This one was spectacular, even if I say so myself. This is now my favorite chicken recipe! This was in the category of "died and gone to heaven" good. It was also a lot of fun to cook because I was able to saute, toss, reduce, and smell the aroma as it cooked -- all of things that make cooking really fun to do. On top of that, it was quite simple and quick to do. Here's the story...
I've been traveling and pretty busy at work for the past couple of weeks and not getting a chance to do any real cooking so I was pretty excited when Saturday rolled around and I realized that I had a chance to try some new things. Being in the mood for chicken I decided it was time to try the "Supremes de Volaille Archiduc," known around here as Chicken Breasts with Paprika, Onions, and Cream. Did you catch that -- cream. Not only cream, but it also has butter so you know it's going to be good, right?
This started off with a white onion being minced and then tossed into boiling water for just one minute. That was an interesting and new step for me -- essentially blanching the minced onions. They were immediately drained and rinsed with cold water. After draining the onions, they were cooked together with 5 tablespoons of butter (surprise!!), a tablespoon of red paprika (is there actually another color or was Julia just toying with me?), and 1/8 teaspon of salt. I tossed them around a bit, just for fun, and the lid went on to cook them covered over a very low heat for about 10 minutes.
This is the point where I didn't follow Julia's recipe exactly with two things, but I think she'd be proud of me for adapting and it turned out well. Instead of using whole chicken breasts I decided to use chicken tenderloins -- we like the smaller portions and the smaller size tends to cook a bit quicker. I don't think its cheating too much since the tenderloin is a portion of the chicken breast -- that's why I'm keeping the name "Supremes" for this dish -- with the amount of French I speak (none) I'm not even going to think about translating tenderloin. Second, I still don't have a metal casserole that I can start out cooking on the stove and then popping it into the oven (as Julia instructed). I'm pretty sure that if I put our casserole pan with plastic handles into the oven I would incur a bit of wrath from my lovely sous chef and wife, Elizabeth. That being the case, I decided to cook the chicken on the stove top and it worked out just fine!
Back to the story... Once the onions were nice and tansluscent, bu not browned, the chicken was added to the pan and rolled around in the butter/onion/paprika mixture to completely cover the chicken. I cooked the chicken with the lid on, only removing it to roll the chicken around every once in a while to cook it evenly. As soon as the chicken was done (it only took about 6 or 7 minutes until it became springy to the touch -- and I checked with a meat thermometer because I don't trust myself completely) it was removed from the pan and placed on a hot plate to keep it warm while I finished the sauce.
Here's where the magic really happened! Once the chicken was removed, I poured 1/4 cup of white grape juice (sorry, I don't use wine) and 1/4 cup of beef broth into the pan and stirred everything up. The heat was turned to high and everything was quickly boiled down until it became a bit syrupy. As soon as it was syrupy, a full cup of whipping cream was added with a little bit of salt and pepper and stirred in. This was also boiled over high heat until it had boiled down enough to become slightly thickened. A little lemon juice was added and it was ready! The sauce was poured over the chicken and some minced fresh parsley was sprinkled over the top. SPECIAL NOTE: Remember the parsley plant that I thought I'd killed months ago? It came back to life!!
The photo simply doesn't do this dish justice. I really should have taken a photo of the plate when we were finished with dinner. Not only was the chicken finished but every single drop of the sauce was wiped off of the plate. I don't think I've missed any of the steps or ingredients on this description -- I did that so you could try it yourself, you won't be sorry! If you need a more standard recipe format, let me know in a comment and I'll add it later.
Bon appetit!!
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