Chicken Breasts Stuffed With Black Pudding
I’ve always liked black pudding. One of my favourite slummy snacks would be a couple of slices of it, grilled until crispy,sandwiched between white sliced bread slathered in ketchup. Most people know it as part of a traditional English Breakfast. However, it also provides a delicious stuffing for chicken, the tastes marry well together and the deep brown of the pudding looks great against the creamy chicken flesh. You need good quality pudding for this – no great big gobbets of fat. The sliced black pudding from Farm Direct is a nice soft, dense texture with plenty of flavour that is perfect here.
4 Label Anglais chicken breasts, skinned
2 slices black pudding
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
A handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Cocktail sticks
100ml dry white wine
Salt and pepper
25g butter
1 tablespoon plain flour
1) Drizzle half the olive oil over the base of a gratin dish large enough to hold the chicken breasts comfortably. Preheat your oven to 200 centigrade, 180 fan.
2) With a sharp knife, make a slit in each chicken breast along the side at the fattest part, to open up a pocket.
3) Chop the black pudding into dice and put in a food processor pestle and mortar with the garlic and parsley. Mix to a fairly fine paste.
4) Take a quarter of the mixture and put into the pocket of each chicken breast, securing with a cocktail stick.
5) Lay these in the gratin dish and drizzle over the remaining oil. Season with a pinch of salt and a good grind of black pepper, then pour over the
wine and cover the dish tightly with foil.
6) Bake this in the oven for around 30 minutes until the breasts are cooked through.
7) Drain off the juices into a small pan and retain the foil over the chicken to keep it warm. Melt the butter in the microwave and mix the flour into it.
8)Stir this mixture into into the juices and bring to the boil to thicken.
9) Serve the chicken breasts with the sauce spooned over, with some roast potatoes or wedges to give a contrasting crispy texture – and may be some steamed, buttered cavolo nero on the side. In the photo shown I topped them with potato rosti, but I actually preferred it with roast potatoes.
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