Chicken dinner, on the river
We’ve just spent a wonderful week aboard the Nenuphar, moored up near the Latin Quarter of Paris. Baguettes, cheese and wine ahoy! To save a bit of cash, we were cooking using the lovely galley kitchen inside our temporary floating home. Here’s one of the recipes from our stay (which I made up really as I went along... but it seemed to work out!)
Ingredients (fed two of us, plus chicken for leftovers)
Couple of potatoes - thinly sliced into rounds
Couple of shallots - diced
Olive oil
Butter
Three whole chicken legs - bone in, skin on
One large leek - washed and sliced
Four white mushrooms - wiped and sliced
Creme Fraiche (or double cream... but the former seems easier to come by in Paris)
White wine
Fresh baguette and salad to serve
1. In a large dish which can go both on the hob and in the oven, lay out the potatoes and shallots pieces nice and evenly. Drizzle around half a tablespoon of olive oil over the top of them.
2. Smear butter over the chicken legs and season with pepper and a touch of salt. Pop the legs on top of the potatoes and shallots in your pan. You can drizzle another teaspoon of oil over the top at this point (to make sure that the butter doesn’t just burn).
3. Put this dish in the centre of the oven, uncovered and set a timer for 45 minutes.
4.When there’s about 20 mins left of cooking time left on the chicken, get your leeks going in a saucepan - pop the slices in with a large knob of butter and cook really slowly, turning now and then to make sure they are deliciously soft and buttery, rather than brown and fried.
5. Ten mins to go - In a small frying pan, do the same thing with the mushrooms - fry up slowly with butter until soft and lovely.
6. When the 45 mins is up, take your pan out of the oven and remove the chicken legs to rest (slightly warm plate is good here, then tent in foil or put a large tight-fitting bowl over the top to stop the heat from escaping. Turn up the oven to 220ºC, stir your potatoes and shallots to reveal any undercooked bits and pop back in the hotter oven for 5 minutes.
7. Turn off the mushrooms and leeks (if you haven’t already). Take the dish out of the oven and put on a warm hob - add half a glass of white wine and bubble off the alcohol. Then throw in two large spoons of creme fraiche. give it a stir around so you have a nice sauce and throw in the leeks and mushrooms. Stir and take to the table.
8. I then served the chicken legs on the plate and we helped ourselves to the sauce, salad and bread (essential for mopping up the lovely creamy gloop!)
Oh, and the leftover chicken was quite lovely in a baguette (bien sûr!) with some leftover salad.
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