Recipe for :

This is one of Alan Spedding's recipes. Alan has featured on several TV cooking programmes as a keen amateur chef.

This has got to be the single best tasting dish that I`ve ever cooked, the smokey taste of the wild fungi makes it worth the small expense that you`ll have to fork out for them but take my word for it, the taste is orgasmic, the recipe simple, and once savoured never forgotten. The recipe serves two.

Ingredients

2 Nice free range chicken breasts (skin off)
1 pkt of dried morels or cep mushrooms soaked in 250 ml warm water
150 mls chicken stock
150 mls dry sherry
250 mls Double cream (fresh, not long life)

• In a saute or frying pan, melt a large knob of butter, season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper then gently fry to seal the meat for one minute each side over a medium heat.

• Turn up the heat, turn the chicken and add the mushroom stock from the soaked mushrooms. (Reserve the mushrooms to one side)

• Allow the mushroom stock to boil away and reduce down, keep turning the chicken breasts to ensure even cooking.

• When the stock has reduced to a syrupy consistency, add the chicken stock and repeat the process of reduction again to the syrupy stage. Don`t forget to keep turning the breasts in the pan.

• Add the sherry and repeat once again until the syrupy stage is reached, now add the mushrooms and the cream.

• Bring the cream to the boil in the pan and then allow to boil away for a minute or so until it begins to thicken up and take on a sauce like consistency.

• Serve the breast sliced or whole, topped with the mushrooms and the sauce. It goes really well with oven roasted root vegetables.

It really is important when making this dish to taste, taste, and taste again and then you`ll  be able to learn how the flavours change during reduction and exactly when to add the next ingredient.

Serves 2