Chicken in Hoegaarden with prunes

I found this recipe in Leiths Simple Cookery by Viv Pidgeon and Jenny Stringer, page 214. It's actually an excellent book -- it contains not only recipes but also explanations of how to make basic sauces, cuts, roasts, what to stock your pantry with, and what vegetables are available in each season. Although, I imagine, the season stuff is irrelevant to New Zealand, and the varieties of potato, for example, aren't the same here either.

I used chicken thighs (tenderloins) instead of chicken breasts because they are cheaper and taste far far better. It's impossible to overcook chicken thighs, they always come up juicy and delicious. I find chicken breast meat too dry. Instead of sunflower oil, I used olive oil because, once again, there is some sort of New Zealand specific or maybe just Wellington specific shortage on what seems like such a staple ingredient. And I didn't have dark brown sugar, so just used soft brown sugar.

I imagine the fact that I used thighs and not breasts and the obvious lack of chicken weight in this recipe is why my casserole was more liquid that I expected it to be. I used about 500 g of chicken thighs, so use more if you're going to do what I did :)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Trim any fat off chicken. Heat a little of the oil in a frying pan and brown the chicken on both sides. Transfer to a casserole dish. Now, to the same pan where the chicken was cooked, add the onions and sweat over low heat for 10 minutes. Sweating means not letting them brown but just making them very soft, so it's important to leave the heat quite low.

Add the tomato purée and flour, and cook for another minute, stirring well. Slowly stir in the beer, bring to the boil, and simmer for two minutes. Pour into the casserole with the stock, sugar, mustard, bay leaves, and vinegar.

Cover the casserole and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Add the prunes, then return to the oven for 20 more minutes. If the casserole is too thick, add more liquid; if it's too thin, remove the lid for this part of cooking.

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with mustard mash or steamed green vegetables.

Yummo!

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts, skinned and boned
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 onions, finely sliced
1 tablespoon tomato purée
2 tablespoons plain flour
300 mL Hoegaarden beer (or pale, blonde beer)
300 mL chicken stock
1 heaped tablespoon soft dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
2 bay leaves
1/2 tablespoon white wine vinegar
12 ready-to-eat prunes, pitted
salt and freshly ground black pepper