Supremes de Volaille a l'Ecossaise

(or the more correct, but not as google-able "Suprêmes de Volaille à l’Écossaise")

I cooked this recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking tonight. The English translation from the book is "Chicken Breasts with Diced Aromatic Vegetables and Cream". It went pretty well despite a few hiccups. The first hiccup was that we do not have a heavy, 10-inch diameter, covered casserole dish. This is a different dish than the glass casserole dishes you are probably familiar with. In fact I used a glass casserole dish and aluminum foil (for the cover) to substitute and it was okay, but definitely not a substitution I would make in the future.

The recipe calls for the venerable combination of carrots, celery, and onion (I substituted shallot) to be cooked in 5 Tbsp of butter in a 400°F oven for about 10 minutes. I forgot to cover the dish and also put it on the middle rack instead of the top which caused the vegetables to be almost spot on (perhaps slightly underdone) for my tastes, but Abby said she preferred her celery to be more well-done while the carrots were to her liking. After cooking the vegetables, the chicken was added to the dish and supposed to be done in six minutes more. I again forgot to cover the dish so the chicken was not done after six minutes. I remembered about the cover, flipped the chicken, and also moved the dish to the top rack for four more minutes. The chicken still wasn't done so I flipped it again and put it in for another four minutes. It was done after this.

While the chicken was cooking, I was prepping the sauce. It was supposed to be made with the vegetables after the chicken was done and removed from the dish. I didn't see how I could make the sauce in the dish using the oven and I wasn't sure Daniel would like the sauce so about mid-way through the chicken's cooking I decided to just make the sauce without the veggies in a saucepan on the stove. My second hiccup was that the recipe calls for one cup of whipping cream. Well, we didn't have any type of cream (unless you count Abby's coffee creamer). So I substituted a half cup of Daniel's whole milk and 3-4 Tbsp unsalted butter. This was a successful substitution. However, my third and final hiccup came when, in the middle of making my sauce, the chicken needed to be turned for the final time. As I was evaluating the done-ness of the chicken and deciding what to do, I neglected my sauce for 30, maybe 45, seconds. This was enough time for it to break. So, my sauce looked odd and didn't have the texture I wanted, but it tasted great. Luckily, this was enough for Daniel to scarf it down (even with the sauce) and Abby to rave about it.

So despite the broken sauce, wrong dish, no cover, and no cream, it was a successful meal. I think the sauce would be a little easier to make with the cream so I would use that if I had it. The chicken was bland (I forgot to add salt, pepper, and lemon juice to it) and looked like it might have boiled in the water from the veggies instead of sautéing in the butter. Abby said she didn't want to say anything about the chicken, but then the sauce came through and saved the day. So I think I would fix this on the stove-top next time unless I had the right dish. That would allow me to monitor the chicken and veggies better, let me put a little color on the chicken, and keep it from boiling.