Sunday 7th of April 2013

Home from a lovely week staying with my parents and guess what? I'm straight back into the kitchen!

For some reason at the moment, I've gotten a bit obsessed (again) with French food, so today for lunch we ate one of my personal favourites, poulet à l'estragon (chicken with tarragon).  This is such a French classic, and it's a shame that this herb is often so overlooked, as it really is magical when combined with chicken like this.

For my Distracted version of this dish, I marinade eight chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on) in about 100ml of rapeseed oil mixed with a dash of vinegar, a minced clove of garlic, a good pinch of sea salt flakes and a teaspoonful of dried tarragon.  Leave this for an hour or two.  I like to cut some potatoes up and parboil them during the marinading. then put them in the bottom of the tin I'm going to cook the chicken in.  When you're ready to cook, put the chicken pieces, skin-side up, on top of the potatoes and pour over the remaining marinade.  Cook at 180ºc for 20 minutes, then pour a glassful of dry white wine into the roasting tin.  Cook for another 25 minutes, then transfer the chicken and potatoes to a serving dish and keep them warm while you make the sauce.

Tip all the juices from the tin into a small saucepan and bring them to a simmer.  Whisk in the juice of half a lemon, a little white pepper to taste and 2 tbsp double cream.  Add some chopped fresh tarragon.  Simmer, still whisking, for a few minutes until the sauce thickens slightly, then pour over the chicken and potatoes in the serving dish. Throw over a bit more fresh tarragon and serve with a green salad.

To follow lunch, and in keeping with the obvious (though admittedly unintentional) theme of the day, we ate some madeleines that I made this morning.  I then proceeded, in clearly-obsessive Francophile mode, to make gougères for supper, but that's another story...

Cath xx