Creamy Beans with Leeks, Dijon, Tarragon and Crispy Chicken
One pan, simple and oh so delicious!
I have another one pan wonder for you and this is a really good one. I find naming my recipes quite hard which might sound weird as the title just describes the dish, so really how hard can it be? The answer is harder than you think! For instance you might think the chicken would be the star of the show and so should be talked about first. And yes crispy chicken thighs are the best, I love them and could talk about them all day. But really here, it’s the beans that take centre stage. These creamy beans with leeks are so delicious and actually make a really brilliant side dish for lots of things. Serve with a fillet of salmon, or crispy pan fried sea bream. They would be lovely next weekend for Easter lunch to go with your lamb - in fact I will most definitely be having them then too. Any excuse to eat them as they really are good and I eat a version of this recipe at least once a week. If you do serve these beans as a side dish you don’t need to worry about baking them in the oven, just let them bubble away on the stove, they won’t take long.
This dish sounds so simple and it is but the combination of these ingredients works so well. Once you’ve made this it will become a regular staple in your house - I feel confident of that based purely on the fact it is in mine. Like all good stories recipes, this one starts with crispy chicken. Crispy chicken thighs get seared in the pan at the beginning to help the skin crisp up but also to give us a gorgeous chicken-y oil to begin our dish with. Onions, leeks and garlic are cooked until soft and then the star of the show…the beans themselves. Beans are creamy inherently by their very nature and then they’re helped along with a little creme fraiche for just added lusciousness. They are spiked with a little dijon mustard (grainy also works v well) which helps to cut through the richness and adds a little bit of gentle heat. Make sure you season well as seasoning can be the difference between an okay dish and a spectacular one. That doesn’t mean dumping in a whole load of salt, so don’t be scared of it - just season a little at every stage of the dish and by using a flakey sea salt you will get a more delicate and refined flavour than table salt. A final sprinkling of tarragon finishes this dish off perfectly, I LOVE tarragon, in general but also particularly with chicken - fresh tarragon sprinkled over the top works so so well and just elevates the whole thing. I know tarragon is a bit like Marmite in that some people love it and some people think it tastes like washing up liquid. So if you are one of the latter of course you can switch it out with some chopped parsley - but if you do like tarragon and you just don’t tend to cook with it very much, definitely opt for tarragon.
If you’ve been reading Dinner Tonight for any length of time, you will know that there are two things that matter the most to me when I’m cooking at home. My first priority is that it has to be delicious - and I mean like really delicious and the second is that it has to be very easy. And included in that second part is that it has to dirty as few pots and pans as possible as I don’t enjoy washing up. Nobody told me when I young and excited about becoming a chef just how much of my life would be spent washing up. The answer is a lot - I don’t want to do the maths as I feel like the answer would depress me but trust me when I tell you I am very well acquainted with a pair of Marigolds. And yes - washing up gloves are a must if you do a lot of washing up! I seem to have no veered off into not quite such riveting territory with this so I will stop on the subject now. But all this to say that when I get home and I’m cooking for myself - I do everything I can to ensure there is the least washing up possible. So one pan recipes like this feature a lot in my daily life and there’s nothing more satisfying than making something really great and then realising at the end of it all that you have one dish to wash up.
