Chicken Périgord-Style for #RandomRecipeChallenge

The past couple of weeks I have had so many lovely comments and Facebook messages from folks who keep telling me how organized I am.  And mostly I am.  Really.  But I dropped the ball on this one.  When it came time to make the dish for this month’s Random Recipe, where Dom from Belleau Kitchen challenged us to use our birthday day to choose a cookbook off of our shelves and then let that book open to a random recipe, I ran into a small problem.  Hands up all of you who know where my cookbooks are!  Yep, in the sea freight.  Now what?  As you might have read way back here only two books with recipes come in the suitcase.  So, I grabbed my Good Housekeeping and opened it randomly.  Then I counted forward to the 23rd recipe. And it can’t get any more random than that with only one real cookbook to choose from.  Sorry, Dom!  Hopefully by next month, my cookbooks will be here.

I ended up in Poultry and the 23rd recipe called for boneless chicken breasts with heart-stopping amounts of butter.  And then cream!  This dish was so rich and delicious that I suggest you cook it for anyone you want swooning in your arms.  Let’s just call it love and not a heart attack, okay?

The original recipe called for eight chicken breasts but I cooked only four (well, my pack ended up being three and two little ones) and left all the other ingredients exactly the same, because we like sauce.  Feel free to add the extra breasts if you have more people to feed.

Ingredients
8 oz or 225g mushrooms, cleaned – I used Swiss browns.
1/2 cup or 110g butter
Drizzle olive oil – perhaps a teaspoon
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1.1 pounds or 500g)
1/3 cup or 40g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
14 oz or 415ml chicken broth or stock
2 tablespoons cream
1 teaspoon minced chives for garnish – optional

Method
Cut the hard ends off of the mushroom stems and then slice them.  Set aside.

Rinse the chicken breasts and then dry them between some paper towels.

Melt three-quarters of the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, along with a small drizzle of olive oil.  Slide the breasts in and cook until browned on both sides.   They will not be cooked through so don’t be alarmed if they are still pink on the insides.  Remove to a plate.

Add the mushrooms and the rest of the butter to the pan.  Cook until the mushrooms are golden.  Remove mushrooms with a slotted spoon and set them aside in a small bowl.

Turn off the fire and stir the flour and salt into the pan drippings.  Use a whisk, if necessary to make sure there are no lumps.

Gradually stir in chicken broth and cream and then cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is thickened.

Return the chicken and mushrooms to the pan.  Pour in any chicken juices that collected on the plate.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 25 minutes, with the lid on.

Serve over rice or noodles. Add the green onions for garnish, if desired.

Enjoy!

Parmesan Chicken Breasts with Crispy Prosciutto

This recipe is especially for my dear friend, Belinda, who apparently has a surplus of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in her freezer.   It is one of my favorites from Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food, published in the US as Food Revolution, where, for some bizarre reason, the Parmesan was omitted from the recipe.  I can’t imagine why.

Ingredients

2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme

30g or 1 oz Parmesan cheese

2 skinless chicken breasts

Freshly ground black pepper

1 lemon

4-5 slices of prosciutto or Parma ham – about 70g or 2.5 oz

Olive oil

Method

Pick the thyme leaves off the stalks.   If there are some very fine stalks which just break when you try to remove the leaves, just chop those up and group with the leaves. Grate your Parmesan.

Lay some cling film on a cutting board and place the breasts on the plastic.  Carefully score the underside of the chicken breasts in a criss-cross fashion with a small knife.

Season with a little pepper (You don’t need salt as the prosciutto and Parmesan are quite salty).  Lay your breasts next to each other and sprinkle over most of the thyme leaves.

Grate a little lemon zest over them.

Put half of the Parmesan on each breast.

Lay two prosciutto slices on each chicken breast, overlapping them slightly. If there happens to be a fifth slice in your package, as mine had, cut it in half and put one piece on each breast on top of the other two slices.

Put a square of plastic wrap over each breast and give them a few really good bashes with the bottom of a saucepan until they are about ½ inch or 1cm thick.

This  is the fun part!  Give it a jolly good bash. 

Put a frying pan over a medium heat. Remove the plastic wrap and carefully transfer the chicken breasts, prosciutto-side down, into the pan.

Drizzle over some olive oil. Cook for three minutes on each side, turning halfway through.

Either serve the chicken breasts whole or cut them into thick slices and pile them on a plate.   Serve with lemon wedges for squeezing over and a sprinkle of the few leftover thyme leaves. 

Enjoy!

Mustard and Rosemary Chicken

Chicken breasts, split lengthwise and seasoned with a marinade of rosemary, whole grain mustard and garlic, are pan-fried for mere minutes each side, until cooked through and golden on the outside. This is a great weeknight meal when time is short! 

Here’s one of those recipes that came from a dear friend of mine who is Australian, an expat wife extraordinaire, who makes me believe, sincerely believe, that we can do it all.  She’s been a vegetarian since living in India many years ago (Apparently the meat that was available then, hanging in the market, full of flies, was enough to put anyone off forever!) but she still cooks animals for her family.  She is also a brilliant textile artist, although I don’t know if she knows that.  Because she is also modest to a fault.  If we could choose our families, she would be one of my first picks for sister.

Here then, her quick and easy recipe for chicken breasts.  Made, photographed and written up especially for another of my sister picks in Beaumont.

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) wholegrain mustard

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) lemon juice

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) olive oil

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) fresh rosemary

1 clove of garlic

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Mince the rosemary leaves.   Crush the garlic with the side of a knife and then mince.

Mix together with the lemon juice, mustard, olive oil, pinch of salt and a couple grinds of fresh black pepper from your grinder. (Don’t have one. Go buy one.  Right after you finish making this quick and easy recipe.) There is nothing to compare to the taste of fresh ground black pepper.

Give it a good whisk so it hangs together well.

Rinse your chicken breasts and cut off all the excess fat, if any.  Holding your left hand (assuming you are right-handed – if not, switch) flat on the chicken breast, use a sharp knife to cut it in two sideways so you have two more or less equal pieces, both breast-shaped.

Spread the seasoning mixture on the top of each breast half.  

Now stack them on top of each other, making sure to save a little mixture for the bottom of the bottom breast. (My Australian friend is saying, “What?!” at this point, because this is my embellishment.) 

This will mean that both sides of each piece have the seasoning, except for the bottom one.  At this point, you can pop the breasts in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook them or carry on to the pan.

Heat your pan pretty hot and drop the breasts in.  They will probably take at least four minutes a side but I hesitate to give exact times in case your breasts are thicker or thinner. When they are sufficiently browned, turn them over.

When you can see the cooked bit coming up the sides, you can probably turn them.

Cook until browned on the other side.  Once again, at least four minutes but if you have doubts, cut the thickest part before taking them off and check for pinkness.  Any pink, leave them on a little while longer.

I know you are worried about that last side without seasoning. When that piece goes on, make sure to put it seasoning side down and then finish the job with your reserved mixture. 

At home, I normally serve these along side some vegetables or salad and a starch. They are best friends with mashed potatoes!

But they also work great in a bun for feeding hungry swimmers and their supporters at a school tournament.  We sold out!

And you thought they were working up appetites swimming!