After I watched French Food at Home tonight, I tried one of the Laura Calder’s chicken recipe with fantastic result!

I used red wine vinegar, dried herbs instead of bouquet garni, chicken powder with water instead of chicken stock, and omitted the butter already. It thickened nicely without it and I’ve forgotten about it! Be generous with the vinegar. It will reduce very quick because of the heat of the pan.

The chicken is tender and succulent and the sauce is, as she said, very very mellow. It is not too sour at all. The cooking has mellowed a lot of the acidity of the vinegar and tomato paste. The only problem is I used chicken pieces which had been seasoned with salt by my mother. I didn’t know and added more salt, so the chicken was too salty. But I will definitely make it again and again. It is a great comfort food and sooo easy to make.

Anyway, since I can’t find the original recipe online, I’ll just summarize it to you here. You can browse Laura Calder’s recipes at the food network website:

Ingredients:

- 4 pieces of chicken

-1/2 cup red wine vinegar’

-1 tbsp tomato paste

- 1 tomato, chopped

- 1 tsp of mixed dried herbs of parsley and rosemary

-1 bay leaf

-salt and pepper

-1 tsp chicken powder

-1 cup water

Method:

1. Brown the chicken until half cook with olive oil.

2. Take out the chicken from the pan. Pour the vinegar to scrap the chicken juice. Add the tomato paste and chopped tomato.

3. Put back the chicken.  Season with salt, pepper, and the herbs. Add the water and chicken powder.

4. Close the lid and cook until done, for about 10 minutes depend on the size of the chicken pieces.

In the future, I’ll add a clove of garlic which I will remove after the sauce is done, and maybe add some boiled veggies (carrots for me) to soak up the precious sauce, and add just a little bit of butter. They are so good I feel so bad of throwing it away.