Blueberry Fool: Two chicken favourites

Mmmmmm, good fettucine. Egg pasta is the bomb, and so is oregano.

egg fettucine
a medium knob of butter
five cloves of garlic, chopped finely
five medium shallots, also chopped finely (and I mean shallots, not scallions. Somewhere, some time in Australia, there was a horrible mix up about this, and we're still struggling to recover.)
three organic chicken thigh fillets, sliced
1/2 - 1 tsp chicken/vegetable stock powder, and some cracked pepper
nine or ten swiss brown mushrooms, sliced finely
a glass of dry white
most of a can of evaporated milk
parmesan, grated
chopped oregano

Add the butter in pad on medium high. While it's melting, season the thighs with stock and pepper, and then throw them in. We're going for caramelisation here, so after the initial browning, don't stir too much, and you may need to put the heat up higher.

Once you have a decent amount of sticky, gooey caramel bits all over the pan, turn the heat down to medium and put the garlic and shallots in (you can stir now, burnt garlic is an abomination!), once they're cooked (five minutes or less), deglaze by adding the wine (a minute or so).

Once that's done, add the mushrooms, and cook them, too. Then put the evaporated milk in.

Evaporated milk is an interesting one. You rarely see it in recipes - except diet books in which it acts as a cream substitute. I wouldn't recommend it as a substitute, per se - evaporated milk has a different flavour to cream, somehow maltier and a thickier, less waxy texture. However, that maltiness actually works better in some savoury situations.

Anyway, that's basically the recipe. Put the heat on low and let it simmer for a few minutes, add a little bit of parmesan to thicken the sauce, and cook the fettucine. Yum.

Finally, I've blogged about red-cooked chicken before.

I've just been freestyling the recipe since, basically, but I've finally got some photos. Unfortunately, the stock looks better than the chicken!