Roosevelt Chicken

Since we were making one meat+banana dish, I thought we’d try the *other* one also listed in Wartime Recipes of the Maritimes. This one is a bit fancier, with cream and booze involved. According to the author, it was named in honour of the Americans joining the war.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
6 skinless chicken breasts (we used 3)
3 whole bananas, peeled and split lengthwise
1 tbsp flour
1/2 cup cooking sherry
2 cups cream
Salt and pepper
Toast to serve (didn't use these)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a shallow baking dish, and place banana halves inside. 

Heat 2 tbsp butter in frying pan and sear chicken breasts. Place chicken breasts on banana halves and bake for 40-45 minutes until cooked through. 

Melt remaining butter in frying pan used for chicken. Add flour, and cook for 1 minute, scraping up food particles. Add sherry and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and stir in cream. Cook on low temperature, stirring constantly until thickened. Season with salt and pepper. 

Place toasts on plates, set chicken breast and banana on top, and pour cream sauce over. 

Since chicken breasts are much bigger now (like double the size!), we ended up using only three of them, placed on two slices of banana each. We also served this on rice instead of toast, but were otherwise faithful to the recipe.

The sauce was VERY rich. I haven’t used that much cream OR booze in a non-dessert … possibly ever.

The verdict

Despite now being experienced with banana-meat dishes, this one didn’t work nearly as well as banana meatloaf. The chicken and the (very, extremely) rich sauce went well together, although I would probably cut the sauce with some stock or something next time. But the bananas … they didn’t go with anything. I’m not sure why they are there. I wouldn’t include them again.