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Cooking
Roast Chicken with Creamy Mushroom Tarhonya
· 4 servings
Prepare the chicken and tomatoes
Wash and clean the whole chicken, then rub it inside and out with a mixture of oil, salt, pepper and crushed garlic. Arrange the washed tomatoes in a roasting tin, brush them lightly with the same flavoured oil too, and season with a little salt.
Place in the roasting tin
Set the chicken breast-side down on top of the tomatoes. Add just a splash of water underneath – about 100 ml is enough. Insert the meat probe thermometer into the chicken (if you don't have one, don't worry) and put it in to roast.
Roasting temperature
I roasted it using the steam setting, switching on the grill at the end so the skin turned beautifully crisp. I started off at full blast – 230°C – then after 20 minutes lowered it to 150°C and finished roasting the chicken at that temperature.
Baste with the pan juices
Don't forget to baste the chicken regularly with the pan juices – ours turns out lovely and lightly tomatoey, giving the chicken a fantastic flavour! Roast until the internal temperature reaches 80°C. If your oven doesn't have a probe, a kitchen thermometer works just as well.
Crisping the skin
At the end, turn the grill on full for a short while, keeping an eye on the chicken so the skin doesn't burn but turns beautifully crisp instead.
Base for the mushroom tarhonya
Heat some oil in a large pot and sauté the roughly chopped onion and mushrooms in it. After about five minutes, add the dry tarhonya and toast for another five minutes.
Add the water
The tarhonya grains should turn a light golden colour. Season with salt and pepper, then pour in the water – you'll need roughly one and a half times as much water as tarhonya, so in our case that's 3 cups of water.
Finish with cream
Cook, stirring and tasting as you go. If the water has evaporated and the tarhonya is still firm, add a splash more. It's absolutely perfect to stir in about 100 ml of cream near the end, once it's almost tender, to make it beautifully creamy.
Stir in the parsley
Once the tarhonya is soft and done, take it off the heat and stir in the roughly chopped fresh parsley. This side dish is so incredibly good that you might find you don't even need the meat to go with it.
Tip: what to do with leftovers?
Got some leftover chicken, tomatoes and juices, just like we did? Cook up a bit of rice the next day and make a 'Czech-style' leftover risotto. Mix the rice with the chopped chicken, tomatoes and juices, and you've got yourself another main meal.