Coq Au Vin

CASE: So Susie turned 29 last night, and I decided to throw a dinner party for her (perfect 8). I personally love cooking for 8. If it's just four people, I think you can achieve a much more intimate dinner party, where people really get to know each other. And that's great too. But there is something about the 8-10 number that allows the cook to really go all out, and to make something really spectacular without worrying too much about the volume of food. Now, I hate cooking during dinner parties. Just hate it. So I always have an eye out for recipes that can be made in advance. There is so much to do at a dinner party without worrying about the food. First and foremost, I like to have fun! I like to drink at my own dinner parties! And if I have to cook or chop, I am definitely not drinking. Because drinking while cooking = burns and cuts. Now my cousin Ann is obsessed with all things French, and as a result, Susie and I have developed a partiality to French cooking. Ann makes The Most Amazing Cassoulet, so I certainly wasn't making cassoulet, besides which, I think it takes a week to make her cassoulet. So I wanted something I could cook in advance, and I wanted something French. I toyed with the idea of making a really fruity, summery menu, filled with peaches and watermelon and tomatoes. But I just couldn't get jazzed about it because I don't own a BBQ grill. A summery menu has to have something grilled. It's like a law. Hum. So while coq au vin is extremely heavy and rich and comforting, I thought, it really does fit the bill nicely and when will I ever again make coq au vin since it takes three days? I mean, it had really better be a special occasion to go to such an effort. And I felt sure Susie would love the dish, because her favorite thing that I make is chicken and dumplings. Coq au vin is not all that far off from chicken and dumplings, in my humble opinion.

So. I decided to go with the coq au vin, and there's a place in downtown LA's Chinatown that sells freshly killed chickens. I'm not kidding. And I really want to try it! It's called Peking Poultry and it's on the 600 or 700 block of Hill Street. Anyway, I didn't have time to go, such I just got some lovely chickens from Whole Foods in Pasadena instead. My plan is to make drunken chicken with those fresh chickens one of these days.

I wanted to make it a really French meal, so I decided to do a real cheese plate. The Whole Foods in Pasadena has The Best Cheese Selection in LA. No kidding! And amazing olives AND amazing bread points AND amazing fresh vegetables. I had a hand-crafted goat cheese (I want to say it was Haymarket Farms), a beautiful creamy decadent French cheese in its own little pot (it was called something like Marcellin), an amazing aged English white cheddar, and a creamy British blue...the blue was called something that starts with an "R" and is apparently incredibly famous. Anyway, the Whole Foods there was lucky to get two wheels of the stuff, so go fast! (BTW, I have about half the blue cheese left so I have big plans to make Brandon some hamburgers with it if we meet up during the week. I think some fresh arugula, caramelized onions, and a nice toasty brioche-type bun would be perfect. Either that or I might surprise him with a blue cheese cheesecake. Now THOSE are fun. They're so rich you make a little mini one and serve it with crackers and cheese. Add one of those rotisserie chickens from the market and pre-washed bag of spinach with a simple vinaigrette and you’re DONE.) Anyway, I picked up some fabulous green French olives, flat crispy bread, amazing salami and lomo-type meats, and decided to serve it with fresh grapes and fig jam. Pretty good right? I didn't want to do nuts (although I was tempted to add walnuts), and to keep it simple. It was a big hit, and everyone’s favorite was the hand-made goat cheese. (Well, I forgot to put out the fig jam, so maybe a different one would have tasted better. In any event, you will soon see a recipe involving fig jam!)

NOTE: I personally like making a schmancy dish less schmancy by making it fun. Susie and I went to Costa Rica and she loved it. So I put out monkey and gorilla napkins and paper plates with the cheese plate. I also put little plastic butterflies all over the cheese, the joke being to remind her of all the bugs in Costa Rica. My feeling is that it makes the whole thing less stuffy. Same feeling for serving sangria—it was so light and sweet, I think it made a nice counterpoint to the heavy wine feeling of the coq au vin.

COQ AU VIN
NOTE: This recipe is a combination of Anne Willan's classic coq au vin and Larousse Gastronomie. If you feel the need to make it with morels, as is classically required, please do! Myself, I just didn't want to pay like $400 a pound for the dried ones. Who knows how much the fresh ones cost. Especially at a Whole Foods!

