Tasty Roasted Chicken with Sage and Serrano Ham served with chicken mustard tarragon sauce

Yesterday I got into the mood for some chicken.   I was watching "Chuck's Day Off" on cooking channel and it was the truffle episode.   In this episode he make a "chicken supreme with black truffles".  This recipe looked freaking amazing.   I wanted to remake it but I didn't have access to quality truffles within walking distance of my house so I wanted to remake it without the travels but keep it super delicious.

I decided what I like about his recipe was stuffing the truffle and sage between the skin on the roast chicken and his sauce.

I needed to find a replacement for the truffle in the skin stuff and change the way I was using the sage to take the amount of sage flavor down a bit since I was removing the HIGHLY dominant flavor of black truffle.

I decided that I was going to marinate the chicken in freshly chopped sage and olive oil.   When I was done marinating them I rubbed the chopped sage and oil in every nook and cranny of the chicken.   I should be able to maintain the sage flavor but not have it overwhelm the chicken.

My next step was to replace the truffle flavor.   I wanted something really robust and delicious.   I chose serrano ham.   My 4 favorite flavors are truffle, pork, garlic, and chocolate.   So since truffles are out since I couldn't find any I went with flavor #2....PORK.   ALL PRAISE HIS SWINYNESS!

I stuffed the ham under the skin and then heated up the skillet to really (&*!@# hot with some canola oil in it.   Once the skillet was ready to singe I put the chicken skin down in the pan.   I kept it on the skillet until the skin was nice and crisp and started to brown.   I flipped the chicken over and placed the whole pan in an oven for 17 minutes at 350(F) degrees.

Before I started the chicken I had started to cook down some chicken stock.   Once it was about 1/2 of the size I whisked in some mustard and fresh chopped tarragon.   I let the flavor combine together a bit and helped it along with a small pinch of salt.   I whisked in some melted butter until it was emulsified.   ie really (!*@# mixed together so the oil from the butter isnt creating butter bubbles in the sauce.  The sauce was friggin delicious.    The only thing I added from the original recipe was the tarragon.  So yeah.    You need to make this sauce.  Chickeny, silky, YUMMY goodness.

I needed some veg with dish so I halfed some banana potatoes and tossed them in sage and olive oil.   I roasted them for about 20 minutes at 350(F) degrees.   I also halved some baby bok choi and LIGHTLY brushed them with mustard and grilled those bad boys up.

What I got was simply delicious.   Thanks Chuck!

Here is the pic of the final plate