Chicken tenderloins with brown mushrooms, shallots, tomatoes and fettuccine

The tenderloin – that sliver of a sort of mini loin on a chicken breast – always used to be attached to a fillet when you bought them. Nowadays this isn’t always the case. Sometimes they are removed and collected to be sold in packs of – I didn’t count, but 10 or so I reckon – chicken tenderloins. But what to do with them?

They strike me as being ideal for a wok dish, but I am between woks. I left mine at a friend’s house a year or two ago after taking it to cook something, and I’ve never got around to buying a new one. In  fact, I have my eye on the woks that are sold in a specialist Chinese shop not far from home. So wok dishes may return to these pages soon.

In the meantime, there’s the large buffet casserole that you sometimes see in photos of one-pan dishes here.

This recipe started with having bought shallots a few days ago and not used them yet. Then I spotted chicken tenderloins at my local store. The big brown mushrooms looked fresh and inviting, and I chucked some plump, bright red baby plum tomatoes into the trolley as well.

There’d be garlic of course, and lots of fresh thyme, and white wine would be employed to meld everything together. Chicken stock would wrap it all up.

And I decided that the dish needed pasta, to mop up the sauce and flesh it out a bit. The fettuccine in that packet at the top of the cupboard would do the trick.

Tony’s chicken tenderloins with brown mushrooms, shallots, tomatoes and fettuccine

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

10-12 chicken tenderloins

4 shallots

3 garlic cloves, sliced

A standard pack of big brown mushrooms, sliced

12-16 baby roma tomatoes, sliced in half

4 or 5 thyme sprigs

200ml sauvignon blanc (or other dry white wine)

250ml chicken stock (I used an Ina Paarman sachet, diluted)

Salt and black pepper to taste

Olive oil, as needed

Fettuccine (about half a standard packet), cooked and drained

Method

Put a tub or bowl next to the hob.

Top and tail the shallots and peel them. Cut them lengthwise from end to end, then slice those sections in half lengthwise again, so that you have slim wedges of shallot.

Add a little olive oil to a pan and fry the shallots, stirring, until they have browned lightly. Add the sliced garlic and cook for a minute, stirring.

Put these in the side bowl and add a little more olive oil to the pan.

Add the sliced brown mushrooms, turn the heat up to moderately high, and fry them until they release their juices. Add the thyme sprigs (leaving a couple aside for garnishing), then continue cooking until the liquid has mostly cooked away and the mushrooms have turned a nutty brown. Remove them to the side dish.

Add the halved baby tomatoes and cook, stirring, for two minutes. Remove to the side dish.

Add more olive oil, and brown the chicken tenderloins until golden browned on both sides, and yes, remove these to the side dish as well.

So every item has been cooked and is in that dish on the side of the hob.

At this point, put a pot of lots of cold water on a high heat to bring it to a boil. Grab a ladder or chair and get that fettuccine down from up there. Salt the water lightly.

Back to the pan: add a glass of Sauvignon blanc and reduce it by about two-thirds. Scrape the bottom of the pan like mad, to get up all those bits that add flavour to the dish. Now pour the sauce into the side dish.

Add the chicken stock to the pan and deglaze. That means stirring the pan continuously while the stock reduces and the stirring is raking up (as it were) all the flavour that is gathering at the bottom of the pan while it’s cooking.

Now add everything in the side dish back to the pan, stir, and let it simmer for a few minutes while you boil the pasta until al dente. Drain the fettuccine and add it to the pan. Toss through and serve, garnished with fresh thyme. DM

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Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

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