Chicken Provencal 

This is a fine Chicken Provencal recipe from the famed region in the south of France. While its an easy dish to prepare, it's as delicious as any other out there...perfect for easy entertaining and dinner parties. 

South French cooking is known to be less heavy on butter, and highlights fresher, whole ingredients. 

Our recipe here includes mushrooms, olives, and fresh herbs - all of which evoke the flavors of the Mediterranean. 

Preparation and cooking time will take about an hour. 

Chicken Provencal: Ingredients List

The ingredients that we are going to need for a four person recipe are the following:

• 1 chicken cut in pieces-portions (try to source local, free range chicken)
• 1 ounce of fresh butter (or ghee)
• 1 tablespoon of flour 
• 3 tomatoes
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 bottle of dry white wine (in our case we recommend a butter Chardonnay)
• 1 bunch of fresh basil
• 4-5 ounces of fresh mushrooms (we recommend krimini mushrooms)
• 20-25 black olives, pitted
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 1 - 2 bay leaves
• 1 -2 sprigs of fresh thyme 
• sea salt
• fresh ground black pepper

Cooking Steps

To start our recipe, we’ll take a pot and on a medium flame warm up the fresh butter.

We then add the chicken pieces (that have already been washed, cleaned, and dried on paper towels), and stir and rotate for even browning.

Sprinkle the flour on top of the chicken and stir. 

Add the tomatoes cut in pieces, the finely chopped garlic, five to six basil leaves, the dry white wine (Chardonnay), and one 8-ounce glass of water, all the herbs tied together in a bunch (parsley, thyme, and bay leaves), sea salt, and fresh ground pepper (as needed).

Leave the ingredients to slowly cook together for approximately thirty minutes. 

During the cooking process, wash your mushrooms, discard the hard stem ends, and cut the mushrooms in thin slices.

Add them (after the thirty minutes is up) in your pot, as well as the pitted black olives, and leave them for 15 more minutes on a low flame. 

Remove now the bunch with the aromatic herbs - put the chicken in a deep serving plate and pour the sauce on the top of the chicken, sprinkle with finely chopped parsley, and serve! 

It can be served with a homemade pasta dish, or homemade fried potatoes or even fried eggplant or zucchini pieces. 

This chicken provencal dish, with its aromatic herbs, salty olives, and wine sauce, balanced by the acidity of the tomato sauce, can be successfully paired with many different wines. 

We think this chicken paired with with a light red, like a Chambourcin, or a heavy white, like Chardonnay, will certainly do the trick.

TIP: You can substitute the fresh mushrooms, with dry mushrooms, that you have already soaked in warm water for five to ten minutes. 

Hungry for more wine recipes? I highly recommend this book: The Wine Lover's Cookbook!  (Book review on its way!) Available via Amazon!

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