I’m thinking about making this on Saturday for a small gathering of people. I haven’t made it in years, and it’s my own variation on something I got out of Gourmet years before that. I can probably find the original recipe. Can you think of any variations or improvements?
Dice a stalk of celery and a carrot. Saute them in a generous amount of butter until slightly browned. Add enough flour to make a roux. Slowly stir in small amounts of chicken stock to make a thick sauce that will coat the back of a spoon. Strain and set aside. Repeat entire procedure, and add to the original sauce. Add salt and white pepper to taste. Add the juice of one lemon.
Beat the yolk of one egg, and temper it with some of the sauce. Add back into the rest of the sauce.
Heat some olive oil in a skillet, and add chicken tenders or thinly sliced chicken breast. Fry until almost cooked through. Heat the sauce, add a splash of white wine and just enough heavy cream to turn the sauce white. Add the chicken to the sauce to finish cooking it.
I had chopped back last year’s tarragon a couple of weeks ago, and new sprouts have already come up from the roots. I picked some of this fresh tender tarragon, chopped it, and added it to my white wine/chicken broth/cream sauce. I also added sliced 'shrooms. It was a pretty sauce on top of the chicken breasts, with the browned sliced mushrooms and flecked with fragrant green tarragon.
So, summing up, mushrooms and tarragon are nice additions to this dish.
That sounds awesome. I normally don’t like to add stuff that changes the color or texture, but a little green looks nice, and mushrooms make everything better.
Add some finely diced onion to that celery and carrot and you have a classic French mirepoix, the basis of a great many sauces.
Add a little green pepper also finely diced and you have the cajun “Trinity” which is just their riff on the mirepoix.
I’d roast the garlic with olive oil and thyme before adding it near the end of the cooking. That will give it a sweet nuttiness that goes wonderfully with chicken.
Capers would be a good addition to that sauce as well.
This is what I was going to add. You could sub pepper for celery and do a cajun thing, but seriously you need onion in that dish. One medium brown onion diced finely and cooked until soft and clear. You will be amazed at what it will do to round out the flavor of the dish.
I also think that deglazing the pan and adding that to the sauce is a great idea that will help carry the flavors of the chicken into the sauce and give the dish a more finished feel.
But onion. You need onion. You don’t really need garlic (I can’t believe I just said that) but onion is a must.
in addition, you can also add a flavorful fat of some sort. Like, say, pancetta. I’m getting a little burnt-out on the whole bacon-in-everything nonsense, but bacon would work well, too.
If you like dill, you can add a generous amount of dill (say 3-4 tablespoons) to the sauce, making a chicken variation of the Scandinavian dish dillkött. It’s traditionally made with veal, but I’ve made it with chicken to great success. Along with the dill, you can also add capers. I love dill, so this is a favorite recipe of mine, but I understand if you don’t.
As mentioned before, tarragon & lemon & chicken combine very well, as do thyme & lemon & chicken. Tarragon will give the dish a greener, fresher, more summery taste (with a licorice-like accent), and thyme will give you a more earthy, autumnal flavor. You can also put in a little fresh rosemary instead of thyme for another earthy, woody flavor.
Instead of Chicken ala King, you could “inspire” the sauce with some SE Asian ingredients and make Chicken ala Indochine.
Maybe some fresh Thai Holy basil, ginger or galangal, lemon grass, Fish Sauce, and small Eggplant (Japanese) incorporated into your recipe would be nice. Serve over some french bread Croutons rubbed with garlic. It could be a very delicate and popular fusion dish.
I would use leeks, personally. They contribute a similar quality to the standard onion, thus rounding out the mirepoix with which we’re all familiar even if we don’t know the name, but they also add interest because it’s not exactly the same flavor as we’re used to. But that’s a personal preference.
Also, if you go with tarragon or some other soft green herb, throw it in at the last minute; otherwise the leaves will break down too much in the heat, which looks not so great, and the delicate aroma will be lost.