Coq au vin
Coq au vin: the seminar.
If I do say so myself, I made the best coq au vin I've ever made for tonight's dinner.
The occasion was a dear friend's birthday. He's a foodie and oenophile, so I wanted something that would go well with whatever special wines he would bring over. He & his wife come over for dinner to our house at least once a week, and they *always* bring the wine, so we hardly ever buy wine for drinking: we just tell R. what's on the menu, and he takes care of the rest.
R's wife said, "how about coq au vin?" So I surfed around, looked through some cookbooks, and this is what happened. I'm making notes so I can be sure to do it again. I've made coq au vin quite a few times in the past, but have never been really satisfied with it before -- it never lived up to my memories from my youthful year in Dijon.
The thing with coq au vin is that the dish is designed to be made with a not-particularly-young rooster. He would be tough, strong-flavored, and not very fatty, so he gets stewed in strong wine and cooked with a *lot* of tasty fat. The trick is to get some of the same effect with ingredients from an American supermarket.
Here's what I did and why I think it worked:
1. I bought a stewing chicken. Most cut-up chickens in US markets these days are labelled "fryers" or "young", which generally means they're no more than 3 months old -- Perdue is known for bringing chickens to market at only 8 weeks. Some coq au vin recipes, like this one, try to get around this by using only the more flavorful dark meat (legs & thighs), but those pieces will have come from the standard very young chickens so the flavor increase won't be all that great. A *stewer* (usually a 2 1/2-3 yr-old bird, in the US market) is what you want for this dish. If I could find an organic or free-range stewing chicken, that would be better still. I can get stewers in my local market, which is a bit upscale by US standards, and though they're slightly more expensive than "fryers" or "roasters" it's definitely worthwhile for this special occasion. Even with an older chicken like this, it's important to pull off all the excess fat you can, because American chickens are immensely fatty compared to French ones.
2. I bought a decent bottle of wine, a Ramsay Pinot Noir. It was at the low end of price for a PN but still $12, which is more than I'd usually spend when the recipe calls for a full bottle of wine. I don't think any other varietal would work as well with this dish, however.
3. I marinated the chicken overnight. I used this recipe for the marinade, approximately:
1 3+ lb. stewing chicken, cut up
1 bottle Pinot Noir
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
about 8-10 peppercorns
about 1 tsp dried thyme
2 stalks parsley
marinated in the fridge overnight.
Then I wiped off the chicken, salt-and-peppered it, and browned it in
1 Tb oil
in the non-stick pan. This was not completely successful, because the chicken didn't actually *brown* all that well, and the skin partly stuck to the pan. Not for lack of fat, either: at least 1/4c of fat rendered off during the browning, which I poured off into a bowl on the side.
Meanwhile, strain the marinade into a bowl, discarding the vegetable. I used about 1/2 c of the marinade-wine to deglaze the pan after I took the chicken out and put it into the large pot, because the pan had a lot of skin and other tasty bits stuck to it. Also meanwhile, blanch:
1 1/2 c pearl onions
in boiling water for 3 minutes, drain, cool, & peel. This is a pain if you don't have a child to do the peeling, but the frozen ones I use for pot pies invariably taste watery.
For the rest, I basically followed the recipe in La Cuisine de France, by Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec -- the copy my mother gave me because she loves me *so much*. This is *the* classic simple French cookbook, of which Child & Beck's Mastering the Art of French Cooking might be considered "the annotated edition".
So:
6 oz thick-cut (rather pricey but worth it, West Virginia) bacon, cut into chunks
Cook over lowish heat until the fat render out. Scoop out the crispy bits and drain, wrapping them in a paper towel for later. In the fat fry up the onions until they're lightly browned. Scoop them out and then fry in the fat:
1 lb good mushrooms, in this case a mix of cepes (baby portobellos) and shitakes, in large chunks
This is double the amount of mushrooms the recipes usually call for, but R is a shroom *fiend* so it was natural to do it. Also, I wasn't sure there'd be enough chicken otherwise, because we had 6 adults and a child at table. It turned out to work wonderfully because the shrooms absorbed all the bacon fat, and I even had to add back a little of the chicken fat rendered out earlier.
When the shrooms were lightly cooked, add back the onions and put in
1 1/2 Tb brandy
Heat until the liquid in the pan starts to bubble, then hold a lighted match just above the food. Wheee! the brandy catches fire, to the children's great amusement. When the flame dies down, scrape it all into the big pot with the chicken, and finish deglazing with the marinade. At this point I added
maybe 1/2-3/4 c homemade chicken stock
to bring the liquid up to the top of the chicken. Taste and adjust seasonings, which I didn't really need to do. Bring to boil, lower heat, and simmer 45 minutes. Turn it off and cool with lid off. Let it sit until about just before the guests arrive, then pour the sauce into the degreasing cup. Let the fat rise, then pour the mostly-defatted sauce back into the pot. Take:
2 Tb unsalted butter, room temperature
1 Tb cornstarch
and rub them together with the fingers to make a beurre manie for thickener. Mix it into the stew, heat it up and thicken it, then at the last minute before serving stir in the crunchy bacon bits (so they stay a bit crunchy).
I didn't make potatoes to go with this time, we just put down trenchers of good bread and poured the coq au vin over them. Roasted asparagus on the side, and multiple bottles of wine to go with: a Riesling with the appetizer (which was smoked trout served with caper sauce), then a '96 Nuits St. Georges, a 2000 (red) Meursault, and an Oregon PN I'd have to look in the recycling bin to find out the name of. And berries with whipped real cream for dessert.
Altogether, it was a *great* meal, definitely worthy of a foodie's birthday party. Especially since he brought the wine.*g* And omg, I am still bloated -- I couldn't resist having just a bit more bread swirled around in the wine sauce.
