A quick and easy traditional stew / fricassee

One of my loves is slow cooked Fricassee Chicken, but who has the time?
Well I have been playing around with getting this dish to a near equivalent in about 30 minutes. (When it used to take 3-4 hours of slow cooking)

You need a good dutch oven or a good deep saucepan with a tight lid. I have used both.

The other thing you need to do is CHEAT. One of the reasons this dish tastes so good is it richness due to the stock. Well you are either going to have this ready in advance (do-able) or just use purchased stock cubes or bouillon.

The trick is to heat everything up really quickly, onions, garlic and then the vegetables you want soft. Remove them, quickly seal the chicken, put everything back together, add the stock and then just add the crunchier veg near to the end.

So...
Peel and chop your garlic and onion
Fry until softening in a little bit of oil. Put lid on to keep in juices if you can. (it also reduces the amount of oil you need)
Add the veg you want to be soft at the end, or want to use to add flavour.
Heat until softened. Remove these from the heat to another dish.
Put chicken in the pan and cook on all sides until sealed.
Put the veggies back in and add enough stock (water and cube or previously made stock) to cover everything.
Add a dash of nutmeg and or mace and some herbs of choice. I use Tarragon. (The Nutmeg and mace give it a more traditional English Fricassee taste) - See Mrs Beaton's original recipe.
Turn up heat until boiling and then let it simmer for 15 minutes, with the lid on!(The longer the better)
Boil it down to the thickness of the sauce you like. (You can do this in 2 ways. Stir and reduce on a medium heat or remove all the solid and then turn up the heat and reduce the sauce more quickly.)
Take off heat. Now you can stir in some beaten egg yolk or cream if you wish to cream it up.

This can be served with Taglitelle, Mashed Potato, Fresh crusty bread,...
-enjoy