All this talk about chickens lately has given me an appetite for some and I find myself revisiting some of my old chicken recipes from the past.
Tarragon Chicken has long been a French classic, the combination of moist chicken and the fresh lemonyness of tarragon being a winning pairing.
I have always preferred the version of this recipe which slowly cooked the chicken in the sauce thereby giving one tender, falling off the bone chicken imbued with the flavour of the herb.
As our French house is quite near Marseillan in Languedoc, where Noilly Prat Vermouth is made, we have a bottle in the cupboard at the moment so that fairly inevitably got thrown in.
Here is my classic Tarragon Chicken recipe, (as I slowly cook it I prefer to use just chicken legs as I find that breasts given the same treatment get dried up and stringy)

Chicken with Tarragon and Vermouth
(for 4)

4 Legs Free Range Chicken
30g (1 oz.) Butter
1 Glass White Vermouth
2 Tablespoons White Wine Vinegar
1 Tablespoon Fresh Tarragon Leaves
Reserve 1 Teaspoon chopped Tarragon
175ml (6 oz.) Cream
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice

Divide the legs into drumsticks and thighs and season with salt and black pepper.
Melt the butter in a frying pan and brown the chicken pieces all over in this,
Take the pieces out of the pan and pour off most of the fat.
Deglaze the pan with the vermouth and the vinegar.
Put the chicken and the cream back into the pan, add in the tarragon, roughly chopped, and cover.
Simmer these gently together for about twenty minutes..
(cut into the chicken to make sure it is cooked)

Take out the chicken and keep it warm.

Add the lemon juice to the pan and boil with out the lid to thicken the sauce a little.
Pour this over the chicken as you serve and sprinkle over the reserved teaspoon of Tarragon.

Serve with rice or small new potatoes.

But that covers just one partner in the match.
For the roots of my acquaintance with the other half I have to go back a bit.

In 1976 I worked for a month one summer on the Galley, the floating restaurant which went up and down the Barrow from New Ross.
The chef on board was Paddy Cunningham, a young man trained by Myrtle Allen in Ballymaloe and made famous in her classic cookbook as the commis who fled from her in alarm when she tried to toss a souffle omelette on to a platter he was holding.
(Paddy incidentally totally denied this)
We were to have a mushroom soup on the Galley and to my amazement, in this age of liquidizers, Paddy proceeded to empty the mushrooms on to the chopping board and chop away at them with a large knife.
“This is how Mrs. Allen showed me how to do this” was his only answer when I asked him why he was doing this job by hand.
Mrs. Allen was –of course- quite right.
The wonderful texture of the, inevitably uneven, chopping of the mushrooms added hugely to the soup.
I have never liquidized a mushroom soup since.
In my own restaurant I discovered an affinity between mushrooms and fresh tarragon and the resulting soup became such a feature on the menu at Dwyers that customers used to complain at its absence.

So, here comes the bride…..

Mushroom and Tarragon Soup

450g (1 lb.) Mushrooms
2 medium Onions
1 Bunch Fresh Tarragon (or 1 Teaspoon Dried)
60g (2 oz.) Butter
60g (2 oz.) Flour
1 tablespoon Lemon juice
1 pt. Milk
1 pt. Chicken Stock

Peel and chop the Onions. Melt the butter over a gentle heat and cook the chopped onion at this heat until soft (this will take 10 mts. or so).
Chop the tarragon and add to the pot. Put out your largest chopping board and chop the mushrooms roughly with a large chopping knife until they are in rough dice (their roughness adds to the texture of the soup).
Add these to the pan, increase the heat and cook briskly until the mushrooms are soft and most of their liquid has evaporated.
Meantime bring the milk and stock to the boil together.
Add the flour to the mushrooms and stir in well. Add the boiling stock and milk to the soup and bring it back to the boil stirring all the time.
Taste and season with salt and black pepper and the lemon juice.
Let it simmer for 10 mts. and serve.

And so back to last week when I was cooking up the legs of a chicken for supper one night. I went to the fridge to collect the fresh tarragon I had bought specifically for the purpose that morning and spotted four large mushrooms, the kind known as breakfast mushrooms, sitting there.
That was when I decided to matchmake.
Like all good marriages I rather think both parties are improved by the match.

Chicken with Mushrooms, Tarragon and Vermouth
(for 4)

4 Legs Free Range Chicken
60g (2 oz.) Butter
4 Scallions
4 Large.(Breakfast) Mushrooms
1 Glass White Vermouth
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoon Fresh Tarragon Leaves
Reserve 1 Teaspoon chopped Tarragon
175ml (6 oz.) Crème Fraiche (buy the low fat one)

Divide the legs into drumsticks and thighs and season with salt and black pepper.

Melt the butter in a frying pan and brown the chicken pieces all over in this.
Take these out of the pan and put to one side.
Chop the scallions finely and soften these gently in the pan.

Put the mushrooms on a large board and chop with a large knife until fairly fine but still roughly chopped.
Cook these with the scallions until they too are soft and have reabsorbed their own juices.
Add the vermouth,the roughly chopped tarragon and the lemon juice to the pan.
Put the chicken back into the pan and cover.
Simmer these gently together for about twenty minutes..
(cut into the chicken to make sure it is cooked)

Put the chicken on to warm plates.

Add the Crème Fraiche to the vegetables in the pan and boil fast until this thikens a little, spoon this over the chicken and sprinkle over the reserved teaspoon of tarragon.

Serve with rice or boiled potatoes.