Old-fashioned chicken fricassee

You know our guest well today. It's Miriam, The Winter Guest , who always shows up with the most appetizing curiosity. This time she brings us an old-fashioned chicken fricassee, an ideal recipe for family meals, which without any major complications will delight both adults and children.

This chicken dish is a traditional French recipe, with simple ingredients and little complication, but well executed, it gives us a succulent dish, with a sauce to dip bread in and not stop.

The sauce is made with nothing more and nothing less than a few vegetables sautéed in butter and olive oil, which are used to make a roux, that is, flour is toasted in this fat which then thickens the sauce. The recipe is traditionally accompanied by mushrooms from Paris, these small, round mushrooms, but I have substituted them with regular mushrooms.

The magic of this dish is in the perfect balance of mild flavours, so don't leave out any ingredient. The egg yolk added at the end to thicken the sauce a little further helps to give it a delicious taste.

Ingredients

1 kg chicken pieces (or breasts cut into cubes, which makes this dish very suitable for children), 100 g onion, 1 carrot, 30 g olive oil, 30 g butter, 1 1⁄2 tbsp flour, 1 bouquet garni (1 bay leaf, 1 sprig of thyme, 1 sprig of parsley), 200 g sliced ​​mushrooms, 1 good glass of white wine, chicken broth, 1 egg yolk, salt and pepper to taste.

Elaboration

Finely chop the onion and carrot and sauté them in a cocotte with the butter and oil over low heat until the onion is transparent.

We salt the chicken pieces, turn up the heat and add them to the sofrito. Brown them on all sides.

When the chicken has changed colour, lower the heat and add the flour. Stir it a few times to coat the chicken and fry for a couple of minutes, stirring well.

Once the flour is toasted, add the wine and mix. Season the sauce, add the herbs wrapped in a gauze so that they can be easily fished out later, and add some chicken broth until the chicken pieces are almost covered.

We cover the cocotte and simmer for 20 minutes over a low heat, slowly. After this time, we add the cleaned and sliced ​​mushrooms and continue simmering for another 10 minutes.

We taste the seasoning and adjust if necessary. We remove the cocotte from the heat and remove the bundle of herbs. We separate the yolk from the egg, beat it in a bowl and gradually add some of the hot sauce from the fricassee while beating. When the yolk is hot, we add it to the cocotte and mix well. And that's it, we have a delicious main dish perfect for a family meal of more or less elegance. Easy to make and not very laborious, don't you think?

Oh, and I'll tell you a little trick that I use to speed up the preparation and use a little less fat: Instead of browning the chicken pieces in the fat from the sofrito, you can brown them on a high grill, so they absorb less fat. If you leave only the minimum amount of fat necessary before frying the flour, you'll have a slightly lighter dish.