Champagne for Dinner?

Champagne for Dinner? Mais Oui!

Some people can make cooking look effortless.  They are the sort of folks who invite you over to their house for dinner, and part of the “event” is to watch them patter around their kitchen: chopping, sautéing, kneading, flambéing, or whatever cooking technique they can perform with the greatest of ease .  Alas, I am not that kind of person.  Mind you, I LOVE to cook, but not when it’s a spectator sport.   For me, cooking is something best done alone, behind closed doors—preferably with NPR prattling on in the background (or maybe some Edith Piaf tunes on rainy day).  For the most part, cooking is meditative.   So having other people milling about while I’m trying to fix dinner is . . you guessed it . . a recipe for disaster.

Let me assure you that this hasn’t made me a Kitchen hermit.  I love to have people over for dinner -- as long as I can prepare most of it ahead of time!  For that reason I’m always on the lookout for dishes that look and taste really impressive . . . yet can be prepared and hidden away in the oven by the time the first guest arrives. That way, my friends and I can relax and talk while we all wait for the oven timer to go off and Voila!

Here’s a recipe from my “Greatest Hits” in dinner party fame.  I got it from one of my favorite books, French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Giuliano.  I know what you’re thinking: pouring champagne on chicken? How decadent!  But it’s actually very practical—you use just a cup of bubbly for the dish, then save the rest for everyone to sample as a pre-dinner aperitif, to “awaken the appetite.”  Interestingly, Giuliano points out that for the French, most wine is strictly to be accompanied by a meal--they’d never dream of sipping wine without some sort of food alongside it. For drinking sans food—the French say that it's best left to the sparkling stuff.  Whether you use the “real” French champagne or opt for Italian Prosecco—this is a dish that’ll make you feel positively effervescent.

Cheers!

Jennifer

(Recipe adapted from Mireille Giuliano’s French Women Don’t Get Fat, Knopf, 2005).

Chicken Au Champagne

1.        Get 4 chicken breasts (with skin and bone attached), and put in a roasting pan. Make a slit in each piece of chicken, and insert a little piece of shallot.  Pour ½ cup of champagne over the chicken, and season with tarragon, thyme, salt and pepper.

2.       Put pan under broiler for a few minutes, then flip chicken and broil on the other side for about 5 minutes.

3.       Remove from broiler, baste with the pan juices, and add in another ½ cup of champagne. Bake in oven at 475 degrees for 30 minutes, basting once after about 15 minutes.

4.       While chicken is cooking, steam some brown rice.  When chicken is almost done, go ahead and sauté chopped mushrooms with some olive oil (this you can probably do in front of your guests—or banish them to the living room for a few minutes!).  Add a squeeze of lemon, maybe some sage, and a tablespoon of butter. 

5.       To serve, get an impressive serving platter.  Place chicken on a bed of rice.  Top with the mushroom mixture, along with all of the pan juices from the chicken.

6.       Toast (and eat) to this fabulous recipe.

Photo via here