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Chicken Fricassee, The Hows and Whys?


SaladFingers

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Hello, I am due to make dinner for family members visiting. I've promised a certain Chicken Fricassee we saw being made on TV last year.

However, I cannot make sense of the recipe, so PLEASE could someone in the know clarify what I need to do? Please, you'd save my life.

First, I'll post the recipe - then I'll tell you what I don't understand.

http://www.itv.com/Lifestyle/RosemaryShrag...ee/default.html

This is the recipe.... Now here is what I don't understand

"Deglaze with ½ the dry vermouth" - What happens with the other half?

"Now add the mushrooms to the stock and cook for 5 minutes, remove mushrooms and add to the onions and the bouquet garni." - What onions? Which stock? The one used to cook the chicken or the one used to cook the shallots? Where does the boquet garni come from?

Any other bits of the recipe you can see that aren't clear but you think you can clarify, please do.

Thanks to anyone who can help!

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Hello, I am due to make dinner for family members visiting. I've promised a certain Chicken Fricassee we saw being made on TV last year.

However, I cannot make sense of the recipe, so PLEASE could someone in the know clarify what I need to do? Please, you'd save my life.

First, I'll post the recipe - then I'll tell you what I don't understand.

http://www.itv.com/Lifestyle/RosemaryShrag...ee/default.html

This is the recipe.... Now here is what I don't understand

"Deglaze with ½ the dry vermouth" - What happens with the other half?

"Now add the mushrooms to the stock and cook for 5 minutes, remove mushrooms and add to the onions and the bouquet garni." - What onions? Which stock? The one used to cook the chicken or the one used to cook the shallots? Where does the boquet garni come from?

Any other bits of the recipe you can see that aren't clear but you think you can clarify, please do.

Thanks to anyone who can help!

They clearly don't tell you, do they? I'd probably deglaze with the first half, cook it off, add the second half, cook some more before adding the stock. You really want to get rid of the raw alcohol taste.

If you liked vermouth enough, I suppose you could drink the other half, while waiting for the stock to reduce!

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You add the mushrooms to the stock that you used to cook the shallots. I'd put the other half of the vermouth in there too when I started the shallots, since they forgot to tell you what to do with it. Clearly they mean a little additional stock, since they tell you to do it "meanwhile" while the chicken is still cooking in its own stock.

They really do seem to mean two different bouquets garni, as far as I can tell, but that's easy to do.

It's a very badly written recipe, but it's not a demanding one. If you make a little slip or tweak here or there, the dish isn't going to really suffer.

Also, when they say "add to the onions" I think they mean add to the shallots, as there are no other onions in the cooked part of the recipe. I hope they didn't pay whoever wrote that one up!

Edited by Abra (log)
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Okay, thank you for the replies.

So firstly, I use the 2nd half of the Vermouth when cooking the shallots, while also at the same time adding a boquet garni...cook off the shallots, remove them, then cook the mushrooms... In the end - all the vermouth should have disappeared?

Edited by SaladFingers (log)
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