Chicken with Cream, Mustard and Tarragon

Sometimes I think this blog should be titled, or at the very least subtitled, “Starting Over: A Million and One Ways to Use Up Leftovers”.  And I’m only half joking.  The thing is, though, that is the way we eat most of the time.  There’s just the two of us, I am determinedly in the ‘mass catering’ mindset, and seem incapable of cooking for fewer than eight hefty appetites at a time.  At every given point in time we are usually pushed for either time or money (and very often both) – right now it is time that is at a premium; we currently just have one night per week to spend in each other’s company.  The rest of the week is either just one of us, home alone, or working in the evenings.  As much as I would love to have limitless hours and dollars to dream up a weekly menu, and shop daily, right now even brushing my hair daily is an achievement, so I’m all about cook-once, reap-the-rewards-many-times kind of cooking  that both frees up my evening hours, while still allowing me a creative challenge: how best to keep these leftovers interesting?

This recipe is from ‘Real Cooking’, a book from a wonderful food writer, Nigel Slater who, thankfully, feels very much the same way I do about having a second go at things – or evidence would suggest that he does, anyway.  There is a wonderful phrase part way through this book regarding roast chicken: “Only the very wasteful would fail to make a broth from the bones”.  Exactamundo, Nigel.  I am many, many things, but very wasteful I am not, especially when it comes to my beloved food.  Elsewhere in the same section are suggestions for transforming leftover roast chicken meat into something not just ‘not bad, for leftovers’, but great in its own right.  In this recipe, chicken is mixed, very simply, with roughly-given quantities of cream, mustard, cheese and tarragon (given that this is necessarily a fridge-scavenging exercise, rough quantities are the only kind that can truly count), topped with breadcrumbs, and baked.  The result is luxury.

Chicken with Cream and Mustard

Adapted from Nigel Slater, ‘Real Cooking’

2 handfuls leftover roast chicken, cut into bite-sized chunks

200mls cream

1 tablespoon grainy mustard

0.5 teaspoons dried tarragon (this would be even better with fresh)

1 handful grated cheese; anything will do (I used 50:50 parmesan and Cheshire)

Pinch salt

2 handfuls breadcrumbs (about 2 slices of bread)

Preheat the oven to 200C.  In a bowl, mix the chicken with the cream, mustard, tarragon, cheese and a pinch of salt.

Pour this mixture into an ovenproof dish, scatter the breadcrumbs over the top.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are golden and the sauce is bubbling.

Serve with a green salad or green vegetables; I went with a huge pile of sautéed, salted cabbage.

Favouritism

Playing favourites can be a strange and confusing game.  Ask me what my favourite way to do potatoes, and that's fairly easy.  "Mash.  No, Dauphinoise.  No, wait, definitely mash.  If I could marry a food, it would be mash".  But ask me, for instance, what my favourite vegetable is and it gets tricky. " Spinach.  No, broccoli.  No, wait, mushrooms.  Mushrooms were my first love.  Or was that Brussel Sprouts?  ALL THE VEGETABLES."  Meat follows the same path. "Beef.  Lamb.  Pork.  Too hard.  TOO HARD".

Eggs I find similarly tricky.

That rare beast, perfectly cooked scrambled eggs.  Silky, plumptuous, buttery.  Poached eggs.  As I am missing the poached egg gene (Andy has it and can poach an egg perfectly, much to my annoyance slash delight) so appreciate a poached egg so much.  Omelettes.  The fried egg, an absolute necessity on a bacon butty.  Crisp around the edges, yielding and dripping within.  Spicy Huevos Rancheros.  I think I would refuse to choose.  Eggs are very much a mood food, and if you can find the perfect egg to suit your mood, you are in ovoid heaven.

I do, however, have a particular affinity with coddled eggs and its sister dish, baked eggs.  Same results, different methods - both cooked in vessels, in a water bath, one on the hob, the other in the oven.  My kitchen didn't feel complete (who am I kidding? It still doesn't.  Never will) until I had an egg coddler, spotted in one of the antique shops on Tinakori Road and clutched in my mitts.  Today I wanted something luxurious and creamy, and so turned to the delights of the baked egg.  Both coddled and baked are incredibly versatile dishes - try mixing up the herbs used, add some chilli, use different cheese or other protein (ham and smoked salmon work particularly well), add your favourite veg, if you can decide what that is.

Baked Egg

2 tablespoons cream

1 egg

1 tablespoon tarragon, chopped

1 tablespoon Emmental, grated

Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 180c / 350f

Season the cream with salt, pepper and nutmeg.  Be generous.  Put one tablespoon in the bottom of an oven-proof dish.  Sprinkle over half the tarragon.

Break the egg on top.  Pour over the remaining cream, remaining tarragon and cheese.

Put the dish inside a larger oven-proof dish.  Pour lukewarm water in the larger dish to come half way up the side of the small dish.

Bake for 15 minutes.  This will give you a runny yolk, so bake for longer if you prefer.

Serves 1

Messy Eaters

Eton Mess has a somewhat hazy history.  The only thing that is agreed on is that the name comes from Eton College, the posh school in England beloved by incredibly well-to-do people and royals.  I always thought the name came from their traditional Fourth of June celebrations, involved an accident with a pavlova en route, and somehow resulted in a delicious mix of strawberries, cream, and meringue.  Apparently not so  - Wikipedia tells me that the word Mess comes from their canteen (what? That's what we called it at my northern Comprehensive), and would originally have been bananas and cream, with the strawberries and meringues being a much later addition.  I'm not sure whether I dreamed up my versions, or whether there is any element of truth in it.  One thing there is truth in, though, is that this is one of the most delightfully simple-yet-indulgent desserts, and also, a curious amount of people have neither tried it nor heard of it (based on my sample research of 7 people). (What?)

The only point at which mine would differ from the standard would be to include Greek Yoghurt mixed in with the whipped cream.  Not only for health reasons, in fact not even for health reasons, but simply because I like the way it cuts the richness, and the ensuing slight tang sets off the juciness of the berries and the sweet crunch of the meringue just delightfully.  Also, while I would normally be an advocate of Making Your Own Meringue, I can't bring myself to stipulate that so strictly when it's going to get crushed up.  Use the ready-made meringue nests, and your sanity will thank you.

Feel free to go crazy and experiment with different berries and coulis; strawberries macerated in balsamic and sugar is a nice progression; Nigella recommends the use of pomegranate syrup to drizzle over.  I have made a more exotic version using mango and toasted coconut.  But really, you can't go wrong with this.  I could eat this all day, every day.  Messily.

Eton Mess

125g strawberries, halved or quartered
3 mini meringue nests
100ml double cream
100ml greek yoghurt

Whip the cream until cloudily soft but not stiff.  Gently fold in the greek yoghurt.  Holding them over the bowl, crumble each meringue into the bowl, making sure all the crumbs go in too.  Fold in the strawberries.

Spoon into serving dishes.

That's it.  If you want to get REALLY fancy you can put a whole strawberry on top.  But really, that's it.

Serves 2