Poached chicken with mushrooms

Serves 4

For the poaching:

1 excellent free range chicken
1 head garlic, sliced through horizontally in half
1 onion, washed, unpeeled, quartered (the skin will give the stock a nice golden colour)
1 carrot, washed, peeled and sliced
1/2 tbsp sea salt
1 tsp peppercorns
Large bunch of parsley stalks, tied together with cooking string if you like
Cold water to just cover

For the sauce:

Large quantity of mushrooms of your choice.  Morels would be superb, and if dried would need to be reconstituted in water for 20mins.  Dried or fresh they are pretty hard to find.
1 glass white wine
30g butter
175ml double cream or creme fraiche


Instructions:

Assemble the poaching ingredients in a snug pot and bring to a simmer.  Do not boil it hard.  Skim off the grey or white scum that appears on the surface with a spoon into a bowl to pour down the sink.

Poach very gently, with a few bubbles rising to the surface every second, for 45 minutes or until the legs feel loose in their sockets.

Lift out the chicken with two large forks onto a plate and leave in a warm place.  Using a slotted spoon or other draining implement, lift out all the vegetables etc from the liquid in the pan and throw away.

Boil the stock hard to reduce to half its original volume, or taste until concentrated.

While the chicken is poaching, sweat the sliced mushrooms (don't slice morels if you are using them) in the butter until they have re-absorbed most of the liquid they give off.  Then to finish the sauce, add the glass of wine to the mushrooms and reduce until syrupy.  Add several ladels of the reduced chicken stock and the cream then reduce until nicely thickened.  Taste the sauce when reduced and adjust the seasoning or with lemon juice.

Skin the chicken and cut the ends off the legs using poultry shears.  Remove the tendon attached to the drumstick with scissors.

Joint the chicken into 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs and 2 breast portions.  Cut each breast in half so each of 4 people can be served 1 piece of breast and then either a drumstick or a thigh.

Serve with some sauce poured over and let people serve themselves to rice and vegetables.

You will have lots of lovely stock left over.