- 1 Onion
- Mushrooms - as many as you like
- Chicken breasts (allow one per person)
OR
- Chicken thighs (2 per person)
- 1 carrot
- Chicken stock cube
- 1 tablespoon of flour
- Potatoes
- Sunflower oil (or whatever you prefer but NOT Olive oil)
- 1 knob of butter
- Boiling water
- 1 teaspoon dried tarragon or mixed herbs - optional
- Salt & Pepper to your own taste
- Dice the onion and mushrooms as finely as you can get them
- Peel and finely dice the carrot
- Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces
- Put the kettle on to boil some water
- Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large pan and add the butter into the centre of the oil ( I use a wok for everything, but you don't have to) Adding the butter to the oil helps to stop it burning, but you do also need to ensure that you don't have the heat too high.)
- Although I have often said that I usually use chicken thighs as they are cheaper and tastier than breast meat, for this recipe I used Willow Farm Chicken Breast Portions from Tesco and they were lovely - very moist and succulent.
- When the oil is hot, add the chicken pieces, a few at a time, and cook just long enough to give them some colour, then removed from the pan and replace with the onions, mushrooms and carrots. Cook these until they have softened, stir them around to stop them sticking to the pan.
- When the onions etc are softened, stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and stir until it is all cooked into the mixture which will have become thick and maybe a bit hard to move.
- Add around half a pint of boiled water and stir well whilst over the heat, remember to scrape the bottom of the pan to gather up anything which has stuck to it. As the mixture gets hotter, it will get thicker add more boiled water until the sauce is the consistency you would like it to be.
- Crumble a chicken stock cube into the mixture and stir, then taste it with a teaspoon. If you feel it needs a little more taste, add another half a cube, I wouldn't recommend more than that as it will become quite salty.
- Add the chicken pieces back into the mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper, but remember that the stock cube will have added quite a bit of salt so always taste (with a clean spoon) first.
- You can add 1 teaspoon of dried tarragon, or mixed herbs if you wish but this is optional.
- Leave the pan to simmer for a while with the lid on whilst you prepare the potatoes.Peel the potatoes and slice them as thinly as you can - a very sharp knife is invaluable for this. The number of potatoes required will vary with the size of the baking dish used, but you can always peel another potato if required, so err on the side of caution
- Pour the chicken mixture into an ovenproof baking dish - the size will depend on how many people you are cooking for. At this point, I would suggest that if you are only cooking a couple of portions of chicken, that you place the chicken in the dish and then pour over the sauce because you may have too much sauce for the dish, but it is easier to leave out some of the sauce than to mess with thickening a sauce which is too thin or diluting a sauce which is too thick at the pan cooking stage when you are a novice cook. Experienced cooks will be able to alter the amount of flour used for thickening at the appropriate stage.
- Once the chicken mixture is in the pan, lay the sliced potatoes over the top, overlapping where necessary to ensure that there are no gaps.Brush a little of the oil over the top of the potatoes before putting the dish into the oven at around gas reg 5, electric 190° or 180° in a fan oven for around 30 - 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the sauce bubbling around the edges.
