Chicken Riesling

CASE: Dinner with Cliff and his new boyfriend. Big Deal. Because: 1. the new boyfriend is a great cook and 2. Cliff is a big francophile so I could make a super French dinner and it would be appreciated!

I did some research and was initially going to do an adapted white wine coq au vin. After looking at Anne Willan's site and just plain old Google, this "Chicken Riesling" thing kept popping up. After reading a ton of recipes, I discovered it's a classic French dish that really gets no love. I think it's because it's so plain. The thing is, it's a PERFECT repetoire dish. By that I mean a dish that I could make for company without any problems, and that could be adapted subtly a 100 different ways so I could use it forever. Oh-and-I-will. This dish was so good, so comforting so WARM. I ended up adapting a Mark Beiderman (sp? The Best Recipes of the World Guy. Bitterman? Writes for the NY Times?) recipe. It's sheer genius, the simplest version I could find. He really narrows it to 5 ingredients but I couldn't help adding a few more.

CHICKEN RIESLING

1 whole chicken cut into parts, avoid rib bones and keep the skin on
1 whole onion chopped in rings
2 stalks celery, finely chopped into little squares
butter
1 bottle Riesling, sweeter is better
2 pinches nutmeg
salt
Fresh lemon juice
sour cream

(AND THAT'S IT!)

Melt butter in large Dutch oven. Add onions, celery and salt. Saute until softened, at least 10 minutes. Tuck the chicken amongst the onion, don't worry about skin side down or anything like that. THEN add enough wine that they're all submerged. Drink the rest of the bottle b/c the hard work is done! Cook for at least 40 minutes, if you cook past 60 minutes then just cook a bit longer so that it doesn't get that chewy stage texture. Finish sauce with a bit of sour cream and fresh lemon juice. When serving, be sure to ladle a good portion of the sauce. There will be plenty of it.

Variations: You could add potatoes and carrots. You could saute mushrooms, add some of the Riesling sauce, add butter and then make a sauce. You could just toss the sauteed mushrooms into the mix. You could chop the celery bigger. You could serve it with horseradish mashed potatoes and gently sauteed carrots (I did). You could just serve it in a bowl with crusty bread. You could serve it with rice. You could serve it over noodles like stroganoff. You could add spring vegetables.

VERDICT: GUILTY OF BEING DELICIOUS! The best part is that there is a lot of winey sauce left over. I used it in mashed potatoes, tossed it into some soup I was making. Possibilities were endless. If you have a lot of it left over, just freeze it and re-use it when finishing a sauce. Goodness, you could probably toss it in spaghetti sauce.