Yummy creamy chicken

There's a style of creamy sauce that I really like, not too rich, with a subtle flavour that enhances the cream. More subtle than your standard sauce in a jar that sullies the good name of cream sauces everywhere.

Some people associate heavy cream sauces with the worst of French cooking but I as I have not had an unpleasant cream sauce in my travels in France, I suspect that this style may actually be a hallmark of inferior local French restaurants.

The cream sauce that we made for our chicken was fantastic. I wished that I had made rice so that I would have an excuse to eat more of it - that said, there was an elegant sufficiency of vegetables, including left-over carrots from last Friday. I had foolishly believed that the braised leeks would soak up the sauce, but they were busy dealing with their own natural cooking juices.

Menu
Poulet Saute a la Crème
Poireaux Braisés Au Beurre
Salad with Sauce Moutarde

This was our last sauteed chicken recipe - a bit of a shame as they have all been quite enjoyable. The drill was fairly standard initially, with the addition of slow cooked onion to the casserole. The chicken pieces, once cooked in butter, were seasoned with salt, pepper and curry powder. Just a hint, but a nice subtle bit of flavour, which, with the onions, reduced the overpowering nature of the cream. I then poured port over the chicken and cooked that down before finally adding "boiling cream" and slowly simmering the chicken for twenty minutes. Season with salt, pepper and a little lemon juice. Delicious!

The leeks were beautiful, clean leeks - which made me happy as they had cost Le Gourmand an arm and at least half a leg (he was shopping unsupervised, I suspect there would have been no leeks this week if I had been there but how can you criticise commitment to the list?). I cooked them down in water and butter, and slowly simmered them on the cooktop for 25 minutes before removing them to the oven, loosely covered in foil for another 25 minutes baking. We love the sweet flavour of leeks all by themselves - no need for excessive flavour intervention.

Le Gourmand had outdone himself with a Moroccan tagine on Sunday night so, in the interests of lightening up our diets, salad was on the menu. I have really enjoyed all of Julia's salad dressing recipes so far and the mustard sauce was no exception - mix dijon mustard with hot water, slowly add oil, a little lemon and don't forget the parsley!