If I do say so myself, I made the best coq au vin I've ever made for tonight's dinner.
The occasion was a dear friend's birthday. He's a foodie and oenophile, so I wanted something that would go well with whatever special wines he would bring over. He & his wife come over for dinner to our house at least once a week, and they *always* bring the wine, so we hardly ever buy wine for drinking: we just tell R. what's on the menu, and he takes care of the rest.
R's wife said, "how about coq au vin?" So I surfed around, looked through some cookbooks, and this is what happened. I'm making notes so I can be sure to do it again. I've made coq au vin quite a few times in the past, but have never been really satisfied with it before -- it never lived up to my memories from my youthful year in Dijon.
The thing with coq au vin is that the dish is designed to be made with a not-particularly-young rooster. He would be tough, strong-flavored, and not very fatty, so he gets stewed in strong wine and cooked with a *lot* of tasty fat. The trick is to get some of the same effect with ingredients from an American supermarket.
Here's what I did and why I think it worked:
1. I bought a stewing chicken. Most cut-up chickens in US markets these days are labelled "fryers" or "young", which generally means they're no more than 3 months old -- Perdue is known for bringing chickens to market at only 8 weeks. Some coq au vin recipes, like this one, try to get around this by using only the more flavorful dark meat (legs & thighs), but those pieces will have come from the standard very young chickens so the flavor increase won't be all that great. A *stewer* (usually a 2 1/2-3 yr-old bird, in the US market) is what you want for this dish. If I could find an organic or free-range stewing chicken, that would be better still. I can get stewers in my local market, which is a bit upscale by US standards, and though they're slightly more expensive than "fryers" or "roasters" it's definitely worthwhile for this special occasion. Even with an older chicken like this, it's important to pull off all the excess fat you can, because American chickens are immensely fatty compared to French ones.
2. I bought a decent bottle of wine, a Ramsay Pinot Noir. It was at the low end of price for a PN but still $12, which is more than I'd usually spend when the recipe calls for a full bottle of wine. I don't think any other varietal would work as well with this dish, however.
3. I marinated the chicken overnight. I used this recipe for the marinade, approximately:
1 3+ lb. stewing chicken, cut up
1 bottle Pinot Noir
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
about 8-10 peppercorns
about 1 tsp dried thyme
2 stalks parsley
marinated in the fridge overnight.
Then I wiped off the chicken, salt-and-peppered it, and browned it in
1 Tb oil
in the non-stick pan. This was not completely successful, because the chicken didn't actually *brown* all that well, and the skin partly stuck to the pan. Not for lack of fat, either: at least 1/4c of fat rendered off during the browning, which I poured off into a bowl on the side.
Meanwhile, strain the marinade into a bowl, discarding the vegetable. I used about 1/2 c of the marinade-wine to deglaze the pan after I took the chicken out and put it into the large pot, because the pan had a lot of skin and other tasty bits stuck to it. Also meanwhile, blanch:
1 1/2 c pearl onions
in boiling water for 3 minutes, drain, cool, & peel. This is a pain if you don't have a child to do the peeling, but the frozen ones I use for pot pies invariably taste watery.
For the rest, I basically followed the recipe in La Cuisine de France, by Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec -- the copy my mother gave me because she loves me *so much*. This is *the* classic simple French cookbook, of which Child & Beck's Mastering the Art of French Cooking might be considered "the annotated edition".
So:
6 oz thick-cut (rather pricey but worth it, West Virginia) bacon, cut into chunks
Cook over lowish heat until the fat render out. Scoop out the crispy bits and drain, wrapping them in a paper towel for later. In the fat fry up the onions until they're lightly browned. Scoop them out and then fry in the fat:
1 lb good mushrooms, in this case a mix of cepes (baby portobellos) and shitakes, in large chunks
This is double the amount of mushrooms the recipes usually call for, but R is a shroom *fiend* so it was natural to do it. Also, I wasn't sure there'd be enough chicken otherwise, because we had 6 adults and a child at table. It turned out to work wonderfully because the shrooms absorbed all the bacon fat, and I even had to add back a little of the chicken fat rendered out earlier.
When the shrooms were lightly cooked, add back the onions and put in
1 1/2 Tb brandy
Heat until the liquid in the pan starts to bubble, then hold a lighted match just above the food. Wheee! the brandy catches fire, to the children's great amusement. When the flame dies down, scrape it all into the big pot with the chicken, and finish deglazing with the marinade. At this point I added
maybe 1/2-3/4 c homemade chicken stock
to bring the liquid up to the top of the chicken. Taste and adjust seasonings, which I didn't really need to do. Bring to boil, lower heat, and simmer 45 minutes. Turn it off and cool with lid off. Let it sit until about just before the guests arrive, then pour the sauce into the degreasing cup. Let the fat rise, then pour the mostly-defatted sauce back into the pot. Take:
2 Tb unsalted butter, room temperature
1 Tb cornstarch
and rub them together with the fingers to make a beurre manie for thickener. Mix it into the stew, heat it up and thicken it, then at the last minute before serving stir in the crunchy bacon bits (so they stay a bit crunchy).
I didn't make potatoes to go with this time, we just put down trenchers of good bread and poured the coq au vin over them. Roasted asparagus on the side, and multiple bottles of wine to go with: a Riesling with the appetizer (which was smoked trout served with caper sauce), then a '96 Nuits St. Georges, a 2000 (red) Meursault, and an Oregon PN I'd have to look in the recycling bin to find out the name of. And berries with whipped real cream for dessert.
Altogether, it was a *great* meal, definitely worthy of a foodie's birthday party. Especially since he brought the wine.*g* And omg, I am still bloated -- I couldn't resist having just a bit more bread swirled around in the wine sauce.