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve, with a rice pilaf on the side.

What to drink: Alex suggests drinking vin jaune with the dish which would be the perfect match but an expensive option. (Majestic has one at the time of writing for £54.99 as part of a mix six deal which is about par for the course.) If. you need more than one bottle I'd supplement it with another savagnin or savagnin/chardonnay blend from the Jura region or an aged white burgundy.

Extracted from ‘Frontières: The Food of France’s Borderlands’ by Alex Jackson (Pavilion Books). Image credit Charlotte Bland. I've suggested using an extra chicken carcass for the stock rather than the carcass from the jointed chicken Alex suggests as it doesn't look as if the chicken pieces are taken off the bone.

Claire Thomson’s One Pan Chicken Braciole

Claire is a cookery writer I hugely admire for her simple but incredibly delicious recipes which you can see her making on her daily reels on Instagram where she posts as 5oclockapron. This recipe is from her latest - and immensely useful - book One Pan Chicken.

Claire writes: "Braciole is Italian-American in origin, and if you have watched and enjoyed the runaway success that was The Bear on TV (a programme about a young chef running a restaurant in Chicago), you might want to have a go at making it. It’s usually made with beef or veal, but I’m using chicken breast, which suits the dish very well."

Serves 4

4 large boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced in half horizontally

8 slices of prosciutto

200g (7oz) cherry tomatoes, halved

salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the filing

50g (1¾oz) fresh breadcrumbs

2 tbsp toasted pine nuts, plus more to scatter

2 tbsp raisins, soaked in warm water for 5 minutes then drained

50g (1¾oz) parmesan, finely grated

50g (1¾oz) pecorino, finely grated (or provolone – the traditional choice)

1 egg, beaten

¼ small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, leaves finely chopped

¼ small bunch of basil, leaves finely chopped

1 tbsp chopped rosemary or thyme leaves

zest of 1 unwaxed lemon, then that same lemon quartered, to serve

1 garlic clove, very finely chopped or crushed

You will also need cocktail sticks, small skewers or kitchen string

1. Using a rolling pin, gently flatten the chicken pieces between two sheets of baking paper until each is approximately 1.5–2cm (5/8–¾in) thick. Season well all over with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

2. Preheat the oven to 230°C/210°C fan/450°F/Gas 8.

3. Mix all the filling ingredients together and divide the mixture into 8 equal portions.

4. Lay out a slice of prosciutto, top with a piece of chicken, then spoon one portion of the filling on top of the chicken. Roll it up tight, securing it with 2 cocktail sticks or small skewers or string. Repeat with the rest of the chicken.

5. Arrange the tomatoes and chicken on a baking tray and roast for around 35–40 minutes, until the chicken is crisp and golden brown and is cooked through. Roughly 3 minutes before the end of the cooking time, scatter the extra pine nuts in the tray to toast.

6. Allow to rest for 5 minutes then serve whole or sliced, spooning some of the tomatoes and their juices on to each plate, with a lemon wedge on the side for squeezing over.

What to drink: Claire and I made a reel about what wine to drink with this dish. Given its origin we both felt Italian wine would be most appropriate but that you could either go for red or white. We tried a Manzani Bianco and a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo with it of which went well though we marginally preferred the red .

See also Which wine goes best with chicken - red or white?

Extracted from One Pan Chicken by Claire Thomson (Quadrille, £20) Photography: Sam Folan

Chicken and cucumber salad with pul biber and tahini lime dressing

Anyone who is a fan of Sabrina Ghayour will be thrilled that there's a successor to her best-selling book Persiana. Actually there have been several but this one relates back directly with a collection of easy, but supremely tasty family-friendly recipes.

This is for anyone who loves a chicken salad which certainly includes me.

Sabrina writes: "Although I love salads, for me they need to have bags of flavour and tick many boxes. Fresh, zingy, crunchy, sometimes sweet and spicy – I always need a salad to be a filling meal in its own right.

This stunner using leftover chicken is a nod to chicken satay salads but using the Middle Eastern staples of tahini and cucumber, and we Persians have an unhealthy obsession with cucumber!

