I caught up with nature and food writer Eugenia Bone this week, who I interviewed for the show we re-aired this weekend, "The Weird, Wild World of Mushrooms," to hear how she’s doing sheltering in place, and what she’s eating. Bone has been cooking from her copious store of dried mushrooms, mostly morels and porcinis, which she has stashed away after collecting them on mushroom hunts this past year.
“I’m hunkered down in New York City with my husband Kevin, full of hope, mostly, wine definitely,” she says. And lots of mushrooms. So far she’s made a matzo ball stock with a type of mushroom called polyporus squamosus, omelet with morels and shallots, codfish with morels, porcini with braised chicken, and the dish below — "Chicken with Sherry and Dried Morels," the recipe of which she shares with us.
The mushroom hunt will be different this year — few people, no distant travel, just hoping to be able to do a day trip in the Catskills this spring, looking for morels under living or nearly dead trees. And then she’ll replenish her kitchen. “There’s lots of social distancing to be had in the divine woods,” Bone says.
Chicken with Sherry and Dried Morels
Serves 4
This is a poor man’s version of the very elegant French regional dish, Poulet Vin Jaune, chicken braised with a savagnin white wine from Chateau-Chalon. It is a very yellow wine, sherry-like, and can age for, well, ages. But for this recipe, any pale dry sherry will do. You can make this dish with dried or fresh morels. If you use dried morels—and I am right now as I get ready for the 2020 picking season—then rehydrated them. Instructions below.
- 30 or so medium-sized fresh or dried morels
- 8 chicken thighs, bone in, or a mix of chicken parts
- 2 large shallots, peeled and thinly sliced, about 1 cup
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 2 cups pale dry sherry
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
If using dried morels, place in a bowl and cover with water. They will soften up in about 15 minutes. Swish them around a bit to remove any grit. Pass the rehydrating water through a sieve lined with cheesecloth or a jelly bag or even a linen napkin placed over a bowl.
Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a large heavy casserole with a fitted lid over a medium heat. Add the chicken and shallots. Saute until the shallots are soft and the chicken is lightly brown all over, about 20 minutes. Add the sherry, salt and pepper, the remaining butter and the rehydrated morels with no more than 1 cup of the rehydrating liquid. Bring to a boil, and then lower the heat to low, and cover. Gently boil the chicken in the sherry for about 40 minutes, until it is very tender. If using fresh, frozen, or canned morels, add them in the last 20 minutes or so of cooking.
Remove the chicken and keep warm. You will probably have about 2 cups of sauce (sherry and drippings combined). If there is a lot of chicken fat on it, pass the fat through a fat separator and then return the de-fatted sauce to the pot. Add the cream. Turn the heat up to medium and reduce the sauce, uncovered, by about a third. Check the seasoning and return the chicken to the pot. Cook for an additional 5 minutes to heat through. Garnish with tarragon.
–Shannon