Dan Bites

I had a bunch of tarragon left from my braised lamb shanks that I wanted to use up with some chicken. Most of the recipes I’ve seen with tarragon involve a cream sauce. That’s all well and good on a cold day, but what does that do for me on a hot, sweltering, humid day? I thought it’d be best to toss it into a marinade and slap the meat on the grill. So, that’s what I did.

First things first though, I made a very simple corn soup. This soup is so simple I didn’t even use garlic! I simply stripped the kernels off of 3 ears and threw them, along with the naked ears, into a pot with 2 cups of water. I brought it up to a boil, covered the pot, turned the heat down to med-low, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Then, I turned off the heat and let it come to room temperature. That gave me time to mix together the marinade and get the chicken ready.

Jumping ahead, once the soup was cool, I tossed the naked ears and poured everything else into my blender and pureed it all up. I poured it back into the pot and slowing brought it back up to a slow simmer. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and then garnished it with some chopped up tarragon.

For the marinade I mixed together 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar, 2 cloves of garlic minced, about 3 tablespoons of finely chopped tarragon, and 2 large chicken breasts that I separated the tender strip from the large piece (I did this for two reasons, the breasts were huge and I wanted some meat for lunch the next day). I covered it all with plastic and let it sit in the fridge for about an hour. I took it out and let it sit for about another hour while it came back to room temperature.

For my veggies I sautéed together 5 shiitake sliced, 1 red bell pepper cut into strips, 1 small head of broccoli cut into florets, 3 garlic cloves minced, and 1/4 onion sliced with 2 tablespoons of butter and about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce.

I first melted the butter. Then I let the garlic go for about 30 seconds before adding the onion and pepper. About 5 minutes later I added the shiitake. 5 more minutes and I threw in the broccoli. I let that all saute together for about 7 more minutes and then poured in the soy sauce. Once the soy had all but evaporated in went about 2 tablespoons of chopped tarragon.

Grilling chicken like this is super easy. I heated the grill up to med-high heat and grilled the chicken for about 7 minutes on each side with the lid closed. That gives really nice grill marks and keeps the chicken nice and juicy.

That’s about all she wrote for this dinner. Oh, we had white rice for our starch.