I’ve planned quite a series of spectacular meals for the next few days… And there is a reason, I promise. But mostly, its an excuse to make great food and show off my culinary skills to my ever appreciative husband. Tonight, we tackle the French classic, and a light chocolate mousse with fruit as dessert. I started this the night before, just putting things in a bag and letting them marinate.

• 2 cups red wine
• 1 cup chopped yellow onion
• 1 cup chopped carrot
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 (8-ounce) chicken breast halves, skinned
• 4-6 (4-ounce) chicken drumsticks, skinned
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (about 2 1/4 ounces)
• 3 bacon slices, chopped (I used turkey, as always)
• 1/2 cup pitted dried plums, quartered
• 2 bay leaves
• Chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Combine first 9 ingredients (through the chicken) in a large bowl (I used a plastic bag) and marinate for at least 4 up to 24 hours. Remove chicken from marinade, reserving marinade, and pat chicken dry. Dredge chicken in flour, set aside.

Cook bacon in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan, reserving drippings in pan; set bacon aside. If you’ve used turkey bacon, like I have, you’ll need to add some olive oil (or whatever oil) to the pan to make the chicken brown (because turkey bacon really doesn’t have anything in the way of “drippings.”)  Add half of chicken to pan; cook 4 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove chicken from pan. Repeat procedure with remaining chicken.

Remove onion and carrot from marinade with a slotted spoon, reserving marinade. Add onion and carrot to pan; sauté for 5 minutes or until softened. Stir in marinade, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add chicken, bacon, dried plums, and bay leaves; bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour and for 20 minutes or until chicken is tender. Discard bay leaves. Garnish with parsley, if desired.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes:

• 2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1/4 c. cream/milk (whatever kind you have from any other adventures you may be planning)
• 4 oz. cream cheese (half a block)
• 1/4 stick butter
• 1 head garlic, roasted

To roast your garlic, cut off the top to expose all of the heads. Put it in a tiny casserole dish with some olive oil, cut side up (so you can see the cloves), a little salt, a little pepper, and bake covered with foil at 375 for 45 minutes or so. Now, to the mashers. Boil your cut up potatoes for 20 minutes, drain, and return to pot over low heat. Mash ‘em up a bit with your potato masher. Add everything else (squeeze the garlic out into a bowl first so you can pick out any errant skins) and keep mashing, add salt and pepper to taste.  If they don’t look quite mushy enough, add some more milk.  (I went a little too far but they ended up tasting great.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 6:40 pm and is filed under chicken, potatoes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.