Marinade
1 bottle of a full-flavored red (I used a Nebbiolo)
3 chopped garlic gloves
1 smashed garlic clove kept whole
3 stalks of onions, chopped in thin ringlets
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
1 T black peppercorns (I added an additional 2 t of white peppercorns too)
1 yellow onion, roughly chopped (I actually used 5 shallots. Big mistake. Sauce needed it.)
10 pounds of dark meat, add a breast or two if you'd like. Meat must be bone-in with skin

Saute your vegetables in a bit of oil, add the wine, and simmer for a good five minutes. Let it cool, then pour it all over your raw chicken in a non-metal pot. Marinate up to 3 days. Note, the longer you marinate, the more likely you'll be serving purple chicken. But if you like the taste of wine...
NOTE: I marinated 1 day, and then let the chicken sit for 1 day before serving. You can wait another 3 days after you've made this dish to really let the flavors meld.

Sauce and Chicken
1 pound of thick bacon or lardons (I used a combination of smoked and fresh, thickly cut)
1 bouquet garni (handful of parsley, 4 fresh bay leaves, 8 thyme sprigs)
3/4 c flour
1 whole box of chicken stock or make your own, you'll need at least 5 cups

Separate chicken from your wine and vegetables. Dry chicken thoroughly. In your dutch oven, saute bacon in a bit of olive oil until it's leaked its oil. Reserve bacon for garnish. Brown the chicken in the dutch oven, cooking approximately 15 minutes. 10 minutes initially, 5 minutes after the flip. (You can coat the chicken in flour too.) Don't crowd the chicken. Let it brown nicely, a dark rich brown, not burnt, but with yummy brown bits. Rest the chicken. Then saute just the vegetables from your marinade in that grease til they're nice and soft. Add your flour and stir it up. Cook for a few minutes to develop your roux. Then add your wine and let it thicken. Simmer 5 minutes. Add your chicken stock and bouquet garni. Season with a bit of salt. Really taste your sauce at this point, because it's really not going to taste drastically different than the way it does at this point. If you feel it's not wine enough, add some! If you feel it's not onion-y enough, add some onions. If it's too thin, reduce. If it's too thick, add more chicken stock. Remember, at the very last stage of this dish you can add cold, unsalted butter to make it glossy and delicious. But at this stage, it has to taste right.

Once you're happy with the taste, add the chicken and simmer a few minutes. Add the cover, and pop into a 325 degree oven for about an hour. The chicken should be falling off the bone, it’s so tender. At this stage, you can serve it and start on the recipes below, or let it sit for up to 3 days in the fridge.

Garnish
2 cups brown mushrooms kept whole, slice a little “X” in the top of the cap
1 1/2 cup button mushrooms thickly sliced
3 cups FRESH pearl onions

Saute onions in butter until they have a nice browning. Season with salt and pepper. Add to your reserved bacon. Sautee the mushrooms in butter til nice and brown until, again, they have nice cripsy brown bits. Season with salt and pepper. Add to your reserved onions and bacon. Toss gently together, adjust for salt and pepper to taste. These should look shiny and crisp, and taste perfectly delicious on their own. In fact, you know you did it right if you want to eat them on their own.

NOTE: I tried the recipe with both fresh and frozen pearl onions. Fellow cooks, it is well worth the effort to use fresh pearl onions, even though they are a mighty pain in the butt to peel. Seriously. And, contrary to what I’d hoped, you can clearly see the difference between the two kinds of onions: one is white and round, the other is oblong and grey. The fresh onions were fresh, oniony and crisp. The frozen ones were water-logged, translucent and mushy. They gave the crunch, but not in a crisp way. I mean, honestly, they still tasted delicious, but not as delicious as the fresh. Sorry!

SAUCE
2 shallots, sliced
2 T cold unsalted butter

If your chicken was in the fridge, get rid of any fat on top and warm up. Pull out the chicken from the sauce, carefully removing any vegetable bits. Strain the sauce, preferably pouring it into wherever you browned your onions and mushrooms. Anyway, brown your shallots in the pan, then add the sauce. Put the chicken back in, and gently re-heat.

To serve: Spoon your boiled potatoes on a plate. (See post above.) Put chicken at a nice angle, slightly atop the potatoes but still touching the plate. Pour some sauce on the chicken and potatoes til its pooling in the plate. Then add a nice big ladle of the garnish on top. Lastly, put a pretty thyme spring on top of the garnish. DEFINITELY serve in French plates, I use dark pinky-red toile plates. If you like, you can remove the skin and bones. I didn’t. I don’t like the idea of having chicken bits floating on the potatoes—I like that people can cleave the meat from the bones on their own and see just how tender the meat is. Honestly, I don’t have much patience for people who are grossed out by bone-in chicken, or the floppy chicken skin. OK, maybe the skin is kind of gross. I should have removed it.

VERDICT: GUILTY! OF BEING DELICIOUS!