I'm gonna show you how to make the most delicious chicken wrapped in puff pastry stuffed with
mushrooms, the most delicious cream sauce.
This is an absolute classic it's from one of my old cookbooks, Happy Days with the Naked
Chef, and this was one of the recipes that people went crazy for.
Lemme show you how to make it for four.
First up we're gonna do the stuffing a beautiful mushroom stuffing.
So we'll get this onto a medium, medium-high heat.
We'll go in with some olive oil, a couple of tablespoons goes in.
I'm gonna get two cloves of garlic finely sliced.
Now, we wanna celebrate mushrooms whether they're mixed, button mushrooms, wild mushrooms,
porcinis, ceps it doesn't matter right, they're all gonna be delicious okay.
So look let's have a little look at the mushrooms.
Standard stuff, you can break it up, I'm gonna chop these up later anyway so don't worry
about this.
So as that oil heats up - I don't want it too hot - I'll put this in.
I don't want aggressive heat on the oil I want lovely perfume flavour.
I don't want to get the bitterness that you can get from when you get it too golden and
brown.
Break up the mushrooms.
So 250 of mushrooms goes in, I've just turned it up now to a higher heat.
Mushrooms are quite a high percentage of water and what I wanna do is start off by frying.
I'll get a little bit of seasoning happening as well, salt and pepper.
Now there's a little twist in the method we're gonna put a little lid over the top just for
a second, and we're gonna drag out that water.
So we're gonna fry, boil, then we'll take the lid off and then we'll fry again.
That way you are gonna get the deepest most delicious tasting mushrooms, that stuffing
is gonna blow your mind.
So now by that lid coming off we're gonna cook that water away, right?
Back to frying.
So over here with the lovely parsley I'm gonna take the stalks and I'll finely slice those
and then on the leaves which I'm getting to now I'm gonna go slightly chunkier, and chunkier
and chunkier and chunkier.
And I'm almost thinking of it like spinach.
Iron-y and fresh.
So the stalk part can go in now like that, beautiful colour.
Wastes nothing.
And you can see we're cooking away that water and it won't be long before we're frying again.
The smell!
Amazing.
I put the stalk in a little bit earlier than the leaves because they're very delicate and
the stalk is more fibrous, but that little extra kind of minute or two will just make
it a dream it will make it delicious.
And look you can see the water's gone now, listen... we're frying again.
So, in we go now with the parsley.
We can give it a nice little toss-around.
If you wanted to be geeky right, and really get into it, you won't believe me but four
drips of lemon juice makes the difference, it's like magic.
Right heat off and these mushrooms are gonna be delicious, now as it's a stuffing I'm gonna
put this onto the board.
Really autumnal, deep dark and beautiful.
So get that all in there I'll keep this pan for later.
You could leave it chunky but I wanted it to be a little bit finer so just use that
cross-chopping method to chop up the stuffing to your liking.
Also we're gonna stuff this chicken and it can't be hot, right, it has to cool down.
So now when we've got it a nice fine texture, if you put that across the board nice and
fine like that, that'll cool down really quickly.
Okay, lovely stuffing, I'll put that to one side.
Have a little clean down.
Now let me show you how to stuff the chicken, it's not tricky, it's straightforward, but
it feels and looks quite chef-y right which I think you'll like but I promise you it's
really really simple and I got a few little tricks and hacks for you.
The first one is: don't ever bother making puff pastry it's really hard - at home never,
right.
Don't get the big blocks that you have to roll out it's just another job, get the pre-rolled
ones like that it's nice and easy, they've done all the hard work for you.
Just roll it out like that, get yourself a little knice, and very simply we're gonna
go in the middle first all the way through, and then into quarters.
So you have four bands of puff pastry, now puff pastry is laminated, it's layers of butter
and your pastry so when it cooks... that happens, right?
Crunchiness, texture, soaks up sauce, chicken juices, it's gonna be amazing right?
So we'll put that to one side.
Get yourself a nice tray like that, we'll get a little dish.
We just need one egg to go into here for egg wash.
This will make it really golden and delightful.
I'm using greaseproof paper because at Christmas you do not want any risk, and I'll double
be sure by a little oil that I'll just rub into it as well, so we're really sure that
nothing's going to stick at all, ok.
So now what we have to do is get that stuffing, that mushroom, into that chicken and wrapped
with the pastry.
We're gonna take a chicken breast so there's no bone no skin, we're gonna take this beautiful
chicken breast we're gonna flip it onto its back.
Here's the chicken breast like that, flap it open, and in here you have a potential
for a stuffing.
So we're gonna get the tip of the knife and gently, carefully, ease that no quite to the
end.
And in slow movements just make - it doesn't matter how you do it, it doesn't matter if
you knife skills are good or bad - just be gentle, and then what you do do is create
like a little pocket here.
And in there you can stuff y'know all kinds of wonderful things.
Once you've stuffed that in there then you can literally flap it back over and cover
it, and I'll do that to all four of these.
Find the thick part, tip in, make that little pouch, get your thumb in there flap it back,
you're good to go, right?
So look now what we're gonna do is stuff this beautiful chicken, so to do that I'm gonna
take a piece of our lovely pastry, you can kind of stretch it a little bit, just let
the weight of it just stretch like that naturally.
We'll put the chicken at the end like this and we'll take, let's use a spoon, take some
of that lovely stuffing it's nice and cool now, we can kind of hug it see how nice and
dense that is.
So thumb in, make sure the hole's big enough, ram it in there.
We'll then use this flap of the filet here to go over, right?
Then what we do is we take this pastry and we just roll it, right?
If it splits and tears don't worry, just kind of patch it up.
But it will be wonderful and will be rustic and as that cooks it's gonna cook up and out.
Let's do another one.
You get better always as you go on.
Here we go, stuffing, take that filet cover it up again and then we're gonna roll, keeping
it as tight as you can.
Beautiful.
Okay, so now we're gonna egg wash these.
Now that was a fun simple preparation.
This will now go into the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about 30 - 35 minutes until the
pastry is golden and gorgeous and delicious and all that lovely stuff.
Ok!
So that's in the oven.
Ok, chicken-y hands there's nothing wrong with it ok, this is normal cooking normal
preparation please don't be scared.
Of course you don't wanna go around touching everything in the kitchen - which I haven't
I've used me elbow to open and close the oven.
Now I have a nice little clean down right, and then I'll show you what to do next and
it's going to be absolutely delicious.
Ok so here they are, they look lovely it smells amazing.
I just love this dish.
So that was just under 35 minutes.
Look at the colour - really really nice.
So like cooking or roasting any kind of roasting joint I'm gonna let the chicken rest a little
bit just for a couple of minutes.
So I'll put them onto a nice board.
Imagine this at the dinner table right?
I'm gonna show you now probably one of the simplest sauces that you can do it's really
really fast.
So I'm gonna put the gas hob on.
It's a beautiful simple mustard sauce that you can use with meat you can use it with
fish, even roasted veggies it's really really nice.
So heat that up, add a little bit of oil to a pan.
We're gonna fry some lovely wholegrain mustard, about a heaped tablespoon goes in.
So as it starts to sizzle like that just move it around.
I'm gonna put in a nice little splash of white wine.
So half a glass goes in, and then we wanna kind of reduce it by half to cook away the
alcohol so it's gonna be light it's gonna be fresh it's gonna be mustardy.
When this is kind of reduced by half then I'm gonna go in with the cream.
So you wanna go in with about 150 ml of gorgeous double cream.
We'll bring it to the boil, we'll season it with some salt and pepper.
So you can see already it looks like a really nice sauce.
What I'm gonna do is take this chicken breast and do two cuts, at a slight angle if you
like right?
So the first one, go in like that... look at that, beautiful cross-section, utterly
gorgeous.
Then we go equally down the other way and we've got the same right.
We can see how beautifully cooked the chicken is.
That sauce over there is just coming to a little boil, and we're just gonna divide that
simple sauce across the plate, really easy.
Look at that.
Little bit of the cranberry sauce on the side and a little bit of olive oil just give it
a little kiss around here.
Y'know with some lovely steamed greens, y'know some lovely mashed potato, that is gonna be
an absolute thing of joy.
Look at that.
Easy to serve.
Mm!
Indulgent, rich, exciting.
That mushroom just always brings it down to sort of like a deep humming deliciousness,
and the white wine does the opposite with the mustard.
It's light and fragrant and it feels like you've gone to a restaurant but this you can
do in your own home.
Absolutely delicious so what're you waiting for?
Get the recipe, get shopping get cooking.
Enjoy.