Well, I dabled a bit with this recipe because I was, well frankly not terribly thrilled with it because it seemed a little too oo-la-la a little too “nouveau” to suit my humble tastebuds. So, accepting a challenge I decided to tinker, to play in my own backyard, my kitchen was fully fortified with a few bottles of champagnes, white and red wine. What could stop me? Nothing. OK, first of all I followed the recipe and worked with five nice sized thighs rather than the normal Sunday-go-to-meeting white meat. I had two bottles of cremant from Burgundy on hand and worked with that rather than go into the cellar and drag the widow Cliquot from whatever she was doing. All worked beautifully, the mixture of champagne, garlic, shallots, parsley, taragon along with the requisite butter and olive oil. It simmers for a good thirty-five minutes and works beautifully. Along with that I prepared mushrooms simmering in butter and olive oil and parsley and a bit of champagne (nice touch). Wonderful flavors and added a couple of dashes of lemon juice. A few red potatoes were gently simmering as well. When the chicken was ready, I thickened the sauce just a little bit, then added the mushrooms and the quartered red potatoes. All came together in a wonderful simmering mixture. It was to die for!! There was the flavor of champagne deep within the chicken, the mushrooms with an added touch of lemon, taragon made its presence known and the potatoes were just dumb and happy to be in the mix. Can you blame them?
Bottom line is this: The original recipe was just too constricting for your’s truly and I had to improvise and the result was a true, unexpected little miracle. I can’t wait to try this one again!