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Coq au Vin

Try going to your local Safeway and asking for chicken's blood and see if they call the police.

The interesting bit about this recipe is that older (medieval) recipes call for the blood of the chicken to go straight into the cooking pot along with the wine, herbs, and chicken. At some later point (1960's) this style of cooking Coq au Vin was briefly revived in France. Even today there are still a few places that will use blood as an ingredient in Coq au Vin. By and large I think blood offends our sense of healthfulness and cleanliness in cooking. And as a result blood is not even available at most butcher shops. Try going to your local Safeway and asking for chicken's blood and see if they call the police.

Sensitive pallets aside blood does actually have an effect on the finished taste and consistency of the dish. Since blood is really not available anywhere you can substitute blood sausage. Pretty close to the same thing and it adds a great flavor.

For 6 people

Ingredients

Conversions to European measurements can be found here!

1 6lb roasting chicken cut into 10 pieces
2 large yellow onions diced
3 shallots diced
3 large cloves garlic crushed
2 large carrots chopped
2 bay leaves, 1 sprig thyme, 5 sprigs parsley, 1 sprig fresh rosemary, 8-10 whole peppercorns
1 1/2 bottles Pinot Noir (or burgundy)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup congnac
6 oz salt pork chopped
1/2 pound blood sausage chopped (or 2 cups fresh chicken's blood)

Procedure

The first step is to marinade your chicken. Grab a big bowl and put the wine, herbs, vegetables, and chicken. Let that either marinade overnight in your fridge or for about 4 hours in a cool, dark spot of your kitchen counter.

After marinating remove the chicken from the wine and pat it dry. Save the marinade because we will be cooking with it. Heat a large skillet with 1/2 cup of olive oil. Dredge the chicken in flour and place one piece at a time in the hot skillet. Richly brown the chicken on each side(maybe 5 minutes per side). After frying drain the excess oil off the chicken.

In a large pot, I use my LeCrusset dutch oven, brown the salt pork and the blood sausage. Drain off any excess fat. Put the chicken pieces into the pot followed by the congnac. Let the congac flame, once it dies down add all the marinade (vegetables and herbs included). Bring this to a simmer. Cover the pot and let it cook very slowly for about 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours.

Remove the chicken to a warmed serving dish. Strain the cooking broth; I usually just use my sieve and drag it through the broth until I have removed pretty much all the solids. Crank up the heat and reduce the broth down to about 4 cups. This could take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. It depends upon how much liquid is in your broth to begin with. In the end you are looking for a deep, rich red sauce. It should cling to the skin of the chicken. Pour the reduced sauce over the chicken.

Tricks

The finished Coq au Vin won't include the vegetables so you can chop them into pretty big pieces that are really easy to remove. Make sure you cut them up a bit though. You want to extract all the flavor from them while they boil.

You can marinade food at room temperature depending on what the marinade is and what you are doing with the food. In this case the marinade is acidic enough to kill bacteria and you are thoroughly cooking the meat later. (Don't ever marinate at room temperature if you are planning on eating the food raw.)

Notes

You can dress this recipe up by sprinkling some finely chopped Italian flat leaf parsley over the top.

Roasted vegetables are a very common accomopanyment with Coq au Vin. You can either fry off some perl onions, mushrooms, carrots, turnips...whatever you like. Or you can roast them under a broiler. You can serve the roasted veg on the side or just drop them in the pot with the finished chicken.