Weeknight chicken with butter beans, a recipe derived from Nigel Slater.
As discussed in the critical, the original recipe from Slater is not quite good but holds a lot of promise. We fulfill the promise here with a recipe for two.
- a Tablespoon olive oil, goose or duck fat, or lard
- scant ½ cup diced cured pork; it may be bacon whether smoked or not, guanciale, pancetta, pickled pork, tasso, lean salt pork or the like
- an onion sliced into the thinnest crescents
- 2 chicken legs, each with 3 to 5 deep slashes cut through the skin
- salt and pepper
- about ½ cup dry vermouth or Sherry
- a can of drained and rinsed butter beans
- about ½ cup chicken stock
- some Worcestershire
- a splash of hot sauce
- 4 or so sprigs parsley, or about a teaspoon dried thyme
- minced parsley and chopped scallion greens to scatter
- Set your fat of choice in a heavy skillet over medium high heat and brown your choice of cured pork, then set it aside.
- Throw the onion into the pot and cook until limp, then add it to the reserved pork.
- Slide the chicken legs into the skillet and cook them until browned on both sides.
- Remove the chicken from the skillet, increase the heat to high and pour on the fortified: Reduce the liquid until nearly evaporated.
- Put the chicken, onion and pork back into the skillet; add the beans and herb of choice, stock, Worcestershire and hot sauce; then partially cover the skillet and reduce the heat to a simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Check the seasoning, then serve the dish with a blizzard of parsley and scallion.
Notes:
-Slater’s instruction to ‘[c]ut deep slashes through the skin” of the chicken legs is sound. The chicken cooks faster, its flavor bleeds more readily into the sauce and the skin crisps up too.
-The original recipe has no pork, onion, Worcestershire, hot sauce or scallions. It only mentions olive oil as a fat.
-The original version also calls for two cans of butter beans, more than enough for four and a diluting agent for two. It also specifies two tablespoons of olive oil, a lot more than you need--or want.
-Canned Goya beans are good.
-Slater also specifies 150 ml of vermouth (no Sherry alternative) which translates to a lot more than half a cup and, due to the reduction, results in an oversweet dish. His 350 ml of chicken stock also is excessive.
-“A pair of pork steaks or lamb chump [shoulder to Americans] lamb chops,” as Slater confides, “can be cooked in the same way…. You could embellish the dish with cream at the end of cooking, about 3 Tbsp would suffice.” As he notes, sage would be even better with pork than the rosemary or our thyme.