Since Megan recently made fun of the fact that I call my French dishes by their native titles, from now on its literal translations only. Coq Au Vin was something that I had never heard of until I was halfway through making it and a hungry [occasional guest blogger] Mark asked me what I was making. He exclaimed that Coq Au Vin was like the French national anthem, which makes sense, I can see them singing out the recipe before sporting events.
After being sloppily dismembered (this guy makes it look way easier than it actually is) our bird spent 3 days drinking wine, eating carrots and onions, and just chilling out in the fridge. The bold purple color of his skin was a bit disconcerting when he first came out of the bag, he looked like what a forensics team might call a ‘floater’. I for one was never worried, because I knew that after another hour and half of browning, straining, sautéing, simmering, stirring, boiling and garnishing… it would be fine
Danielle is right now sitting behind me watching a Circus of the Sun trailor (I would have previously called it Cirque de Soleil) to which she said “how do they come up with this shit?” This highly elaborate preparation, with its chicken being taken in and out about 4 times, and its marinade vegetables being strained out, browned on their own, added in, only to be strained out again and thrown away makes me think the same thing.
The recipe and prep is by Anne Willen and can be found here. I made a few alterations such as letting the bird marinate for three days instead of one, and omitting celery in the marinade. Like the sauce if its too thin at the end, this reprint of the recipe is reduced from the one in The Country Cooking of France, so if you’d like to be told to remove the chicken pieces individually as they become tender instead of all at once like normal people would, you’ll have to buy the book.
I was blown away by the fact that without actually going to the store with this meal in mind, I had everything for the herb bouquet… an absolute first.
I started with a particularly small bird, so I watched it carefully and ended up pulling it from the oven about 45 minutes in instead of the hour and a quarter recommended. There is nothing sadder than overcooked chicken in something like this, so open it up and pierce it periodically and grab it out the second its done.
