Daily Blague

Coq au vin is a favorite dish of mine, and it's perfect for a relatively informal dinner for six. It can be made a day or two ahead of time, which is always great if, like me, you like to cook and you like to serve dinner to friends but you don't like to do both on the same day. Even without having to think of the main dish, I had plenty to do the other night before everyone arrived.  There was the salad of endives, walnuts, and forme d'ambert to prepare for starters, and the chocolate soufflé for dessert. (I started the soufflé before sitting down to the stew.)

The whole point of coq au vin is the soup-sauce in which the chicken braises. For this reason, I serve it with a good, sliced-up baguette. Noodles sound like a good idea, but they don't soak up juices, and rice and potatoes are not much better. It would not be totally insane to strain the dish and discard the solids - so long as you had a good piece of bread.

When I started cooking, coq au vin was, like boeuf bourgignon...

Continue reading about coq au vin at Portico.