Saturday, October 03, 2009

Friday: chicken, corn, morel ragout

Inspired by the corn in the biokiste along with memories of an appetizer we had at Zur Säge.

Soak some dried morels in chicken stock. Halve or quarter the softened mushrooms. Combine the (strained) soaking liquid with some more chicken stock and reduce it strongly.
Cut the kernels from a cob of corn and cook them for a few minutes in butter, until they are about ready to eat. Reserve. Add a bit more butter to the pan and cook some thinly sliced leek and very finely diced carrot until the leek softens. Sprinkle over a bit of flour and cook another minute or so. Stir in some white wine and let it reduce substantially. Stir in the corn, morels, and reduced stock along with a bit of light cream (halbrahm). Let this simmer very gently over low heat.
In a separate pan brown some chicken breast (cut into bite-size chunks) in clarified butter. Season well during the browning. As the chicken finishes transfer it to the corn-morel mixture. Deglaze the browning pan with some more white wine, reduce that to a very small amount, and add to the main pan. Taste for salt and add a bit more cream if needed. Serve with good bread.

This turned out really nicely.

As a vegetable side: cook spinach with a bit of olive oil, remove from the pan and chop. Add diced long green pepper to the pan and cook until it softens a bit. Add back the spinach and taste for salt.

We also had a green salad (the first nussli of the year).

No comments: