Poached Chicken and Mushrooms

Serves 6 

This is great when your digestive system needs a reset. It is something light and gentle to counter the overly rich and abundant food at Christmas. The Umami flavours will do you a lot of good. I also find brown rice useful but what wine would you serve with it?

NOTE: (You could easily substitute poached duck breast for the chicken to be a bit more exotic. Strip the fatty skin from the breast and sautee it until the fat is rendered and easily poured off - keep it for later roast potatoes. The remaining crispy skin is a good garnish for the dish.)

Serve with 2021 Chardonnay and any of our Pinot Noirs

Ingredients

(will serve 6 as entree)

• 3 Chicken fillets

• 2 cups chicken stock (home made is best for its restorative effect)

• Ginger (1 large thumb sized piece finely sliced)

• 1 clove garlic (finely chopped)

• 2 T Tamari & 1 T mushroom soy to taste

• 3T peanut oil

• 2t sesame oil

• splash of plum vinegar

• salt & pepper to taste

• 4 spring onions (sliced)

• Mushrooms (a variety, sliced for sauteing)

• (a few larger mushrooms as well as 250 g button mushrooms,

• 200g Shiitake, 150g King oyster and 100g Enoki.)
  

Method

Halve the chicken fillets by slicing across and poach the 6 pieces in the gently simmering chicken stock until they are cooked through which should only take a few minutes. Reserve or keep in the fridge and gently reheat in the stock later.

In a separate fry pan, heat the pan and add enough peanut oil to quickly saute the mushrooms. Season with a small amount of sesame oil, ginger and garlic, chopped spring onions, then touches of soy and mushroom soy and quickly deglaze the pan with the chicken stock. Add the Enoki last. Add ground pepper and some salt or more soy if needed. (If you can’t buy fresh shiitake mushrooms, I always have some dried, so just reconstitute in boiling water and use that mushroom water towards the stock.)

Decorate with some spiced seaweed, or the enoki mushrooms or chopped spring onions.

Shortcuts

Buy bone broth chicken stock and boil down to concentrate the flavours