These are some of my favorites. Most of them are traditional from somewhere, and they are written according to that tradition, but you can usually substitute breasts for legs, white wine for dry vermouth, etc. All onions get sweeter the longer they cook, but if you have eaters who are resistant to onions, use the milder yellow ones or even the sweet onions from Peru when Vidalias are out of season. The saucier recipes are good over rice or pasta, and the others are good with steamed new potatoes or sliced polenta seared in butter
Chicken alla Romana, from Sora Lella: Easy, light, and colorful from Rome, nice with pasta
Chicken Legs with Walnuts and Olives: Easy, light, unusual and delicious combination of flavors from Northern Italy
Chicken Breasts Archduke: Easy baked chicken breasts in a wonderful pink paprika-cream sauce, French
Chicken Normandy: Easy and festive, this is a slightly simpler modified version of the traditional Norman Vallee d’Auge recipe below.
Chicken Legs with Juniper: Easy oven-baked chicken with a great, unusual flavor. This finishes with a cornstarch-thickening step which is easy to learn and very useful in other cooking. From Aosta, in alpine NW Italy. Serve with polenta if you have it.
Chicken Breasts a la Vallee d'Auge: Chicken with mushrooms braised in cider and cream - a Norman recipe. This one finishes by thickening the sauce with an egg yolk, an easy step and very useful to know, so don’t be anxious.
Chicken Legs with Porcini in Red Wine: This starts with cooking some bacon and other ingredients to make a flavorful fat to saute chicken in, followed by a gentle stovetop braise in wine. I have Porcini mushrooms that you are welcome to.
Chicken with Pecans and Maple Bourbon Butter: This one isn’t simple, but it’s not difficult and it is festive and delicious! It’s from the late celebrated Locke-Ober Restaurant in Boston and it can be simplified:
- You don’t have to clarify the butter.
- You don’t have to pound the chicken.
- The flambeeing step is important so the final sauce is not too boozy, but you can do it in 2-3 steps so it’s not scary. Alcohol burns cool and emits no smoke, so it won’t set off the smoke alarm and it won’t set anything on fire. If you’re still anxious, keep the pan lid handy - you can cover the pan at any time and the flame will go out.
- The final butter enrichment step is really just stirring bits of soft butter into the hot sauce at the last minute.
Comments