BDRSC - DRZ - Chicken

[Dr. Z]

Okay, so lets start things off!

I went to Asda and bought:



Chicken Breast - £2 for 2 so £1
Unsmoked Back Bacon - 88p, I used 3 rashers, so say 40p
King Edward Potatoes £1.48 for a bag, I used 2 so thats about 30p
Red Leicester Cheese - £2 for a block, I used about 40ps worth
Garlic - 50p
Chives - 50p
Dumisani Chenin Blanc Chardonnay (Taster Bottle) - £1

Total Cost: £4.10

So, what did I do with those?

First of all I took the chicken breast and gently cooked it in a frying pan in about half the bottle of wine. Its really important NOT to go full-bore at this stage, I used about half the power of my crap electric hob. Cook it until the whole breast is white with no visible pink bits, turning frequently to stop it drying out as much as possible.



Whilst that was cooking I took the potato, peeled them, cut them in half and then gently cut about 3/4 of the way through every 3-4mm or so. I actually cocked up here, what you are SUPPOSED to then do is boil them for a short amount of time but I didn't because the extra time taken would have meant I was hungry for longer. If you do follow these instructions, if you do that bit then they will "fan" properly, mine didn't.

I then took them and put them in a roasting tin and covered them in a small amount of oil (enough so that the potato was covered and would sit in about 1mm of oil in the oven).



I had conveniently pre-heated an oven to 200c earlier so I lobbed those in on the middle shelf and cracked on with the next bit.



Finely chop the garlic and a few of the chives so that they look like that and then whip the breast out of the white wine. By this time, you should have about half a cup of wine left in the frying pan - this is too much! Crank up the heat for a second until there is about half that amount left and then add in the garlic, chives and a knob of butter. You need to then turn the heat RIGHT down or you will end up with nothing left! Once the butter has melted gently turn up the heat so that the garlic will go soft and then it will look like this:



From there, I then butterflied the breast, put in a THICK slice of cheese and spooned in the sauce from the frying pan. This is where it all went a bit Pete Tong for me, trying to keep it all in the chicken whilst wrapping it in the bacon to keep it all together is a bit of a challenge but I got there with no significant loss!

That then goes into the oven to finish cooking. Whilst you are in there, whip out the potato. If you added in the boiling step you will have lovely fantail potatoes in front of you. If not, then they will still have fanned slightly but nowhere near as much

I transferred them to a flat, chopped up some more chives and sprinkled them on top with some grated cheese and popped them back in the oven to brown once the bacon had started to show signs of being cooked.



Once they have finished browning the chicken should be completely cooked and the bacon cooked but not overcooked. I aimed for just past cooked so it is still really moist but cooked into oblivion also tastes nice - problem with the latter is that by that time, ALL of your filling will have escaped

Plated up, mine looked like this:



It tasted fantastic and the other half-bottle of Chardonnay went with it really well The garlic was present but didn't stop the flavours of the wine, bacon or cheese from coming through and the chives really shone through the aftertaste with the butter to leave a really soft but clean taste in the mouth.

[BBx]

Mmmmmmmmmm that looks delic DRZ!!!

You DO know that some people are going to fail with the photo taking

BB x

[Desmo]

That looks really nice DRZ. I think we should give this a go

[lostkat]

That looks nice Martin. I find Red Leics really bland though, so I'd fill it with brie (or feta). I do chicken stuffed with various things and wrapped in bacon quite a lot, although I don't pre-cook it first. I just hammer it flat and secure with cocktail sticks

[vix]

Oooh good list of ingredients there I have a nice, Phil inspired idea for this one. Will get the ingredients wen I do the online shop this week.

[Jonny69]

Cool idea with the spuds, I'll be trying that pretty soon.

Less macro on the pics please, keep thinking my contacts are up the spout and squinting

[Dr. Z]

Only had my 50mm to hand and as it was quite dark I had to use it wide open, hence the narrow DoF. Pics are just for illustration anyways

[Belmit]

I'll be trying this tomorrow hopefully.

[vix]

My stuff comes on Monday so may be trying Tues night

[Belmit]

I've made Poached Garlic Chicken and Bacon, with Cheese 'n' Chive Mash.

Only made a couple of concessions: Used baking potato as it was what I had already, and used Sainsbury's own Australian Chardonnay (but still a taster bottle). I also added broccoli because I couldn't be doing without veg.

First I slit the chicken breast down the middle and stuffed garlic cloves inside:



Then created a kind of stock using half a chicken Oxo, a 1/4 pint of boiling water and half the wine. Draped bacon over the breasts (that shouldn't turn me on!) and tipped the stock into the pan.



Covered the pan in foil (keeps the garlicky, winey goodness in the chicken) and banged it in on about 190 for 15 minutes. Whilst that was doing its thing I boiled the chopped up potato (skin on). After the 15 minutes I removed the foil (smells like cider!) and put it back in for a further 15 minutes.

Once the potato was cooked I drained it and lobbed in a decent chunk of grated cheese and plenty of chopped chives. Mashed. Around the same time I quickly showed the broccoli a pan of boiling water.

Drained the stock from the chicken pan and added what I hadn't used before (didn't want to drown the chicken at the start). Threw in a couple of teaspoons of cornflour and stuck it on the hob to thicken for a chickeny, garlicky, winey, bacony gravy. Whilst I was doing this I put the chicken back in the oven for 4-5 minutes to dry it out ever so slightly.


Bring it all together on a warm plate and coquettishly bung a couple of chives on for that pretentious atmosphere.



Season and nosh.