Balearic Islands, Spanish Meat Dish Recipes, Spanish Recipes

Chicken with Sobrasada Sausage

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I have written on this site about the origins of the Sobrasada sausage and the fact that the island of Majorca lays claim to being the home of the Sobrasada. No sooner had I done so than a Catalan friend called me to say “it’s not their sausage, it’s ours.”

I never thought I would be arguing over a sausage!

He’s wrong. Yes, this so soft it can be spread sausage is very popular in Catalonia and considered a signature dish in many a restaurant there; but the Balearic Islands have proved they were producing it long before it showed up in cities such as Barcelona.

I got stuck in the middle of a long distance debate over ownership of the Sobrasada. I felt like the meat in a sausage!
Anyway, life is too short to argue about the birthplace of a sausage.

Here is a recipe for Sobrasada served with chicken, butter beans and courgettes. Whisper it quietly, but this recipe comes from the island of Majorca, where they have shops dedicated to this unique sausage.

Ingredients

75 grams of sobrasada sausage, thinly sliced
4 free range chicken breasts
300 mils of tomato sauce
2 tablespoons of olive oil
a pinch of crushed dried chillies
350 grams of courgettes, trimmed and cut on the diagonal into slices
a handful of flat leaf parsley leaves, chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper
100 grams of dried butter beans, ideally judión, soaked overnight. Or 225 grams of butter beans

Preparation

Use soaked dried beans and drain them. Tip into a pan and cover with fresh cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for between 20 and 25 minutes until almost tender. Add half a teaspoon of salt and continue to cook until tender. A further five minutes should do it. Drain and set aside.

Use some lovely fresh, deep red and juicy tomatoes to make your tomato sauce. In Spain you will find these sold at fresh food markets. If all else fails, use tinned tomatoes. Should you not know how to make a nice tomato sauce, I have written an article under our “How To” section of this site showing you how to do just that.

Season the chicken breasts on both sides with some salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the chicken breasts skin side down, and cook for five minutes over a medium heat until golden brown. Turn over and cook for a further five minutes. Move the chicken breasts to one side of the pan and add the crushed dried chillies and sobrasada.

Allow the sobrasada to melt into the oil. Turn the chicken breasts over in the now spicy oil until well coated. Lower the heat. Sprinkle over the courgettes. Cover and leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

Uncover the pan, add the cooked butter beans and tomato sauce, re-cover and simmer for five minutes until the beans are heated through.

Sprinkle on the parsley leaves and serve.

* photo courtesy of Chemical Dave via Flickr: http://bit.ly/o1LWhU

 

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About Writer, TV producer & author of a guidebook to the 100 best tapas bars in the Spanish city of Granada. He's produced food & travel programmes for UK broadcasters. He's written for newspapers and magazines in the UK and Spain. He's travelled all over Spain tasting tapas - all in the name of research, he insists.

4 Comments

  • Reply
    J BROOKS 10 October 2011

    how ever many times i read this list of ingredients no where can i find beans of any description…

  • Reply
    Vernon 11 October 2011

    Hello there. Sorry about that. They were there at one stage but clearly they had ‘bean’ and gone!
    They are back there now. Butter beans almost as good as judión and easier to acquire. Enjoy!
    Vernon

  • Reply
    Joanna Langkamer 17 October 2011

    As I’m back in England now, we couldn’t get hold of Sobrasada but made the dish with Chorizo. Nothing else was changed. It was probably the most delicious meal I have tasted in ages! Served with warm bread by a driftwood fire was pure heaven (Well as close as you can come to it whilst in England and not Menorca…..)

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