Chicken with grape and fennel sauce with braised cabbage
I love grapes and i love using them in ways that you may not usually think of. Lets face it, we drink them to accompany our meal so why not include them in a sauce.In addition to the braised cabbage I also served it with "baked" mash potato, a little more effort than the usual way to make mash potato but worth the effort
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Ingredients
4 chicken breast (skin on)
1tspthyme leaveschopped
4tspflour
1tbspvegetable oil
grape and fennel sauce
50mlwhite wine
400mldouble cream
2tbsppernod
2tspfennel seedsdry roasted and crushed
2tbspdill (or fennel fronds if you grown your own)roughly chopped
150gwhite seedless grapeshalved
Braised cabbage
1hispi or sweetheart cabbagetrimmed and finely shredded
4spring onionsfinely sliced
25gbutter
1tbspolive oil
100gfrozen peas
Instructions
Pre heat the oven to 180C fan. Sprinkle the chicken breast skin with salt, pepper, thyme leaves and flour, press down.
Drizzle a large frying pan with vegetable oil and place the chicken skin side down and cook over a medium/high heat until the skin is crisp. Turn the the chicken over and lightly colour the underside. Put on a baking tray and roast for 15-20 minutes. Keep the frying pan to one side ready for your sauce
braised cabbage
Melt butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add shredded cabbage, spring onions and salt and pepper, sautée until soft, add the peas and keep warm.
Sauce
Heat the frying pan on a high heat, add the resting juices from the chicken, Pour in the wine and let it bubble for a few minutes scraping all the bits off the pan from cooking the chicken. Pour in the cream and Pernod and reduce by half. Add grapes, dill or fennel fronds and ground fennel seeds. Cook for 1 minute to warm the grapes.
to finish
Slice each fillet into 3, place some braised cabbage in the middle of the bowl, top with chicken and ladle the the sauce around the side (don't put it on top of the chicken as you want to keep the crispness of the skin.