Chicken and Whine

Posted: January 17, 2010 | Author: Alyssa | Filed under: Alyssa, Chicken | 6 Comments »

This week has been AWFUL.  Between ridiculous work announcements, full teaching evaluation, friend worry and stupid boys, I pretty much stopped functioning sometime around Wednesday.  By Thursday I had lost my mind so completely that I went to the bar and stayed out until 2am.  Completely unintelligent since I had to work the next day, but entirely worth it since it helped me get through the rest of the week.  Normally, when I am in a funk like that I can just get into the kitchen and lose myself in a recipe.  By the time I am done, I feel better about everything and can think with a clear head again.  However today, that did not so much work as it did totally backfire.  I had some left over chicken in the fridge from last week that I decided to fry up so I had it for the rest of the week.  Unfortunately my mind was so jacked up that I burned half the chicken.  I have been making fried chicken for years, I can almost do it in my sleep.  I can not BELIEVE that I burned it.  SO from that little adventure, I moved on to a recipe that a monkey could do: Red Wine Chicken Stew.

The Recipe:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, mashed
• 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
• 2 boneless chicken breasts
• 1 cup sliced onion
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup full-bodied red wine
• 1 cup chicken stock (1 cup water plus 1/2 chicken or vegetable bouillon cube)
• 1/4 tsp thyme

Literally all this entails is sauteeing the garlic for a minute, then adding the tomatoes until they give up their liquid.  At that point you throw in everything else and let it cook on low for an hour.

The title of the recipe is pretty misleading, since without a thickener it does not get thick (most obvious statement ever), and stew it supposed to be fairly thick, or at least thicker than just a broth.  So of course, rather than just taking it as it is, I feel the need to play with it and try to make it into what I want it to be.  My first move was to add 3Tbsp of butter, because what isn’t better with butter?  It also has the added bonus of thickening liquid, but keeping it  smooth rather than cornstarch which can leave it a little grainy.  I also added about 3/4 of a Tbsp of flour.  I let it simmer on the stove, uncovered, for about 15 minutes.  It didn’t thicken as much as I wanted, but it definitely improved.  Next time I will just make a roux and then follow the recipe.  The good news is that by the time this was done, I did feel a little better.  Pair this with some crusty bread and a large glass of wine, and it almost became a good evening.  I’m just glad that after my burned chicken debacle, I was able to successfully create something that was edible.  Stupid Chicken….