Chicken with Grapes (Volaille Veronique)

I dug out my French Recipe Cookbook last night, sadly it seems to no longer be in print, but you can buy it used at amazon.ca/French Recipe Cookbook, (if you can get one) and mine was printed in 1995, and so it was brand new when Steve bought for me for Christmas. While I mostly make the pepper pepper steak from  it, and the Boeuf Bourguignon, this is a recipe I have always wanted to try. There are so many amazing recipes to try. I don't want to do the Julie and Julia thing, but French cuisine is magnifique, n'est-ce pas? They don't overwhelm with truckoads of ingredients, and let a few ingredients shine and work their magic.





 With grapes on sale this week, I decided to use a few different colours of grape just for fun. We had pink muscatel grapes in last week, but they are very expensive, so there will be no more of them anytime soon. But they were so pretty, I just wanted a photo of them, so I'll find one online (here's a  link: muscat grapes), The grapes I bought are pictured here. I'm pretty sure no one wants a picture of raw chicken, so you'll see the finished product in a bit.

Volaille Veronique

• 4 boneless chicken breasts
• 2 T butter
• 2 small shallots, chopped
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (use wine you like to DRINK too, in the food that you will be eating. In case you're tempted to get chintzy with the wine, don't ruin the recipe with inferior wine, since the rest of the ingredients aren't cheap either).
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1 cup (30) grapes
• salt and pepper
• parsley (optional)

Season chicken with salt and pepper, melt half the butter in a frying pan over med-high heat and cook 4-5 minutes each side, until golden. (Just a note, after I made this, it seemed a little too salty {shocked gasps are heard}, which does tend to happen when reducing chicken stock, which concentrates the saltiness, so use low-sodium chicken stock, or a light fairy-dusting of salt on your chicken.)

Transfer to a plate and cover. Add remaining butter and saute the shallots until just softened, stirring frequently. Add the wine, bring to a boil, and boil until reduced by half, add stock, and boil until half reduced again. Okay, this is a weird photo, but it is a pictorial representation of one of my favourite aromas: onions sauteeing in butter and white wine. Plus, there are more bubbles. (see my blog post Books 2 Eat (Part 2) if that made no sense). Too bad there is no such thing as smell-o-vision. (Like in Charlie and the Chocolate factory). That would be such a fun book for Books 2 Eat, you know, cabbage soup, and loads of chocolate, but anyway.

Add the cream, bring back to the boil, and add any juices from the chicken. Add the grapes and cook gently for 5 minutes (it took more like 15 minutes to have the sauce thicken as much as I like, be patient, it is worth the wait). Slice the chicken and serve with the sauce (garnish with parsley).

I also made another recipe from this book,

Straw Potato Cake (Pommes Paillasson)

Peel 4-5 large potatoes and grate coarsely. Immediately toss in 2 T melted mutter. Season with salt and pepper.  Cook in 1 T oil, adding salt and pepper. Cook until golden, about five minutes per side, (med-high temp). They give flipping instructions but I didn't find it complicated. 

It was crispy on the outside, soft inside. YUM.

Dinner is Ready. I took many photos, but this one with sunlight cascading off the grapes was my fave. Here it is again!