More Garlic is Our Watchword

 It's chicken week, and I have an embarrassment of recipe options. Too many good things, and too much seasonality for potential. I shall just have to keep ploughing on. Today: "chicken with sherry and lots of garlic"... If you've been on this blog for a while, you can see how that got to the top of the list.

Though, if I'm honest, I'm not so keen on sherry. I do like some of the sweet sticky ones that are much despise (in fact, they are possible candidates for the Festive Confined Cocktails that we decided last night are going to happen at some point. Or possibly, several points. I have waaaaay too many winter drinks (Baileys still to be bought, but glogg, Marsala, and any number of spiced liqueurs are all possibilities already).

But this isn't one of those, it's dry sherry. Posh, collegial sherry. And I'm afraid I'm not a fan of it for swigging. But I suspect that's a relief for my liver, and it's a perfectly delicious cooking ingredient. 

This is a one-pot in a technical sense, but has many stages for that pot (frying pan, whatever). You start by making what other recipe books would call a picada, but this (New Kitchen Basics) doesn't label. Toast some chopped almonds dry in the pan. Tip them into a blender. Then fry off some white bread till it's crispy, and add that to the blender. Add some parsley, chopped enough it won't wrap itself round the blades. Blend and set aside your green crumbs.

Meanwhile, if you're a multi-tasker, your frying pan is now frying off lots and lots of garlic cloves - still in their skins, about 5 minutes, shake them so they don't burn, otherwise quite ignorable. This is one of the less potentially-disastrous multitaskings I've seen suggested. 

Take your cloves of garlic out of the pan, and fry off your chicken - thighs, bone in. I had ones with skin on, which is probably right but they don't really brown so it's not much of a plus tbh. 5 minutes each side, and plenty of seasoning. 

Then slosh in 200ml dry sherry (for 8 thighs in the recipe and 4 in my making, it seemed pretty ok as an amount), cook it off for a couple of minutes. Return the garlic and add some bay leaf. Add as much water or stock as you did sherry. Bring to the boil, turn down and simmer 15-20 mins until the chicken is cooked. 

Just before serving, stir in the picada. Some of it goes to thicken the sauce and the recipe says the rest forms a nice crunchy topping to the chicken. Given the skin situation, and that the almonds weren't all that crunchy, and I've had them sat on the side mixed with parsley for ages, this was not crunchy. But it was texturally interesting once I'd scraped the chicken skin away... 

Pretty good stuff. 

It's a nice umami savoury thing, with plenty of garlicy undertone. You can make it with white wine if you prefer, but all the stuff I'm not wild about with sherry as a drink make it very delicious for cookery. So I'm not too sad about having quite a bit left over. Any ideas for recipes, please pass them on.

Tomorrow: prawns WITH MORE GARLIC. October goes out like a stinky, pungeny allium-breathed LION this year. Why not? I've had my fun for the next month and will not be troubling the cultural or public transport spheres for a few weeks yet.