Chicken with Green Garlic and Mushrooms
Spring is officially right around the corner and I can’t even explain how excited that makes me…longer evenings, spring jacket weather, and tons of lighter, new vegetables to cook with. Don’t get me wrong, I love those heavy root veggies, but I also love the lightness of baby spring veggies.
This week, I got green garlic in the CSA bag and I immediately wanted to make something with it. Since I had mushrooms already, I settled on a Georgian-inspired Chicken with Mushrooms & Green Garlic. Since I had beautiful skin-on chicken breasts, I knew I wanted a crispy skin with a melt-in-your-mouth sauce, so I used butter and white wine and cooked the sauce down until it was thick and oh-so-good. We served this with a light arugula salad topped with sliced French breakfast radishes that I bought from the Union Square Greenmarket.
Ingredients (Serves 2)
Roasted Turnips
2 cups mixed mushrooms (cremini, oyster, button)
2 small leeks
6 green garlic shoots
2-3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup of water
3 tablespoons fresh parsley
2 skin-on chicken breasts
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Prep Your Ingredients: Preheat oven to 400ºF. Trim the dark green tops of the leeks and remove any tough outer leaves (save these for stock!). Cut the leeks in half and thoroughly wash out any dirt. Thinly slice the leeks crosswise. Trim any tough leaves and the roots off the green garlic. Thinly slice the light green and white parts of the green garlic crosswise. Chop the dark green leaves into 1 inch pieces and keep separate. Roughly chop the parsley leaves. Wash and pat the chicken dry and season with salt and pepper on both sides.
Make the Sauce: Heat one tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium-high. Once the butter is hot, add the sliced leeks and the white parts of the green garlic. Sauté until the leeks have softened and are starting to turn dark brown. Add the mushrooms and cook until soft, adding more butter as necessary up to 2-3 tablespoons if the pan is too dry. Once the mushrooms have begun to caramelize and the pan is extremely hot and the butter is mostly absorbed (About 10 minutes), make a small well in the middle of the mixture and add the wine to the hot pan and turn down the heat to a high simmer, stirring constantly to scrape up any brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the dark green parts of the green garlic and all but a pinch of the parsley and stir. Add half a cup of water and simmer for 25 minutes until the liquid has reduced and thickened. Remove the sauce from the pan and keep warm. Carefully wipe out the pan.
Make the Chicken: Add one tablespoon of olive oil to the wiped out skillet and heat over medium high. Once the olive oil is shimmering, add both chicken breasts, skin-side down. Cook over medium high heat, without moving the breasts, until the skin has turned dark brown and is very crispy, about 5-6 minutes. Monitor the chicken carefully to make sure it doesn’t burn. You may need to rotate the pan a few times to ensure that each breast is browned evenly. Carefully flip the chicken breasts over and cook for an additional 5-7 minutes, or until the bottoms are browned. Take the temperature of your chicken at this point to determine how much longer you may need to cook it in the oven. At this point, our breasts were 145ºF, so we only needed about 7 or 8 minutes in the oven to get them up to 165ºF. Cook the chicken in the oven until cooked through. Remove from the pan on to a cutting board and slice crosswise.
Plate it Up: Spoon the warm mushrooms onto two plates and top with sliced chicken and a bit of remaining parsley. Serve with a light salad and radishes or steamed vegetables (optional).