CHICKEN À LA KING AND OTHER STORIES

Chicken à la King is a dinner party classic, served with white rice. The combination of diced chicken, mushrooms, green peppers and canned pimientos (today we use red peppers) doused in a creamy sauce traditionally tarted up with a generous nip of sherry has many stories about it’s origin. The most plausible, say the experts, is that it was created by a chef at a New York hotel in 1898 who had to prepare a special dish for the owners, the Kings. They loved it so much they asked the chef to put it on the menu. I believe the chicken & broccoli bake could be an updated version of the aneamic-looking chicken à la King, leaving out the the mushrooms and peppers, adding cheese to the sauce, broccoli florets and a gratinated topping.