Tony Jackman’s garlic chicken with thyme and white wine. (Photo: Tony Jackman) Today is all about garlic. Actually, it was intended to be all about regular white garlic, at first. Then I remembered that I still had some black garlic, and there were seven cloves of it. Which is why there are seven of them, finely chopped, in the dish.
And that is how recipes take shape, sometimes.
Of course, there isn’t only garlic in the recipe. There’s thyme too, to balance out the flavours, and the stock base is built on white wine. There’s no stock as such in it, and it doesn’t take long at all to cook.
The chicken I used was breast fillets, which are dusted with seasoned flour, and ultimately the flour serves to thicken the wine sauce while it cooks. There’s no need to flatten the fillets as you would for cordon bleu or chicken parma.
Tony’s chicken with 17 garlic cloves and a touch of thyme
(Serves 2-3)
Ingredients
6 chicken breast fillets
Flour, to coat
Salt
Black pepper
Olive oil, as needed
4 thyme sprigs
10 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced thinly
7 black garlic cloves, chopped
250ml white wine
Thyme sprigs or picked thyme leaves to garnish
More salt and back pepper to adjust the seasoning
Method
Heat a little olive oil in a pan and add the sliced white garlic (not the black garlic). Cook on a low heat, stirring, for only a minute or two, and remove the garlic to a side dish before it takes on colour.
Add some flour to a bowl or tub and season it with salt and black pepper. Dip the chicken fillets in this on all sides, shaking off excess flour.
Heat a little more olive oil in the pan and fry the chicken fillets on both sides until lightly browned. Don’t take them too far or they may overcook and turn tough. Remove to the side dish.
Add the wine to the pan and work the bottom with a wooden spoon or spatula to dredge up all the goodness and flavour in the pan. Add the thyme and chopped black garlic. Season with salt and black pepper.
Return the chicken breasts and garlic to the pan, and simmer gently until the chicken is tender. This should take about 10 minutes.
To go with this, I tossed some courgettes, baby carrots and fine green beans in a little hot oil and seasoned them simply with salt and pepper, or you could serve this with a sturdy starch such as polenta or rice, garnished with thyme. DM
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Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.
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