Respect the Coq!

So I've really been enjoying Chubby Hubby's Singapore-based food blog, and he had a great post about how a lot of foodies tend to thumb their noses at that most generic (at least at a lot of restaurants in the States) of meats: chicken.

Was it Anthony Bourdain who said that chefs see chicken as the menu item for people who don't know what else to order? Anyway, Chubby Hubby gives a rather impassioned defense of chicken and ends it with a lovely recipe for his wife's version of Coq au Vin.

Coq au Vin is one of those daunting, oh-so-French sounding dishes that I've never even ordered, much less tried to make myself--and I really didn't even have any idea what it was supposed to taste like. But I was feeling ambitious and the recipe seemed simple (and made my mouth water just reading it), so I figured what the hey.

It'd be silly for me to copy and paste the whole recipe, so I'll just give the abbreviated version here. Oh, and I roughly halved the original recipe, since I figured 4 drumsticks is kinda sorta equal to 2 thighs (we couldn't find thighs), and I didn't want to end up with too much sauce for two people.

So first you need to chop up an onion and a clove of garlic, and dice a carrot and a few slices of bacon (pancetta would be better, but we live in Taiwan):

Okay, so maybe Mario Batali would mock me
for my uneven dicing, but I did my best.

Then, over medium heat, heat up a little bit of butter and olive oil in a heavy pot, put the bacon in and, after that gets some color, add the carrots, onions and garlic. Let the vegetables soften for five minutes or so, then, using some kind of slotted spoon, move everything in the pot to a bowl. In the oil that's left in the pot, brown the chicken on all sides. (Coq au Vin is normally made with rooster, but where was I going to get a rooster?)


Now turn the heat up, dump your veggies and bacon back in, and pour about half a bottle of Gewurztraminer (a sweet white wine) into the pot. Once it's boiling, turn the heat down and let everything gently simmer for about 25 minutes, flipping the chicken every so often.


When the chicken seems like it's done, fish it out and put it aside for now. Now add about a third of a pint of heavy cream (the recipe calls for double cream, but you can't easily get that in Taiwan or even the States).

Season with salt, freshly ground black pepper and sugar (optional) to taste. You'll need a good amount of salt and pepper, and depending on how sweet your wine is, you might want to leave the sugar out altogether. Add some chopped parsley (or dried parsley if you can't get a hold of fresh) and about a quarter pound of regular white mushrooms (cut into quarters). Now just let this sauce reduce and thicken.

Once the sauce is to your liking, just put the chicken back in and let it heat back up. What you end up with is this luxuriously creamy, subtly sweet sauce--and all the veggies and the bacon add different layers of flavor. And the chicken gets nice and tender, and absorbs some of the sweetness from the wine as well. Here's what it looked like on the plate:


Yeah, I know--it doesn't look super-appetizing. But it did taste good, I swear, especially with a nice loaf of French bread to soak up all the extra sauce and a glass of the Gewurztraminer we had left over. I don't know if anyone has suggestions for how to plate this more attractively.

And if I were to make this again, I'd try to cook the bacon a little bit longer than I did at the beginning--rendering more of the fat would have also meant there'd be more oil to brown the chicken in. I kind of flubbed that step. And I do think thighs would be preferable to drumsticks (more meat, less bone).

But anyhow, thanks to Chubby Hubby, it's good to know that you too can eat gourmet French cuisine, without having to go to too much trouble, even on a weeknight.