Pollo con Champiñones

This Chicken with Mushrooms recipe uses a whole chicken chopped up into small pieces which is a very typical way of eating chicken in Spain. The only problem with doing this is that you tend to get bone fragments in the dish. If you prefer you can use chicken breasts or any other part of the chicken.

The chicken liver mentioned in the recipe is used to thicken and flavour the sauce. If you really don’t like the flavour of chicken liver you should probably leave this out.

Ingredients

Serves 4

• 5 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1.25 – 1.8kg chicken chopped into small pieces the Spanish way
• 6 cloves of crushed garlic
• 1 chicken liver – optional
• 450-900g of assorted mushrooms – this will depend on what is in season. I use Spanish wild mushrooms (setas) and any others I can find
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 150ml white wine

Cooking Method

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken till it is golden brown. This should take about 15 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan and put it in a casserole.

Fry the garlic gently in the same frying pan for a few minutes then add the chicken liver (if you are using one) and fry gently for a few minutes. Remove both the garlic and the liver from the frying pan and set aside.

Add the mushrooms to the frying pan and fry gently for about 2 or 3 minutes. Put them in the casserole with the chicken and season with salt and pepper.

Now pour the wine into the frying pan and bring it to the boil stirring well so that it absorbs all the flavours of the chicken, garlic and mushrooms. Pour it over the chicken and mushrooms in the casserole.

Zap the chicken liver and the garlic in a blender to make apaste, add it to the casserole and stir it through the mix. Put the lid on the casserole and cook on a gentle heat for about an hour.

This would normally be served with chips in Spain but I prefer to serve it with new potatoes or crusty bread and some vegetables.