CHICKEN COQ AU VIN RECIPE SKIN

BreakthroughД®lizabeth David's coq au vin. The finished result is good вЂ“ the meat falls off the thighs and legs вЂ“ but the sauce, while pleasant, lacks the kind of oomph I'd hope for after such effort. That done, I may reunite the ingredients in the original dish and finish it off with a final half hour in the oven.

CHICKEN COQ AU VIN RECIPE SKIN

This encourages a skin to form, containing, Olney alleges, 'fat plus other impurities' which I can then pull to the side and discard вЂ“ on a regular basis for half an hour or so.ДЄs if reading my mind, he observes tartly that this dГ©pouillement is often avoided 'because it is time-consuming and boring', which is a great pity, given it is 'essential to the purity and digestibility of the sauce'. Once it's out of the oven, and after removing the chicken and carrots from the pot, I must then strain the cooking liquid into a pan, and put it on the heat 'so as to permit its contents to simmer only on one side'. However, the sauce-making process is yet in its infancy. Meanwhile, I cook the mushrooms and the pearl onions. I then douse them with cognac and wine (and a reassuringly jellied stock), bring the whole lot to the boil, and then transfer it to an oven dish, scrapings and all, and stick it in there to stew for 40 minutes.

I brown the lardons, set them aside, and then gently cook the carrot and onion pieces in their fat until soft, and then brown the chicken pieces on all sides, sprinkling them with flour towards the end. Richard Olney, author of The French Menu Cookbook, recently voted the best of all time by an Observer Food Monthly panel, observes 'it is only logical that a bird no more than 2 months old, though perfect for a sautГ© вЂ¦ should be less satisfactory in a dish whose qualities depend on the flavour and gelatinous material which, over an extended period, may be drawn from the meat into a reduced and concentrated sauce.' As a compromise, he suggests using leg and thigh pieces (which lend themselves better to this type of preparation than do breasts) and replacing half the wine with a 'rich gelatinous veal stock'. The sauce is good, the chicken is tender, but there's no denying they look disappointed вЂ“ chicken 'n' sauce is not what they came here for.

Twenty-six hours after I first uncorked the wine, this is not entirely true вЂ“ having made a thickened red wine sauce in the onion pan, I must then strain the cooking liquid into it, swirl in 2 tbsp butter, joint the chicken, chuck in the golden bits, and then 'dazzle friends with brilliance'. 'Your work is pretty much done,' Bourdain chips in at this point. The chicken then stews in this for an hour and a quarter, in which time I cook the lardons, mushrooms and pearl onions until golden brown. Setting it aside, I sautГ© onions, celery and carrot until golden brown, add flour, and then stir in the reserved marinade. Searing a chicken on all sides is hard, even with tongs вЂ“ it's a cumbersome, slippery beast at the best of times and even harder to grasp when gruesomely Pinot-purple with wine. 'You should, with any luck, reach a Zen-like state of pleasurable calm.' (Note that this will not happen if you fail to clock the first instruction, to marinate the bird in red wine and various aromatics overnight, before cooking it for that evening's dinner party.) Just take your time,' he says reassuring. 'I know it looks like a lot of ingredients, and that the recipe might be complicated. I discover why when I try Anthony Bourdain's recipe, from the Les Halles Cookbook, which calls for a trimmed, 1.35kg chicken, amongst about 15 other things.

The name coq au vin suggests a poule au pot type arrangement, but curiously one rarely sees the dish made with a whole bird.

Chicken coq au vin recipe