Quick Tarragon Chicken with Chestnut and Morel Mushrooms

Serves 4

You will need


4 tbsp olive oil

4 free-range organic chicken breasts, skin on

60g Graham’s organic butter

20g dried morels, soaked in warm water for 15 minutes

100g chestnut mushrooms, cleaned and quartered

200ml dry white wine

200ml brown chicken stock

200ml Graham’s organic double Cream

2 tbsp fresh tarragon, chopped

Maldon sea salt

freshly ground black pepper


To serve

200g spring greens – we used asparagus & broccoli

300g new potatoes, scrubbed

25g parsley

50g Graham’s organic butter


Method

Skin the chicken breasts and slice the meat vertically, across the grain of the meat, into even-sized thin escalopes of about a centimetre in thickness, to give roughly 3 pieces per breast. Season with salt and pepper.


Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and add the oil. Add the chicken pieces one at a time, ensuring they are not on top of each other. Leave them alone in the pan to allow a nice crust to form. Turn the chicken pieces over and cook for another 2-3 minutes as above.


Add the butter, the soaked morels (retain the liquid for later) and quartered chestnut mushrooms to the pan, moving them around in the butter to ensure they take on a nice colour. Pour in the wine and deglaze using a heatproof spatula to scrape all the flavour and caramelised pieces from the bottom of the pan. Reduce by half, then add the stock plus 4 tablespoons of the strained mushroom soaking liquid and reduce by half again.


Add the cream and chopped tarragon and bring to a simmer. Further reduce the sauce until it has a good coating consistency on the back of a spoon. If you have a thermoprobe thermometer, the serving temperature of the meat should be 80C. Check the seasoning.


For the potatoes, boil them in plenty of boiling salted water until tender – 15-20mins, then lightly fork them with the butter, pepper and chopped parsley.


When you’re ready to serve, spoon the hot crushed parsley potato into a mousse ring (or cake cutter) on a warmed plate to make a neat round helping. Pat down gently then remove the mousse ring. Place the chicken on the plates with steamed greens on the side and the sauce and mushrooms spooned round.

Guest Post Credits- Grahams The family Dairy