Hunter's Chicken

Makes 4 servings (serving a crowd?)

4 boneless skinless chicken cutlets (6 to 8 oz each)
approximately ¼ cup of flour with a dash of salt and pepper
4 Tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons oil (olive, grape, canola, whatever), only to keep the butter from browning too quickly
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley
1 cup chopped scallions
2 slices of bacon, trimmed of excess fat
1 cup light cream
½ lb dry egg noodles
1 Tablespoon butter
a dash of black pepper

Special equipment

frying pan
baking dish

Method

Preheat your oven to 350° and prepare the mushrooms, parsley, and scallions by washing and slicing as need. Chop the bacon.

Dredge the cutlets in the flour, salt and pepper, and sauté in the butter until brown (about 8 minutes over moderate heat; 4 minutes each side). Remove and store in a baking dish. Sauté the mushrooms, parsley, scallions and bacon in the same pan for about 5 minutes, or until the mushrooms begin to yield their liquid. Add the cream and stir, sautéing for maybe another five minutes or until the cream is no longer pure white. Pour over the cutlets in the baking pan, cover with foil, and bake for an hour.

In the meantime, about half an hour before you plan to serve, bring a large kettle of salted water to a boil. Throw in the egg noodles, bring back to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove, drain, and season with the butter (which will also help prevent the noodles from drying out) and pepper.

At serving time, spoon the noodles onto the plates, place a cutlet on top, and smother with the creamy mushroom sauce. Serve with green bean vinaigrette or some other crisp salad.

Notes

Why Hunter's chicken? Presumably, this sauce of onions and mushrooms originated as a way of serving game all across Europe. The Germans call it Jägerschnitzel (literally ‘hunter's cutlet’), a personal recipe of which our version is based on, the French substitute white wine for the cream and call it Chasseur (again ‘hunter’), and in Italy they add tomatoes and call it Cacciatore (‘hunter’) as in Chicken Cacciatore.

Suggestions

This recipe was originally designed for quantity cookery. Feel free to simmer the cutlets in the pan on low heat for half an hour minutes until done rather than in a baking dish in the oven.

Have some venison and want to make a quick, true hunter's cutlet? Try a Rehschnitzel: flour both sides of your venison steak (we prefer to spice up our coating with a couple screws of freshly ground black pepper, a shake to two of garlic powder and some salt; better still, try some Penzey's Bavarian Seasoning; it's ideal for this dish). Fry in 1 T butter, with perhaps a drizzle of oil to keep the butter from burning, for 2-3 minutes, depending on the thickness of your steak. Fry the other side. Remove to a warm plate, and deglaze the pan with 1 cup of sliced mushrooms (Chanterelles would be ideal but awfully expensive in American kitchens, so we usually substitute oyster mushrooms), and turn down the heat. Stir occassionally until the mushrooms begin to brown. Add 2-3 T of cream, perhaps any leftover flour from the coating, and stir for two minutes, and pour upon your venison steak. Enjoy!

First served: Samhain 1993
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Last modified: © April 2010