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Chicken Tarragon

Posted by SaraBir, September 13, 2006 at 9:53 AM

In honor (or rather acknowledgement) of Fashion Week, here’s a recipe from 1955’s Fashion Cooks, by the Fashion Group of Chicago. It was contributed by Patricia Dougherty Boysen, the past regional director of the Fashion Group of Chicago, and it’s the sort of recipe that never goes out of fashion. I’d omit the teaspoon of “kitchen sauce” (Kitchen Bouquet) from the recipe, on the grounds that these days, few people have such an item in their kitchen. If you brown the chicken sufficiently before baking, it should have a lovely color without the kitchen sauce.

Ingredients

(Serves 6 to 8)

2 young, small fryer chickens, each cut into 6 or 8 pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ cup unsalted butter
1 cup dry white wine
2 to 3 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon kitchen sauce, optional

Procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Over low heat, melt butter in a heavy skillet, and brown chicken slowly until golden brown, adding more butter if necessary (to avoid crowding the skillet, you may want to do this in two batches).

2. Transfer pieces to a casserole or baking dish, and add wine, tarragon, and kitchen sauce, if using, to the drippings in the skillet. Pour over the top of chicken, cover, and bake 45 to 50 minutes, until the thickest pieces are fork tender.

3. Arrange chicken on a warm serving platter. Skim fat from pan drippings; discard fat, and transfer drippings to a skillet. Over high heat, cook until reduced by at least half. Pour some of the reduced drippings over chicken, and serve the rest on the side. .

Note: Fashion Cooks encourages browning the chicken and placing it in the casserole with the sauce ingredients ahead of time. Cover and chill until baking time. "Pat serves this with a pilaf, a green salad and fruit dessert," the book says.

1 Comment | Tags: chicken, recipes, tarragon