Poulet à l'estragon

I'm running late this morning because instead of doing this blog post I've been working on all the photos of hot-air balloons that I took yesterday. I'm not ready to post them yet — maybe tomorrow. At least a dozen montgolfières floated right over our house yesterday morning, just about scraping the treetops. And then a minute ago we had a power cut. That also slowed me down. It was a blip, really, but it crashed our computers and our satellite TV even though it only lasted a second or two. Who knows if it's related to strikes? Could be... or just a coincidence.

Anyway, we have a beautiful tarragon plant growing in a pot on the front deck. The plant is probably 4 or 5 years old and it comes back every spring. We both like tarragon, and try to find opportunities to use it in our cooking. I repotted the plant into a new and bigger container early in the spring, and it is growing like a weed.

So one of the real classic dishes using tarragon — estragon in French — is poulet à l'estragon. I see a lot of recipes for it in English (Tarragon Chicken) and in French on the web. Here's the recipe I followed — we used to watch Bernard Laurance's cooking show on Cuisine TV before the channel was taken off the air. Here's a link to my translation of the recipe into English.

Walt had gone to the market on Saturday morning in Saint-Aignan and bought a fine free-range chicken from our favorite local poultry processor and vendor. I didn't take any photos as I prepared and cooked it, only of the leftovers. That's what you see here. The sauce contains chicken broth, aromatic vegetables like shallots and garlic, cream, and of course tarragon. We had some cooked celery in the fridge, and we like celery as a side vegetable, so we cooked some rice and there we had our lunch.

By the way, Callie spent a quiet night without once moving and now she's gone out for a walk with Walt. I think her back leg is already getting better, because I saw her running when I looked out the back window.