This was originally planned as a Freezer Friday dinner, using chicken breasts and brioche breadcrumbs from the freezer. However Soph was dragged to the pub last night, so it’s become a hangover breakfast instead!

The chicken is ‘oven fried’ along the lines of this Cook’s Illustrated recipe, but I sliced up the breasts before baking, and used eggs and sour cream to attach brioche breadcrumbs.

The mushroom sauce was inspired by this maple butter sauce. I fried up onions, garlic and mushrooms in butter, added more butter, then flour, to make a sort of ‘mushroux’ :) Then added thyme, seasoning (lots of black pepper)) and milk to make the sauce, with a splash of white wine vinegar added at the end.

The waffles were made with grated carrot, which seemed to make them a little soggy, but that didn’t matter once they were topped with crispy chicken and creamy sauce. I think next time I’ll add carrots, or other veg, in the morning just before making, rather than leaving in the overnight batter.

I’m very happy with my improvised mushroom sauce: I’m normally a follow-the-recipe type of guy, so just throwing this together and having it work was satisfying.