Drawing a blanc.

Supremes De Volaille A La Blanc -- Breast of Chicken with Cream

Start with the hardest recipe first, right? That seems to be the way my brain has worked as I've been going through my adventure of learning to cook (better) by using "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as my initial guide. Julia Child gives wonderful lessons beyond recipes -- I've learned details about eggs, poultry, a variety of vegetable, and how to prepare sauces that I never realized people even thought about. Being the kind of person who likes to flip through the pages of textbooks and manuals before actually reading the whole thing, I've tended to find recipes deeper in the book that are more interesting sounding than those towards the front.

For the most part, this random exploration has been working out. I have occasionally realized, however, that Julia intentionally placed some of the simpler recipes at the beginning of a section so that a cooking technique could be tried without compounding the difficulty by adding more complex ingredients or multiple techniques. Awwwwww, what would the fun be in that? Besides, my skipping ahead is probably what's added some of the excitement to my experiences!

Well, "Supremes" (Chicken Breasts) have definitely been that way. When I discovered the section of the book teaching me how to prepare chicken breasts with a variety of cream sauces I immediately started making the ones that had all kinds of spices and ingredients added to the cream sauce. I reached the point, though, where I'd used up all of the fancy pants sauce recipes and was faced with the basic cream sauce. **sigh** I suppose I should make it at least once.

So, with some of our children and grandchildren coming over for dinner, I found myself resigned to making plain old ho hum "Supremes De Volaille A La Blanc" (Breast of Chicken with Cream). Nothing exciting there, right? Oh Julia, how clever you are! This turned out to be easy to make and it tasted great! Who would have thought that a simple and basic cream sauce could taste so good?

There was really nothing complicated about preparing this and, even though I doubled the recipe from past preparations, I had it done on time together with two other side dishes. Cream, it turns out, needs to be a new staple in my kitchen. It magically transforms broth into creamy soups and the leftover liquid in a frying pan into delicious sauces that we are all loving!

Here's how easy it was to prepare. Four tablespoons of butter went into the skillet (remember Id doubled the recipe and was cooking 16 chicken tenders) and was used to cook the chicken. The chicken was cooked for a couple of minutes on each side to give it some color and was done when at 165 degrees (slightly springy to the touch). The chicken was then removed and set aside while the sauce was prepared.

To the liquid remaining in the pan, I added a cup of white grape juice and a cup of chicken broth plus a little salt and a big pinch of pepper. These were cooked on a high heat until the liquid was reduced to a syrupy consistency. Then cream was added, stirred in, and also stirred continually over a medium high heat until thickened.

Learning from my past presentation mistakes, and suggestions from a couple of my wonderful blog followers, I first spread a bed of sauce on the serving plate before arranging the cooked chicken on top. Then more of the sauces was added on top of the chicken and chopped parsley was sprinkled over the top for color. I'm not going to earn any Michelin stars for my presentation but it was an improvement and was certainly much much better than a TV dinner! I don't think it looked too bad for my home cooking, eh?

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, even my harshest and most vocal food critics -- my two granddaughters. They no longer run and hide when they see me cooking so I suppose that is progress. Lesson learned, even simple recipes can taste pretty darn good. Simple basic ingredients and a quick preparation make this something I'm sure I'll cook again. Drawing a blank and don't know what to make for dinnery? Maybe you should try this -- you'll like it!

Bon Appetit!