Juicy chicken thighs with blue cheese sauce
The Saucy Dressings team was feeling in need of comfort as the following day we had to take The Lady Margaret, the harp, back to the music shop.
This dish was (together with the odd dram – it goes well with whisky) the answer.
Serve it with crushed lemony potatoes, which also soak up the blue cheese sauce; and with either a crisp green salad, or with buttered Romanesco or broccoli.
You can cook the chicken in its buttery, spicy sauce and freeze it. It also heats up well. The blue cheese sauce keeps fine in the fridge for a day or so.
This is a good way of using up any scraps of elderly blue cheese which might be lurking in your fridge.
Juicy chicken thighs with blue cheese sauce
Serves – 4
Ingredients
- 50 g butter
- About four sundried tomatoes
- 1 tblsp white balsamic condiment (or sherry vinegar)
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tbsp Spanish sweet smoked paprika
- 2 tsp cumin seeds
- 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed with 1 tsp salt
- 4/8 chicken pieces (depends on size), skin on – enough for four people, about 500g/1 lb 2oz
- Olive oil to oil the chicken
- 160ml/⅔ cup mayonnaise
- 80ml/⅓ cup crème fraîche
- Juice and zest of half a lemon (about 2 tbsps)
- 100g/about a cup of crumbled blue cheese
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 210°C.
- Put the butter into a small saucepan and begin to melt it while you chop the sundried tomatoes – add them, and a little of the oil they were in.
- Dry fry the cumin seeds for a couple of minutes and then crush in a pestle and mortar.
- Add the garlic, paprika, vinegar and maple syrup to the butter. Add the crushed cumin to the butter.
- Oil the chicken pieces and place them cut side down in a snug roasting tin. Pour the sauce over and roast for about half an hour- the chicken will be cooked through and the skin starting to crisp up.
- Meanwhile make the blue cheese sauce by mixing the mayonnaise, crème fraîche, lemon juice and zest, and the crumbled blue cheese.
