COQ AU VIN

 Time to catch up a little bit.  I made the coq au vin this weekend and a cucumber salad.  I will start with the coq au vin followed by the cucumber salad.  Chicken in wine, coq au vin, is a classic French recipe but I change my up just a bit.  One thing I don't change is using pearl onions but they do take a bit of prepping.

First boil the onions for 1-2 minutes, immediately plunge in ice water.  As soon as you can handle the onions slice off the top of the onion and peel back the skin, then cut off a small portion of the root end to clean it up.  There are some instructions out there that tell you to squeeze the onion at the root base and the onion will pop right out of its skin...don't do it or you will be chasing onion around your kitchen.  These darn things are slippery when wet and hard to get a handle on.

 While the onions were cooling, I took care of chopping up my veggies and the smoked jowls.

Slowly brown the jowls so that you render the fat.

 Once the jowls are a lovely golden brown take out and put on a paper towel lined pan.

Salt and pepper the chicken pieces and brown in the fat in the pan.

 

New it's tie to saute the veg.  I start with the mushrooms and then add the carrots, celery and onions.  I leave the garlic for last so it doesn't burn.  Now I've done some research and most coq au vin have either carrots or celery but not both and very, very few have potatoes.  Since this is traditionally a rustic stew I like to add the potatoes.

Next I deglazed the pan with a 1/4 cup of cognac.  I love using cognac, it adds such a richness and depth of flavor.  I added the chicken back in along with 3 bay leaves and 4-5 sprigs of thyme from my garden.   Next was 1/2 a bottle of a great French Merlot and a container of homemade chicken stock. 

Add the potatoes and pearl onions and bake, covered at 275 degrees for 40-45 minutes. 

Serve with crusty bread or a salad.

And for the light cucumber salad that is a great accompaniment to a rich dinner like the coq au vin.

I started by making the dressing, red wine vinegar, mayonnaise, sour cream, chopped garlic, salt, pepper and dried dill.  Wisk it all together.

Next cut two tomatoes into eights taking out the seeds.  Thinly slice half of a red onion or less if you are not fond of a heavy onion flavor, as you can see from the picture I only used half of the half.  Finally peel two cucumbers, cut in half  and then in half  horizontally.  Take a spoon and scrape out the seeds.  Slice the cucumber and then add all the veggies to the dressing.  

Try to let sit over night in the refrigerator, it will be hard not to dig in but try to resist, it will be worth it.

 

As you can see I couldn't resist a bowl.