French Coq Au Vin

After we cooked this traditional French dish together, Nathalie Petersen, from Paris, France, reminisced, “My mother said something to me that really stuck. 'When you are young you think your work is everything. When you get older, you realize that what’s really important is everything else.'" See below for the full story, recipe, and how-to photos. 

The Recipe

French Chicken in Red Wine Sauce with Mushrooms
Coq au Vin

As Nathalie Petersen from Paris, France, taught Lindsay Sterling in Cape Elizabeth, ME, 2014

Serves 6-8
Cooking time: 2 hours

6-8 chicken drumsticks or whole chicken cut into pieces
1 Tbsp oil
1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, smashed with skin on
bouquet guarni (1 bunch sage + 1 bunch thyme, tied together with twine)
1-2 Tbsp flour
1 bottle red wine, preferably Burgundy
7 oz. white pearl onions, peeled (can buy pre-peeled and frozen)
2 Tbsp butter
12 oz. bacon, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
12 oz. button mushrooms, washed
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

In a dutch oven on medium heat brown chicken pieces in 1 Tbsp oil. When chicken is golden brown on all sides, add chopped yellow onion, bouquet guarni, and garlic and turn to low. Stir in 2 Tbsp flour, then add one bottle of red wine. Cook on low for 2-3 hours, covered but open a crack. Add 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper.

In medium saute pan on medium heat, melt 2 Tbsp butter. Add pearl onions and 1/2 tsp sugar and saute long enough to caramelize or turn the onions a nice golden brown color. Add bacon pieces. Saute for about 5 minutes, then add mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms are soft and juicy.

Remove bouquet garnis and garlic cloves from the chicken-in-wine. Mix mushroom-onion-bacon mixture into the chicken and red wine sauce. Serve coq au vin with roasted or mashed potatoes.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2014

See How To Do It

The Story

A Call for Coq Au Vin

By Lindsay Sterling

                                                                                         

Last spring a French woman I met in my spin class at the YMCA taught me how to make authentic coq au vin. Ever since then, I’d been on the look out for the requisite coq (that means “rooster” in French) for the full experience. A promising lead: one of my neighbors acquired twelve baby chicks, and five turned out to be roosters. By fall, their crowing at 4am was generating serious complaints in the neighborhood. The owner asked me if I thought a neighborhood dinner featuring the noisy chicken would make everyone feel better. I jumped in: “Yes, I do. Would you like me to make authentic coq au vin out of them?”

Ursula carried the roosters from the coup to her clothesline, where her friend Ron tied their feet to the line. Upside down, the birds really did fall instantaneously and conveniently asleep. Miraculously, they stayed asleep while Ron pulled the heads down and sliced through their supple throats. Red blood dripped into a bucket below. Wings flapped frantically. The pet birds, sadly, were dead. Ron dunked them in hot water, pulled off all the beautiful feathers, cut off the heads and feet, and eviscerated them. I was relieved to see the familiar sight of whole, pale-skinned chickens, ready to be cooked. I could take it from there.

Nathalie Petersen from Paris, France, had shown me how to cook coq au vin in her home in Cape Elizabeth. In a cast iron pot she seared bone-in chicken pieces in oil, and then added chopped yellow onion, a couple tablespoons of flour, two cloves of garlic, a bouquet of fresh thyme and sage, and a bottle of red wine. While the chicken and wine were cooking, in a separate pot she cooked pearl onions and mushrooms with a pound of chopped bacon. Once the onions, bacon, and mushrooms were juicy and soft and the chicken was cooked, she combined the chicken and all the vegetables and juices into one pot.

As I reread my notes from Natalie’s house, to my horror I realized that she hadn’t drained off any of the bacon fat. The whole evening would backfire if my neighbors found out how much bacon fat I put in their dinner. What are you trying to do, kill us? We’re kale smoothie drinkers for crying out loud… Bacon is so uncool. I can’t believe you’d try to get us to eat that...You couldn’t just make a quinoa salad, could you. I tried to make the sauce with less bacon fat, but it was not good at all. I went ahead and served the authentic version, which tasted divine, and made a vague joke about the meal not being exactly fat free, so if someone sued me – she didn’t tell me there was bacon fat in there! – my ass was covered.

          The evening was a wild success. Everybody loved the coq au vin, and each other. And no one died. Except, of course, the roosters – and somewhere, a pig. I do wonder why are our theories about animal fat are totally inconsistent with low rates of heart disease in France. I hope the author of The Big Fat Surprise is right, and Americans come around to thinking that animal fat ain’t so bad. Then the next time I make coq au vin, I won’t have to sneak around with the bacon.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2014