M.Jacques Armagnac Chicken -French Fridays With Dorie

I am very excited each time I have to try out a new dish from AMFT  :)  This week French Friday's recipe is M.Jacques Armagnac Chicken....and gosh it was GOOD !!!  I thought it was just like other normal stew dish but I was wrong.  It was so TASTY that I forgot for a moment, I was recovering from a bad flu and the   beautiful aroma automatically mend my appetite.  The chicken was tender and juicy and baking with a foil over the chicken before covering it with the lid, has given the chicken a deeply golden color and the aroma and flavor sealed in. The sauce was super delicious...richly flavored with the natural sweetness from the free range chicken and red onions  and the subtle fragrant of basil and rosemary herbs that I used was enough to give me back my appetite.  This was easy to whip up and as I was recovering from my flu, it has made cooking easier for me. I just have to dump everything into the casserole dish and baked it for an hour and tada it was ready for serving.  

Wild Boar and I had half a bird each ...yum yum .Dont worry, the bird is small....as free range chickens are normally smaller in sizes . I had it alone without rice and the carrots , onions and potatoes were so tasty having absorbed all the sweetness from the  sauce .  I took Dorie's suggestion and added some prunes to the dish...giving the gravy a darker rich color. The pruney flavor of armagnac/brandy is so intriguing ! In my case , I used brandy. A splash of the brandy on the bird has given the chicken a nice golden color after baking.   

I lightly sauteed the vegetables with basil and rosemary with a tablespoon of olive oil, add some pepper and salt for taste and before dishing up , add in some prunes, and placed the sauteed veggies at the base of the casserole dish , place the chicken ( cut into halves in my case ) on top of the veggies. Splash 1/2 cup of  Armagnac or brandy over and around the chicken. If your casserole cover is shaky, cover your dish with a piece of aluminium foil and then put the cover in place . Slide the casserole into the oven and let the chicken roast in the oven undisturbed for 60 minutes.  Transfer the casserole to the stove and remove the lid and foil. Turn the heat to medium , add in a cup of hot water to the pan dish and stir the vegetable to dislodge those stuck at the bottom . Simmer for 5 minutes and you are ready to crave the chicken and serve in a platter with the tender veggies and aromatic sauce. Thanks to Dorie for sharing this recipe with us in her book AMFT. Her recipes never failed to intrigue me. This dish turned out amazingly GOOD! 

délicieux !

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