It’s a simple, traditional recipe that relies on quality ingredients coming together in a seamless dish. It all starts with quality ingredients. Real chicken is a minefield these days given the laughable definition of free range: 10 birds max per square meter and an open hatch in the barn door. Did you know that Lilydale chickens don’t come from Victoria, let alone the Yarra Valley? That Maggie Beer products don’t come from the Barossa and King Island meat comes from other places? Our butcher gets his chickens from Thirlmere in country NSW. Hudson in Sydney sells terrific Bannockburn chickens. If you look around, you can find real chicken.
Ingredients
- Drumsticks, wings and thighs (skin on)
- Speck or Kassler or thick streaky bacon
- Small onions or eschalots
- Carrots
- Fennel bulb
- Swiss brown mushrooms (optional)
- Garlic, to suit your taste but don’t overdo it
- Wholemeal flour
- Tin of crushed tomatoes
- 2 tblspoons tomato paste
- Dry white wine
- Chicken stock
- Butter, olive oil
- Seasoning (I use coarse black pepper and Herbamare salt)
- Thyme, rosemary, chives
Quantities depend on the size of the casserole you want to make. I tend to make enough in a big flat dish to feed 6 (or two of us for 3 meals). I’ve taken to freezing portions of meals for convenience.
For 4 people, you’ll need 8 chicken pieces, a handful of speck, 4-5 carrots, 2 fennel bulbs, 5 onions and a handful of mushrooms. The rest is tasting and and judgement, and adding the right amount of liquid: what we want here is a sauce that is in between thin and thick.
How-to
I find that the carrots and onions take longest to cook so I put them in the oven (in the casserole dish) with some olive oil while I prepare the chicken and the rest of the ingredients
- Dust the chicken pieces lightly and brown in a frypan, a few minutes each side, in olive oil and butter
- Add the chopped garlic when you turn the chicken over
- Turn the heat down, give the pan a minute to cool, then add the crushed toms and paste
- Add a glass or 2 of white wine and stir
- Cut up the fennel bulbs into big chunks and add
- Add seasoning
- Add the lot to the casserole dish with the carrots and onions
- Add some chicken stock to cover, stir well and put back in the oven
- Cook for half an hour at 175
- Just before the half-hour mark, fry the speck / kassler / bacon with the mushrooms in butter for 5 – 7 minutes
- Add these to the casserole and stir well, turn over chicken pieces, add wine or stock as needed
- Add the herbs, check if it needs more seasoning and adjust
- If there’s too much liquid, take some out and reduce it in a small pan.
- Give it another half hour (or less if you like your chicken firm)
Serve on its own or with potatoes, rice or pasta, a a bottle of good Riesling