This is a really nice recipe that allows you to potter round the kitchen without too much fuss and delivers a meal suitable for a dinner party or a nice change for a Sunday lunch. Chicken is poached in a stock packed with flavour and set alongside parmentier potatoes and roasted butter-nut squash. The poaching liquor is then used to make a deliciously thick and flavourful sauce to coat the chicken with. Take it from me, once you’ve got the hang of this one you’ll be making it time and again. Please post your comments below on how you go and any ideas you have for improvements!

Ingedients

4 Chicken Breasts
100ml white wine
300ml Milk
1 chicken stock cube
1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 leek, split lengthways and roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs of Rosemary, chopped
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp cornflower
2 tbsp water
A small handful of Parsley, finely chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic
4-5 potatoes (Maris Piper, King Edward or simple white potatoes will do), peeled and diced into cubes
1 butternut squash, peeled and cut up
Olive oil

Method

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. In one baking tray add olive oil, salt, pepper and a sprinkle of chopped rosemary then throw in the diced potatoes and smush it all around. In another tray do the same with the butter-nut squash but before smushing, crush in 2 cloves of garlic. Put them both in the oven for 45 minutes, turning half way through.

In a large saucepan or sauté pan, add a tbsp of oil, 1 clove of crushed garlic and the chopped carrot and leek. Let this cook for a minute or two then add in the white wine, let this bubble and fizz for a minute then crumble in the chicken stock cube and the milk. Put the chicken breasts in and cook for about 18-20 minutes (unless they are very large breasts). You can use your meat thermometer here to keep checking progress. You can add a little water to the pan if it looks like its getting too thick and frothy.

In a small saucepan, add the 2 egg yolks. Mix the 2 tbsp of water with the 1 tbsp of cornflower and add this to the eggs, whisk well. Once the chicken is poached, take it out of the liquor and cover with foil. Then take a cupful of the liquor and, through a sieve, put it in to the saucepan with the eggs and the cornflower, whisk it well off the heat. Then sieve more of the liquor into the eggy mixture and put it back on the heat and keep whisking it very well until the sauce thickens.

Make sure you add the chopped parsley to the sauce and season it and then serve it on top of the chicken. I hope you enjoy this one, we definitely did last night.