Our kitchen garden cook Melanie Johnson shares a beautiful creamy tarragon chicken recipe.
With notes of aniseed, tarragon’s versatility is usually unsung, but it works well with chicken, fish and red meat.
Making tarragon butter is an easy way to get the taste in a pre-prepared and easy to use form. Simply mix 100g of softened butter with a handful of chopped tarragon leaves until evenly distributed. Then, put a pile on a piece of cling film and wrap it up to form a cylinder; you can chill the butter until it’s ready to use — and it’s perfect melted on a pan-fried piece of sea bass, for example, with a small squeeze of lemon and a green salad.
Here’s a more involved recipe which is ideal for a weekend lunch.
Recipe: Creamy tarragon chicken with garlic-roasted new potatoes
Ingredients
Serves 4
- 1kg new potatoes
- 50ml olive oil
- 1 bulb garlic
- 4 chicken breasts, skin on
- 30g plain flour
- 2 banana shallots, diced
- 200ml dry white wine
- 2 sprigs tarragon, to be removed before serving
- 1tbsp Dijon mustard
- 400ml chicken stock
- 200ml double cream
Method
Preheat your oven to 180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4.
Add the new potatoes to a roasting tray and toss with olive oil. Slice the garlic bulb across and add it to the tray (to squeeze out later) and roast for 30 minutes.
Season the chicken breasts all over and toss them in the flour. Heat a large, heavy-based pan and add a splash of olive oil. Brown the chicken all over and set aside.
Add the diced shallots to the same pan and fry gently until softened. Pour over the white wine, add the tarragon sprigs and stir in the mustard. Reduce the wine by half and add the chicken stock. Simmer for about eight minutes to reduce again. Return the chicken to the pan to finish cooking through and pour in the cream. Simmer for a few minutes to thicken the sauce.
Squeeze the garlic cloves from the bulb in among the potatoes and toss to combine the flavours.
Serve the creamy tarragon chicken with the roasted new potatoes on the side, together with some freshly steamed green beans.
