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Coq au Vin

Food • Local • Newsletter • Recipes • Signature Living with Reuben

Coq au Vin, served with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli stems

Ingredients

  • 1 bottle of Red wine
  • 1 carrot, roughly chopped
  • 1 celery stalk, roughly chopped
  • 1 small onion, cut into quarters
  • 4 cloves of crushed garlic
  • 1 bay leaf
  • Small bunch of Thyme
  • 10ml Butter
  • 150g streaky bacon, cut into thick chunks
  • 20ml Seasoned Flour
  • 6 chicken thighs
  • 6 chicken legs
  • 20 baby onions, whole but peeled
  • 20 button mushrooms quartered
  • 60ml Brandy

Method

  1. Start with the wine based sauce
  2. Pour wine into a saucepan and add the chopped carrot, celery, onion, crushed garlic, bay leaf and thyme.
  3. Bring to the boil and reduce by half,
  4. Reducing the wine, allows the flavours to intensify and thicken the dish.
  5. Next, strain the sauce through a strainer and discard the flavourings.
  6. Keep it aside for later.
  7. Now, Heat the butter over a medium heat in a large heavy based pan with a lid and then fry off the bacon bits. Cook until golden and slightly crispy.
  8. When the bacon is fried, it releases a lot of fat which has plenty of delicious flavour that shouldn’t be wasted. Use the same pan to brown the chicken, It ensures a crisper skin and transfers the bacon flavour into the chicken.
  9. Now lift out the bacon bits, with a slotted spoon and put to the side.
  10. Dip the chicken pieces into the flour to coat evenly, and using the same pan that cooked the bacon, fry the chicken to brown on all sides.
  11. Sealing the chicken beforehand always gives a great colour to the end dish.
  12. Then, once the chicken has browned, remove and set it aside.
  13. Now moving on, Turn the heat down then add the onions and Cook for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally until they begin to caramelise.
  14. After 10 min, add the mushrooms and garlic and cook for a further 4 minutes.
  15. When it is browned and cooked, take the mushroom mix out and set it aside.
  16. We want the mushrooms and onions to have that lovely caramelised texture to them but we also don’t want to overcook the mushrooms. So add them in later just before you serve.
  17. Using the same pan, pour a little of the reduced wine into the pan and scrape the bits off the bottom with a wooden spoon. This is called deglazing and gets all of those delicious crusty morsels off the bottom of the pan and into the gravy.
  18. Next, place the chicken and half of the bacon back into the pan.
  19. Pour over the brandy and carefully set it alight, then when the flames have gone out, add the rest of the wine and thyme leaves.
  20. Now bring this to the boil, turn down the heat, cover with the pot lid and leave to gently simmer for an hour.
  21. After it has simmer for an hour add the mushroom onion mix and simmer for a further 10 minutes, keeping the lid only half on this time which allows the remaining liquid to evaporate leaving the sauce thick and coating the chicken.
  22. And add some salt and pepper to taste.
  23. Now add the rest of the cooked bacon bits to use as a garnish.
  24. Remove when done you can either serve with fluffy mashed potatoes or warn crusty bread, both soak up the delicious sauce.
  25. A good accompaniment would be steamed broccoli steams with toasted sesame seeds.

Wine Pairing

  • Reciprocal Wine Trading Company
  • Reuben paired he’s dish (above) with the following Louis Latour Wines:
  • Grand Ardèche Chardonnay 2011
  • Valmoissine Pinot Noir 2012