The Guild Fanucci

Faheud’s Cookbook, Page 07
Tarragon Chicken
© 2004 George Reed

Ingredients to acquire:

• 1 chicken, cut into pieces
• 2 Tblsp Fresh tarragon
• 1/4 fresh lemon
• 1 tbsp butter[yes, ~salted~, don’t start with me]
• 1 pepper corn
• 1 bottle medium dry white wine of choice
• 2 dried apricots

Wash, dry, and arrange chicken in deep, glass baking dish. Looks familiar, huh?

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

As with previous anecdotal advice, always ensure chicken is completely thawed. It is not unhelpful to bring it to just above room temperature by tossing a bay leaf into a pot and covering the chicken with warm water. Then dry and arrange in the dish—squelching any complainers with stern looks and promises of becoming leftovers—the ones back behind the baking soda in the refrigerator. Bay leaf soaking to room temperature has a slightly enhancing effect on the flavor of your dish—without changing the outcome—and many surface creepies that can be on fowl do very poorly when exposed to the leaf of the bay.

Take the fresh tarragon, bruise it well, and sprinkle over the chicken. It is probably about a tablespoon in all. If you need to use dried, bottled tarragon spice—glare at your grocer for being a slacker, and pulverize the tarragon in a mortar/pestle arrangement.

Melt the butter {I trust your industrious grocer has ~that~, eh?} and drip over the chicken.

Squeeze a little lemon juice over the chicken. It will not take much. If your grocer has no fresh lemons—make a citizens arrest for impersonating a produce section, and use an orange. Do not use bottled real-lemon. They claim they do not add citric acid. They used to work for a presidential campaign. {wink}

Pour 1 ½ cups of the medium dry white wine in the baking dish. Drop the peppercorn in there somewhere—after cracking it. Have you noticed this recipe has lots of chances to smush things? Very nice after a long day for those passive-aggressive tendencies.

Cut the two dried apricots in half; drop them in various quadrants of the dish. I do not recommend adding extra apricots. It does not work all that nicely, and Julia Child will haunt you—and who needs to try to sleep with ~that~ in the background?

Cook the chicken in a tightly sealed baking dish. “But faheud! I have no lids to my baking dish!” Not to worry. Use three layers of foil. You want it sealed tight. One hour and twenty minutes….50 minutes if it’s de-boned breasts or something.

The juice will be clear from the chicken when it’s done. Do ~not~ try to rush things by getting happy with the temperature dial. Do ~not~ microwave. You may as well add a can of 30-weight if you are ever going to nuke tarragon….”Bad things, man……bad things….”

This dish is great with steamed squash, white rice with a hint of saffron, and a tossed salad with something in the vinaigrette family.

Some Asparagus steamed, and then grilled with raspberry/basil vinaigrette over it would not go amiss either.

Enjoy!