This is a plain but luxurious dish that really shows off the best of spring. It isn’t difficult, but you need very good ingredients, both chicken and vegetables. It has one drawback: you should ideally use homemade stock, made from raw chicken (get bones and wings from your butcher) not a cooked carcass. It’s important that the broth is nice and pale but full of flavour. Stock made from cooked carcasses is darker.
Chicken with spring vegetables and herbed cream
This is a plain but luxurious dish that really shows off the best of spring. It isn’t difficult, but you need very good ingredients, both chicken and vegetables. It has one drawback: you should ideally use homemade stock, made from raw chicken (get bones and wings from your butcher) not a cooked carcass. It’s important that the broth is nice and pale but full of flavour. Stock made from cooked carcasses is darker.
Ingredients
FOR THE SAUCE
- 15 g ½oz unsalted butter
- 1 shallot very finely chopped
- 2 tbsp vermouth
- 1 tsp plain flour
- 150 ml 5fl oz double cream
- juice of ½ lemon
- smidgen of Dijon mustard
- salt and white pepper
- leaves from 4 sprigs of tarragon chopped
- 2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves chervil is even better, if you can get it
- 3 tbsp crème fraîche
FOR THE CHICKEN
- 150 g 5½oz peas, podded weight
- 150 g 5½oz broad beans, podded weight
- 18 skinny carrots in a bunch
- 18 baby leeks
- 500 ml 18fl oz chicken stock
- 6 good-quality skinless boneless chicken breasts about 175g (6oz) each
Instructions
- For the sauce, melt the butter in a smallish saucepan and gently cook the shallot until soft but not coloured.
- Add the vermouth and cook until it has almost disappeared.
- Sprinkle on the flour, stir, then add the cream.
- Heat to a simmer, then add the lemon juice; the mixture will thicken considerably.
- Don’t panic.
- Add the mustard, salt and pepper, then add the tarragon, parsley and crème fraîche.
- The sauce will become thinner when you add the crème fraîche.
- Check the seasoning, it’s really key.
- Heat through; the herbs will flavour the cream as it heats.
- Set aside.
- Boil the peas and broad beans in separate pans for four minutes.
- Drain and run cold water over them while they are in the sieve.
- Once the broad beans are cool, slip the skins off.
- Trim the green tops from the carrots leaving a couple of cm (about 1in) of greenery.
- Carefully wash them, especially around the green tufts, to remove any soil.
- Trim the tops from the leeks, remove any discoloured outer leaves and trim the bases, but leave the bases intact so the leeks don’t fall apart.
- Put the carrots in a steamer or into boiling water and cook until tender.
- They should be ready in about 15 minutes but can stay in the steamer (or water), covered and off the heat, once they’re ready.
- Pour the stock into a sauté pan and bring to the boil, then reduce to a very gentle simmer.
- Add the chicken and poach for 12–13 minutes.
- Back-time your leeks to be ready with the chicken; steam them for four minutes, until just tender.
- Put the peas and beans into boiling water to heat through for a minute.
- Drain.
- Quickly reheat the sauce, adding water to let it down.
- Bring to the boil, then immediately take off the heat.
- Put the vegetables – carrots, leeks, broad beans and peas – into broad soup plates.
- Put the chicken breasts on top, sliced or left whole, and spoon the broth from the chicken round the breasts.
- You don’t want a soup, but the vegetables should be in broth.
- Spoon some sauce over the chicken and serve.