A Dianne Henry recipe: Spanish supper. This is a classic Basque dish, and a tasty midweek meal.
So easy to prepare, couldn’t find morcilla so used I used French black pudding, which really enriched the sauce.
INGREDIENTS Serves 2
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
4 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs
8 thick slices morcilla or black pudding
I medium onion thinly sliced
200 ml dry sherry plus 3½ tablespoon if necessary
3½ tablespoons double cream
1 tablespoon pine nuts roasted
1 tablespoon flat leaf parsley finely chopped
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180°C
Season the chicken thighs on both sides.
Heat the olive oil in an ovenproof frying pan or roasting dish that is big enough to hold the chicken and morcilla in a single snug layer
Brown the chicken in the pan on both sides (just for colour; it will cook through in the oven) then remove and put on one side.
Add the morcilla or black pudding to the pan, cook lightly then take it out and put it with the chicken.
If, at this stage, the pan is awash with fat (it might be, if the chicken pieces were particularly fatty) then tip off most of it, leaving behind about 1 tablespoon. Try not to lose any juicy bits of chicken or morcilla stuck to the pan; they will add lots of flavour to the dish and its sauce.
Next, fry the onion in the same pan, again just letting it colour. Pour the sherry over the onions, and stir it in. Now’s the time to scrape the bottom of the pan to catch any of the bits of meat stuck to it and mix them into the sherry.
Return the chicken and morcilla to the pan, then cook in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, until the chicken is done. (You can test it by sticking something sharp into it; if the juices are clear then it’s ready.
As soon as the chicken is cooked remove the pan from the oven. If there is not much liquid left in the pan, add the extra sherry now and stir it in well.
Finally, stir in the cream and heat gently, just until the cream bubbles then serve sprinkled with the Pine nuts and chopped parsley.
Serce immediately
Original recipe Diana Henry ” A bird in the hand “
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