Pecan Chicken with Woodford Reserve Maple Cream Sauce

O-M-G!  This dish was SO good, even the next day as leftovers, SOOO good.  This is from Off the Eaten Path (Kentucky, p. 91).  It does take some time to prepare, you need at least 8 hours to allow the chicken soak, but actual cooking time takes maybe 30-35 minutes (if you pre-measure).

The recipe below is not exactly like the one in the book because I've included my ingredient modifications after having made it (see Notes for changes).

Pecan Chicken with Woodford Reserve Maple Cream Sauce
(Lynn's Paradise Cafe, Louisville, KY)

Pecan Chicken

3 lbs chicken filets*
2 cups buttermilk*
veggie oil
2/3 cup pecan halves*
1-1/3 all-purpose flour*
4 tsp kosher salt*

Woodford Reserve Maple Cream Sauce

4 peppered bacon slices
1/4 cup shallots, minced
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup whole grain Creole mustard
1/3 bourbon
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1-1/3 cups heavy cream**

Chicken prep

Place the chicken in a bowl and pour buttermilk over it.  Make sure all the chicken is coated, then cover and refrigerate for 8 hours.

In a large deep skillet, pour veggie oil to about 1" deep.  Heat over medium-high heat until hot (book says to 350 degrees, but if you can't measure the temp, "until hot" will work).

While the oil is heating, process the pecans in a food processor until very finely chopped. 



Transfer pecans to a bowl, stir in 1-1/3 cups of flour and 4 tsps of kosher salt.

Remove the chicken from the buttermilk (and then chuck the buttermilk out) and dredge filets in the flour mixture and shake off the excess.
 

Fry the chicken in small batches, 3-4 pieces at a time, should take 4-5 minutes per side.

Drain fried chicken on a rack over over paper towels (or foil).  Set aside and keep warm.

Sauce prep

Cook bacon in a large saucepan over medium heat for 10 minutes, or until crisp.  Remove bacon and drain on paper towls, reserve bacon drippings in pan.

Add shallots to the drippings and saute 2 minutes or until tender.

Stir in 3 tbsp of flour and cook, stirring constantly, over medium-high heat until lightly browned (about 2 minutes).

Stir in syrup, then add Creole mustard, bourbon, Dijon mustard, and kosher salt.  Cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes or more until thick.

Stir in cream and bring to a simmer over medium heat.  Stirring constantly (you'll notice a theme here) for about 5-8 minutes until thickened.

Generously pour sauce over chicken.  Crumble up the bacon for garnish.  Start chowing!

NOTES

* The original recipe called for 6 skinned and boneless chicken breasts, I found that by using the chicken filets frying takes half the time and you get a much better coating to chicken ratio.

* The original recipe calls for 1 cup pecan halves, 2 cups flour and 2 tbsp kosher salt, but even after dredging 3 lbs of chicken, there was about 1/3 of the mixture leftover.  Pecans aren't really cheap, so I think if you cut back the dredge mix by 1/3 (as calculated above), you won't have a lot leftover (and less waste of perfectly good pecans).

** The original recipe calls for 2 cups of heavy cream, but when I was making the sauce, because of some freak occurence of nature, my cream has clotted in the container -- wasn't bad or rancid, just clotted -- so I only had 1-1/3 cups to use, BUT it tasted perfectly fine.  So if you want, you can use as much or as little as you want to get the consistancy you like.

Just an FYI, I thought that the pre-creamed sauce was fabulous by itself and would make a nice dipping sauce for beef (like filet mignon).  It's very thick, but has that salty-sweet-booze combo thing that really make its work. 

I was surprised, but actually found peppered bacon at Harris Teeter, I'd never seen it before. The stripes were very thick and cooked up nice and crisp.  The raw strips are just edge dipped in pepper, but it spreads around as you fry them up.