Pan seared chicken with red wine & mushrooms

Image courtesy of blog.water2wine.com

A very simple dish that focuses primarily on flavour from our sauce which is made primarily from mushroom and red wine reduction. It does take a bit of time to make the sauce, but ideally no longer than the chicken takes to cook, so it can be preapred all in one go.

I've left accompaniments absent as its quite a generic dish you can serve pretty much what you like with it. I would however reccomend mash or champ potatoes, and some root vegetables such as carrots, celeriac etc.

This recipe concentrates on doing the chicken in one pan and cooking in the oven, and using a seperate pan for the sauce. There is however nothing stopping you from doing it all in the one pan and not using the oven at all. Its up to you really. If you have a big enough pan, then go for it.

Ingredients
(serves 2)

2 Chicken breasts (skin on with wing bone) or 4 chicken thighs (deboned and skin on)
3 rashers smoked bacon (2 intact one chopped to 1cm square)
150g chopped muchrooms. (Ill leave the choice up to you but a mix of wild and closed cup works for me.)
6 shallots or 2 small onions (chopped to a 1cm dice)
Tsp tomato puree (optional)
Red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar (3 tbsp)
Glass and a half of red wine or port
250ml chicken stock
3 cloves crushed garlic
Generous handful of rosemary & thyme
tsp demerera sugar
Salt & pepper
tbsp butter

250 ml chicken stock

Chicken

Place one rasher of bacon under the skin of each chicken breast or 1.2 of a rasher under the skin of each thigh. Add some of the herbs int he same fashion (when stripped from the stem).

Sear the chicken in a pan skin side down. When coloured flip over and repeat for underside, then put on tray or in pan in the oven at 170C until cooked. This should give you enough time to cook the sauce.

For the sauce

In a saucepan saute onions / shallots,  chopped bacon and mushrooms until coloured, then add garlic. When they all begin to soften, Add the herbs, then add the vinegar and sugar until a syrup forms, (you can add the optional tomato puree at this point) then add the wine and reduce by half. Add the stock and reduce by half once again. When the sauce has reduced enough that it tastes to yourliking, fold in a little bit of butterand keep it moving to finish the sauce.

Pork Wellington with Redcurrant & Cranberry Sauce

The wellington is a very British dish, as its namesake suggests. A favourite of Sir Winston Churchill amongst others, this dish goes beyond the quaintness of "hearty" and borders of luxurious.

This recipe in particular takes the focus away from beef, and utilises pork instead. I've taken the focus away from expensive ingredients here, and am quietly confident you can feed two people here for less than £10 (shopping around may however be required).

Service thoughts: it goes with pretty much anything, vegetable wise. You can use any of the classic potato dishes also, as they each give a different focus and ideal to the dish when presented. Whether its the glorious fondant potato, dauphinoise, pommes dauphine, croquettes or even champ potato, you're going to enjoy this dish. I'll leave the accompaniment to you.

From a seasonal perspective I suppose its perfectly suited to winter, with the extra filling nature of wellington, the sweetness of "winter" fruits such as redcurrants and cranberries, and the earthy flavours of the pate and mushrooms utilised.

To create this mammoth dish you will need (serves 2)

Puff pastry (when bought from a shop you generally get what you pay for, but if ur on a budget any will do)
Chicken liver pate (you can get this quite cheaply)
1 pork fillet (if you are on a budget you can get the side of a loin by haggling a bit with the butcher)
About 10 chestnut or similar earthy flavour mushrooms. If a bunch of enoki are available, go for them.
2 shallots or 1 small red onion
Chopped fresh rosemary, sage and thyme. Its alot cheaper if you have them growing.
4 pancakes (savoury) (roughly 7in in diameter).. These are I suppose optional but they help the dish greatly. Its up to you.
25g butter for glazing.
1 beaten egg for glaze.
Salt & Pepper for seasoning.

Preparation:

Cut the pork fillet in half and remove any membranes and bits clinging to it. Discard any bitsor put to one side for stock use.

Take your puff pastry and roll out on a cool surface until about 1/2 cm thick. Divide into two equal pieces (these will wrap the fillet etc).

Spread pate on the pastry leaving about 3/4 in breathing gap on all edges.

Finely chop the onion and mushrooms into about 1/2 cm dice. Saute in a pan until soft, then fold in a small amount of butter and the chopped herbs and turn the heat down. When the onion and mushrooms have absorbed the butter take off the heat and allow to cool slightly.

Layer 1 pancakes on the area covered by the pate, then add the mushroom and onion mix in the same manner as the pastry. Add the last pancake on top of this.

Season with salt and pepper, then sear the pork fillet in a very hot pan until colour shown on all sides. We dont want to cook it fully, just enough for the latent heat to start work, and give a bit of caramelised flavour to the meat.

Allow the meat to rest for a minute or so then wrap the pastry / pancake affair around the meat into what appears to be a sausage roll. Seal the wrapped end with the eggand makes sure you do the same for the ends. One thing we dont want is leakage.

Glaze the ready to oven wellington with butter and the remaining egg. Place on greaseproofed oven tray and put in preheated oven (about 180C) until golden brown .

Devour, mercilessly.

For the sauce:

Handful of fresh cranberries
Tbsp redcurrant jelly
Small glass of red wine or port
tsp balsamic vinegar (white preferred)
1/2 cup of chicken stock.

Preparation:

Add the redcurrant jelly to a pan and allow to melt into a syrup. Add the cranberries and turn the heat down to a simmer. Once the cranberries have begun to soften, add the vinegar. Allow to cook for about a minute then add the wine. Reduce the liquor by half then add the stock. Reduce by half again and the sauce is ready.
Don't worry about the straining, the fruit here is a real feature.