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French Cooking Class - Chicken

Well, its a new year and apparently winter is for meat because that's the focus for next 6 weeks or so  and first up is chicken.

We made several dishes such as Hunter style chicken, Grandmother style and chicken in beer. All of the chicken dishes were very good but we did wind up putting all the chicken in the oven to finish cooking after searing in the pan.



In the grandmother style chicken, all the vegetables are prepared separately then placed around the finished chicken which seemed pretty labor intensive to me and I was glad I didn't have to do that one. I got to work on beer chicken. The beer chicken recipe is from the Alsace region which is close to Germany and beer is used instead of wine. The chicken is browned in the pan then the aromatics and beer are added. The chicken continues to cook, however we finished our chicken off in the oven since we were hungry. The sauce is then strained and finished with egg yolks and cream. And we served some egg noodles on the side with salad.

After 12 weeks, I think everyone in the class is pretty familiar with the kitchen and each other. We all pair up or get in a small group, get handed a recipe and a tray of ingredients and off we go. Tuesdays have definitely become a comfort day of cooking and mingling with other people who like to cook and it's a nice break in the week that everyone looks forward to.










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