Olly Smith is well known as a wine writer and presenter, respected for helping the nation to find and appreciate good wine. But he’s also a keen food lover and has written his own cookery book Eat and Drink full of his favourite recipes, with an emphasis on food that’s great to drink with. The collection is wide-ranging and includes recipes handed down in his family as well as his own creations and adaptations. The writing style is very much like his energetic speaking style and very down to earth.
And there’s an endearing ode to Roger Moore than runs throughout the book.
I confess that I really like photographs in cookery books and those are missing here. But it’s an easy read with many appealing recipes including a tangy orange and squidgy almond cake, north sea chicken in a hijack sauce, lavender-studded roasted lamb rump, orange blossom rum babas, great granny Lennard’s crunchie pie and sticky bourbon beef. Don’t those sound wonderful?
What drew me to the recipe below is that it starts a lot like my slow cooker chicken, where I poach a whole bird for several hours in a basic braising liquid. This recipe starts off similarly but then mixes the wine-poached chicken into a sauce made from the reduced cooking liquid and green grapes.
Jolly Olly’s Chicken Veronique
Ingredients
- 1 kg organic or free range chicken
- 50 g butter
- 1 onion , roughly chopped
- 100 g button mushrooms , sliced thinly
- 500 ml fruity white wine
- 500 ml chicken stock
- 300 ml double cream
- 200 g white grapes , halved
- salt
- black pepper
Notes
Instructions
- Preheat the oven 180 C / 350 F/ Gas 4 and season the chicken with salt and pepper.
- Heat an ovenproof casserole dish, big enough to fit the chicken snugly, until medium hot. Add the butter and heat until foaming and then add the chicken and seal on each side for 1-1.5 minutes until golden brown. Remove the chicken and set aside.
- Add the onion to the dish and cook for 5 minutes until softened, then turn the heat up, add the mushrooms and cook for another 2 minutes.
- Place the chicken back into the pan on top of the vegetables and pour in the white wine. Bring to the boil, then add the chicken stock and return to the boil.
- Season with salt and pepper, cover and place in the oven for an hour until the chicken is tender and cooked through. Remove the chicken and set aside to cool.
- Return the dish to the hob and bring to the boil. Add the cream and cook until the whole mixture has reduced by a third. Check the seasoning, add the grapes and then set aside.
- Strip the chicken of all the meat and shred into 5cm strips (the carcass can be used to make stock). Add the chicken to the sauce and mix well.
- Place back on the heat until bubbling, check the seasoning once more, then serve with some basmati rice.
I adapted the recipe to use my slow cooker for the first part, so didn’t pre-soften the onions, nor seal the chicken; since one strips away the skin when taking all the meat off the carcass, I couldn’t see the point in sealing and the onions softened completely during the long period in the slow cooker.
I did use stock, as per Olly’s ingredients, but don’t think that was necessary – I didn’t find the cooking liquid any deeper in flavour than what I’ve always achieved using wine and water.
Rather than put the cooked bird aside, make the sauce and put it aside, then strip the bird and add back to the sauce and reheat I re-ordered the steps and set the chicken aside only while I transferred the cooking liquid sauce onto the heat. I stripped the chicken meat while the sauce was reducing and then, once it was reduced, put the meat straight back into it; t`he meat quickly reheated in the hot sauce.
We had it with potatoes, which were put on to boil while the sauce was reducing.
Because I switched to using the slow cooker, we probably had a larger volume of liquid to reduce than had we used Olly’s recipe as it’s written so it took a fair old time! The finished result was delicious!
Olly Smith’s Eat and Drink is published by Headline Home.
Please leave a comment - I love hearing from you!4 Comments to "Jolly Olly’s Chicken Veronique"
Orange blossom babas! Yum!
Great review Kavey, I need to check out the rest of the book – just for endearing ode about Roger Moore 😉
Oooh, I do love a good chicken veronique! I think I will be trying this recipe. I am quite tempted to get the book as well, if only for the recipe for 'great granny lennard's crunchie pie' – doesn't that sound AWESOME?
I managed to catch and episode of Olly's 'secret supper club' the other day, and have to agree with you that he comes across as a very jolly fellow.
Foodycat, yeah, I'm going to have to make those, I know!
Winewomansong 🙂
Holly, I'd not come across chicken Veronique before, and yes, it totally sounds awesome. Best thing about Olly is that he's the same in real life, genuinely jovial and very friendly. Lovely chap. Plus, he wrote the scripts to Pingu, how can you not love the chap who wrote the scripts to Pingu?