Chicken in Riesling

Tuesday 9 September

The basis of the dish is from A Year in Niagara: a nice combo of flavors but the order of the cooking is totally whack, as we don’t say.
So you supposed to sauté pancetta, onion, and garlic, and THEN take it all out, and brown the chicken in the oil. The idea presumably is that you flavor the oil. The reality is that you can't remove everything so the bits and pieces burn and make the dish a mess. So here’s how you actually do it.
1) brown pieces of chicken (thighs, legs) first.
2) remove
3) THEN add the onions, garlic
4) toss back in the chicken
5) pour in a healthy gulg of Riesling or an other slightly sweetish (and cheap) wine.*
6) cover and cook for a bit
7) only then add sliced mushrooms
8) when mushrooms are nicely done
9) remove everything to a plate
10) cook down the juice
11) add a shot of cream, a sprinkle of parsley, and tarragon
12) eat.

*By the way, once they're cooked, all wines taste the same. A wine with a genuinely nasty flavor will come through as will very tannic wines, but no one can tell the diff between a Montrachet and a Gallo "Chablis" once you've boiled the bejezus out of them.