Chicken Supreme

Come sit with me for a second before you start cooking.

This recipe has been with me for years, and it started like most good things in my kitchen, at home with my own children.

I’d been grating mushrooms for them for a while. Not because I read it somewhere or followed a clever tip just because I noticed that when mushrooms were sliced, little hands would find them immediately and move them to the edge of the plate. But grated? Grated they disappeared. Into pasta, into sauces, into whatever I was making. My children ate them without a second thought and never once knew they were there.

So when I got to the nursery kitchen and started thinking about this dish, that memory came with me. Seventy children. All with opinions. And I thought – well, if it worked at home, maybe it’ll work here too.

I won’t pretend I was confident. The first time I made it, I genuinely wasn’t sure the children would even try it. A creamy sauce, mushrooms hiding inside, something a little different from what they were used to. I watched. I waited.

And then something happened that I still remember so clearly.

The whole room went quiet.

Twenty two-year-olds. Silent.

I was in the kitchen, just behind the wall. There wasn’t a door between the kitchen and the dining area, only a safety gate, so i could hear everything. I was cleaning up while the children were eating when I suddenly thought, Why is it so quiet? Any nursery practitioner knows that silence from a room full of toddlers usually means one thing – you’d better go and check.

When I looked over ….and there they were, completely absorbed in their lunch. They were scraping every last bit of sauce from their plates, some were licking them clean, and all I could hear was:

“More! More, please!”

That’s when I knew this recipe was something special.

And then, in the days after, I started getting the question that every nursery cook quietly hopes for: when is it going to be again?

But the moment I remember most is the colleagues. One by one, a few of them came to find me in the kitchen, a little surprised at themselves, to tell me they’d never liked mushrooms. Never. And yet somehow, this had changed their mind.

That’s what this dish does. It’s quiet about it. It doesn’t announce itself. It just makes people enjoy something they thought they didn’t like, and leaves them wondering how.

So if there’s someone at your table who turns their nose up at mushrooms – make this. Don’t say a word. See what happens.

Who knows. Mushrooms might just become their favourite too.

—Jo

---

Watch me make Chicken Supreme on tiktok
In my TikTok video, I cook the chicken in a pan. Here on the blog, I’m sharing my favourite oven-baked version, which keeps the chicken beautifully juicy. Both methods are delicious, so feel free to choose the one that suits you best.