Chicken and Mushroom Casserole

Ingredients

• 8 bone-in chicken thighs
• 30 g butter
• 120 g smoked bacon lardons
• 8 shallots, halved
• 300 g chestnut mushrooms, halved
• 25 g plain flour
• 200 ml white wine
• 400 ml chicken stock
• a few sprigs of thyme
• 100 ml double cream
• a handful of parsley, chopped

Method

1. Brown the chicken skin-side down

   Season the thighs and brown them in the butter, skin down, without moving them, until the skin is properly gold. Then lift them out. Rushing this is the single most common reason a casserole tastes pale.

   12 min

2. Bacon and shallots

   Fry the bacon until its fat runs, then the shallots cut-side down until caramelised at the edges.

   8 min

3. Mushrooms on a high heat

   Turn the heat up and add the mushrooms. Wait until they have stopped releasing water and started to brown; added to the liquid raw they would water the sauce down.

   7 min

4. Flour, wine, stock

   Stir in the flour and cook for a minute, then add the wine and let it bubble hard before the stock and thyme go in. Cooking the flour first removes the raw taste; boiling the wine off removes its sharpness.

5. Slow oven

   Return the chicken skin-side up so it stays above the liquid, and cook uncovered at 170°C until the meat is falling from the bone and the skin has crisped again.

   45 min

6. Finish

   Stir the cream into the sauce around the chicken, off the heat, and scatter with parsley. Boiled after the cream goes in, the sauce can split.