Not the coq au vin I made. Mine looked just a little bit better, hehe.
Sometime durinng the weekend I had the urge to cook a new dish, and since I saw Julie and Julia at the movies recently as well as seeing Samantha magically whip up a coq au vin on one of my Bewitched dvds, I decided to make coq au vin, which is basically chicken in a red wine & chicken stock sauce.
Since this was a new recipe I tried to do a little reading and found a recipe that was looked relatively easy and bought the ingredients for that recipe. After getting home though, I found a modified version of Julia Child’s recipe, and decided to give that one a try instead.
Now it’s not generally a good idea to change recipes just before cooking, as I found out, so I decided to just combine the two recipes and see how it all turned out. Both recipes had red wine in them, so I assumed that everything would be fine.
The whole thing was a bit complicated, and it took me about three hours to finish everything, but it was a fun experience. My favourite part would have to have been making the bouquet garni, all those herbs tied up into a little bundle smelled wonderful.
We served the coq au vin with a tasty potato bake that Adam made, and I had seconds like the greedy pig I am. Adam also made a beautiful little custard that was very creamy and nutmeg-ey.
The only downside to the whole dinner was that I think I didn’t put enough chicken stock into the pan or it could have been that I didn’t flambé the dish before adding the stock. Anyway I didn’t really notice anything wrong until the next day, when I woke up with a horrible headache and a dry mouth.
That’s right, my chicken gave me a hangover, and I didn’t even have anything to drink the night before! In fact, I’m ready to swear that I’ve been hungover for nearly two whole days now.
So if you feel like getting drunk one night and have a craving for chicken, hit me up. I’d be happy to cook you some coq au vin.
