ROAST SUPREME OF CHICKEN, BRAISED BARLEY WITH BACON AND FRESH THYME
This recipe is a great and reminds me when my mum used to make my sister and I vegetable and barley soup ( geat after beong outside in the freezing cold), it’s a great combination, very rustic and simple to do. It’s all about using ingredients that are always available.
X 4 supremes of chicken 120g pearl barley
180g streaky bacon 2 fresh thyme sprigs
1 pt chicken jus/chicken stock 1 chopped onion
30g butter salt and pepper
1 pt chicken stock
Method
Soak the barley in cold water for a couple of hours
Once the barley has been soaked, drain and rinse, put in a pot, cover with stock and cook slowly. Bring to the boil, then simmer for about an hour. When cooked push to one side.
Take the chicken supremes and trim off the excess fat and sinew, season with salt and pepper. Take a hot frying pan, add little oil and colour the chicken supreme evenly, putting onto skin side down and cook in the oven for 7-8 minutes.
Chop the onion fine and pick the thyme leaves.
Cut the bacon into lardons, fry lightly in a fry pan, try not to get too much colour on the bacon, drain well.
Take the onion and sweat lightly in a little butter, add the barley, bacon and thyme leaves, add the chicken jus and bring to the boil, season (if you wanted it slightly spicy you could add either chopped chilli or Tabasco.
The barley mix should resemble a ragout mix, which is a dish where everything is partially cooked and then finished in the sauce (for example Scallops with penne pasta in a ginger sauce. The penne would be cooked and the ginger sauce would be ready, you would add the penne pasta to the boil sauce along with the Scallops, bring back to the boil and serve).
When serving the chicken dish, place the barley mix on the bottom of the dish, add then place the sliced chicken on top and serve with crusty bread to soak up the delicious sauce.
Breakout 1
If you didn’t fancy this dish with the barley, you could use Haricot Blanc (the white bean of our baked beans to you and me!) or you could make it with Puy Lentils, either way all three dishes would be just as delicious.
Breakout 2
Using simpler ingredients, you could make it even more rustic, with creamed mashed potatoes, still using the bacon and the thyme leaves in the sauce
Tip of the week
In order to cooked your chicken, keeping it moist, pan fry your chicken fillets on both sides for between 3-4 minute on each side, taking them off the heat and leave them to rest for 10 minutes which will finish off the cooking.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here