Day 7: Ponderings on Monday’s Coq au Vin

At around 9:30 on Monday evening, the heavens opened and the seas parted as I experienced the first bite of my very own coq au vin. Not only was the sauce delectable, but so was the coq itself! Actually, it was a poulet because I didn’t have an old rooster just waiting around to be butchered and subsequently simmered in wine, but since when would you ever expect a recovering vegan to be technically correct when it comes to meat, anyway?

As I poured through my 98+ cookbooks in search of the perfect coq au vin recipe, I quickly realized that though I possessed about a handful that would (presumably) be delish, none called out to me as being “the One.” So, I did what any irrational carnivorously-challenged individual would do and I combined attributes of three of the best recipes with a healthy dose of my own ideas in order to create my very own unique recipe for a French classic that deserves to be left alone by the culinary-challenged home cook. And thank God I did!

Here’s the deal: recipes for coq au vin tend to fall into two categories—those that reduce the wine prior to adding the chicken, and those that do not. Julia Child’s falls into the latter category, while Cook’s Illustrated and (most of) James Peterson’s versions fall into the former. Each has its attributes, though not reducing the wine prior to adding the bird will leave a dish with a distinctively raw wine flavor, since the chicken will finish cooking before the wine is adequately reduced. There may be more to it than this, so if you are really curious about it, just google it. Anyway, when coq au vin was really coq au vin and not poulet au vin or whatever the French actually call it when it’s made with chicken instead of rooster, the poor old bird’s meat was so tough that it required larding and a good three hours of simmering in the wine to tender it up, which would have eliminated the raw flavor of the broth. Why would Julia Child—the Master Teacher—ever direct us to prepare this dish in such a way so that the resulting broth is less-than-stellar (she does call for chicken, after all)? My guess is that she does not require first reducing the wine either due to simplicity’s sake for the American housewife—her target audience, or due to possible forgetfulness that simmering a rooster for three hours will affect the flavor of the sauce differently than will cooking a chicken for 30 minutes.

That aside, I invited my friends Heather and Celeste—both fellow wine and food snobs—over for dinner, which I had planned to be ready by 7. Do not underestimate the length of prep this dish actually necessitates; I began marinating the bird around 3, and was moderately busy for the next 6 hours! Anyway, all was good, since we shared a bottle of rosé with wedges of Winey Goat and Piave Vecchio during the final prep, and since my tardiness allowed for me to pass on the job of making mashed potatoes to someone far better suited to the task (Heather). During this time, I also managed to turn out an over-baked crème brûlée, which I am blaming on a faulty oven thermometer. Heather brought over the salad of greens, pears and chèvre doused in vinaigrette, as well as the rosé and a bottle of red, which we polished off while lingering over our coq au vin and crème fraiched-mashed potatoes. By the time the overdone crème brûlée was produced, I think that we were probably too happy from the wine and the otherwise gracious culinary gods’ blessing bestowed upon us during dinner to care. Finally, Heather and I did the dishes, and it’s worth noting that if you ever move to Bozeman, you should become friends with her so that you have an excuse to cook good food and have MAJOR help restoring your kitchen to pre-meal status. All she asks for in return is good conversation and a glass of wine.

Needless to say, dinner was a hit, my kid loved the stew, and I’ve decided that because of my obvious talent for preparing a tasty coq au vin and less-than-tasty crème brûlée, I ought to author a cookbook. Lol! Till next time…Bon Appetit!