It really is refreshing and full of flavour – perfect for sharing, or not…

SERVES 2–4

1 large cucumber, peeled and cut into thin batons or strips using a vegetable peeler

2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded (or use chicken thigh or leg meat)

3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally from root to tip

1 teaspoon pul biber chilli flakes

handful of salted peanuts or cashew nuts

handful of fresh coriander leaves

Maldon sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

For the dressing

1 heaped tablespoon tahini

juice of 1 lime

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 heaped teaspoon clear honey

Arrange the cucumber, chicken and spring onions on a large platter and season with a little salt and pepper.

Mix all the dressing ingredients together in a small bowl and drizzle over the salad.

Sprinkle with the pul biber, scatter over the nuts and coriander leaves and serve. This needs no accompaniment.

What to drink: I'd probably go for an off-dry white like a pinot gris or riesling with this. Or a viognier FB

Persiana Everyday by Sabrina Ghayour is published by Aster (£26). Photography by Kris Kirkham

Sticky chicken tulips, prunes, smoked bacon, toasted pecans and star anise

There was so much interest when I posted this pairing from 67 Pall Mall's new book Wine and Food in my Match of the Week slot recently that I had to follow up the the recipe from chef Marcus Verberne.

Master Sommelier Ronan Sayburn who collaborated with Marcus on the book introduces the recipe.

Madeira is one of the most wonderfully complex wines you will ever taste, but it’s often left to the end of the meal, or served with cheese. We wanted to do something different with it. This sticky chicken dish works very well, as the intense flavours in the Madeira need to be paired with punchy ingredients. It’s a fun bar snack or pre-dinner nibble.

The sticky glaze is infused with the most prominent flavours present in aged Madeira, such as smoky bacon, prunes, honey and nuts, with the complementary spices of star anise and cinnamon. This is the perfect example of what we endeavour to achieve at the Club: to create dishes to match the flavour notes of a certain wine, resulting in a memorable synergy between the two.

Sticky chicken tulips, prunes, smoked bacon, toasted pecans and star anise

Serves 4 as an appetiser

16 chicken wing ‘drumsticks’, ordered from the butcher

600ml chicken stock

8 star anise

2.5cm cinnamon stick

50g pitted prunes

40g pecans

1 tbsp honey

4 smoked pancetta rashers, finely chopped

2 tbsp groundnut oil

80ml Madeira

1 tbsp soft brown sugar

Salt

To prepare the chicken tulips, using the heel of a heavy cook’s knife, assertively chop the small knuckle off the end of each wing drumstick to reveal the bone. Pull back the flesh from the drumsticks, turning it inside out to reveal the bone in its entirety.

Place the chicken tulips into a small saucepan and cover with the stock. Add the star anise and cinnamon and season well with salt. Over a medium heat, bring to the boil, skimming off any impurities that collect on the surface with a ladle. Once it is boiling, drop in the prunes and remove from the heat. Allow to cool and infuse for 30–40 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 170°C.

Place the pecans on a small oven tray and toast for 5 minutes or so. Remove the tray from the oven, drizzle over the honey and mix, coating the nuts in the honey, then return to the oven for a final 2–3 minutes. Remove from the oven, mix them again, then allow to cool.

Once the stock has cooled, strain the chicken through a sieve over a bowl to collect the cooking liquor. Remove and discard the star anise and cinnamon; they have done their job.

Place the chicken tulips on kitchen paper to dry. Chop the softened prunes very finely to create a paste.

To finish the chicken, preheat a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.

Fry the chicken tulips and pancetta in the groundnut oil until the pancetta is crispy. Deglaze the pan with the Madeira and add the brown sugar and prune paste. Toss the tulips in the pan to coat, then pour in 150ml of the reserved stock. Stirring regularly, reduce the stock to a sticky caramelised glaze, with a consistency that coats the chicken. Place the tulips on a serving platter and coat with the glaze.

Roughly chop the honey-roasted pecans and sprinkle them over the top.

Serve with a finger bowl and plenty of napkins.

What to drink;
Ronan suggests:
Sercial, Blandy’s Vintage Madeira
Sercial, D’Oliveiras Vintage
Verdelho Terrantez, Blandy’s