Pippa's Recipe: Pot Roast Tarragon Chicken

Last week I had some family in for dinner, and I decided to try my hand at Pippa's recipe for Pot Roast Tarragon Chicken!

The recipe was not that complicated, but it was a bit laborious for a roast. It required a lot of prep to get it ready to put in the oven.

However, it was delicious! My family really enjoyed it, and the chicken was very moist and nicely flavoured! I served it with caramelised brussel sprouts (recipe by Martha Stewart) and a spring salad with a tasty vinaigrette dressy I got off of a blog, and a basic potato salad, also by Martha Stewart.

Here are some pictures of what my two birds looked like before going into the oven (I didn't have time to take a shot of them when they were done, I was too frantic serving getting ready to serve dinner!) :)

The only thing that I would say is that it was hard to get that nicely browned look that Pippa's book shows. I wasn't able to successfully brown the birds like she did, it just turned the chickens a less pale colour.

If you are interested, here is a link to a blog where another woman tried the recipe, and her thoughts (http://reluctanthousedad.com/2013/03/27/pippa-middletons-pot-roast-tarragon-chicken/). It seems she modified it a bit, as did I. I had two birds and I didn't strain the veggies out of the broth at the end, and I didn't have any fat to skim off the surface of the soup either. The veggie added a nice look and flavour to the sauce. 

I wasn't sure where to find creme fraiche, but I found it in the dairy isle after much searching. The brand was Liberte and it was in a smallish yellowish plastic container in and around the sour cream. I used just ended up using the whole thing for the two chickens, as it basically called for the whole amount and I had the two chickens anyways.

I would definitely recommend you try this recipe. I bought Pippa's book both because I'm a fan and of course because I was curious. I like it well enough, especially as it has a lot of British/English recipes that I don't know about, being from Canada. So I liked it a lot for that reason. But other recipes or suggestions seemed a bit obvious and were things I already knew of and about.

On the whole though I liked the book, and I found it very interesting, as it gave a look into her life and her "world". I liked reading the tidbits about her family members too, that was fun! I still sometimes go back and just look at the pictures, they are very neat themselves and visually appealing.