Chicken Parisienne

This recipe is the 2nd out of our try to use our cookbooks and comes to us from our “Historic Lexington Cooks – Rockbridge Regional Recipes” Book. This recipe was picked because it’s listed as “..One of the area’s favorite Chicken Dishes.” and the recipe had been submitted by no less than seven different people. Without further ado, here we go.

We start off with 2 nice big slices of center-cut country ham. If you’ve never dealt with this stuff before, be prepared. It smells like death. Normally when I’m cooking, the kitty hangs around and likes to stick her nose in everything. I took the ham out of the package, and she jumped off of the counter and ran into the bedroom.

So, you want to cut the ham up into manageable sized pieces, and cook it quickly in a pan. Just about a minute to a minute and a half on each side will do it. Meanwhile, you can start getting the liquids all ready. The liquid portion is rather easy: 1/2 a pint of Sour Cream (AKA 1 Cup), 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, and 1/4 Cup of Sherry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is all mixed up. Simple ain’t it? So, while your finishing up cooking the ham, grease a 8x12 pan. For this, I used good old fashioned butter. Then, put the ham down as the bottom layer of the pan.

Place Chicken breasts (boned, skinned, trimmed, etc) on top of the ham. The recipe calls for 8 pieces, but I think I could only cram six half breasts into the pan. Maybe chicken breasts are a bit bigger these days compared to when this recipe was made. Sprinkle the chicken with some Paprika, and then cover in the liquid mixture.

Now, it’s ready to go into the oven which has been preheated to 275. It’ll live in the oven for about 3 hours, so get comfortable, watch a movie, whatever. Just don’t try to start making this at 5PM unless you don’t want to eat until 8PM.

Top picture is about 2 hours into the cooking. The level of liquid has dropped considerably. I think it all went into the chicken. The next 2 pics show the chicken after it’s done. I stuck the fork into a piece to move it, and it just fell apart on the fork.

I plated the chicken on top of a piece of the country ham, and it was a juicy, salty, flavorful piece of wonderful. Virginia cooked up some potatoes to go along with the chicken, so now I’m sitting here stuffed.

For next time, I think we might try to pull the chicken out of the oven just a little earlier… the chicken fell apart, but it was just a tad dry. Also, I think it would be lovely served on a bed of rice… I might take some of the leftovers and make chicken salad with it though…