Le Petite Coq au Vin

Write this down: Anything remotely resembling French cookery will involve a) tons of butter (yay!) and b) every pot and pan in the house (not so yay)...and sometimes bacon (yay again!).

I was catching up on my own blog reading, and whilst reading The Amateur Gourmet, I saw his post about his Top 10 Dishes of 2009. The dishes all looked pretty awesome, and like him, I am a sucker for something braised...especially if I get to use my Le Creuset pots. Which, I am sad to say, are rather underused in my kitchen. When you're cooking for one, it's usually a quick saute here and there. I have been trying to use them more and more, because why else do I have them? But I'm still a little afraid of them. Totally irrational, I know, because they are cast iron, and it would take a whole house nuclear disaster to hurt them...seriously, this is where those indestructible cockroaches will be living after the apocalypse--in cast-iron Le Creuset pot condos. And yet, some people are afraid of spiders, too. (I know, arachnophobia is real...I was just trying to be funny, because I'm not afraid of spiders, but I seem to be afraid of seemingly indestructible cookware. Maybe I should say something along the lines of "...and some people are afraid of dust bunnies." Is that better?)

And that brings us back to the coq au vin. I decided to try Adam's technique and the recipe that he used and see if I could make a smaller version for myself...after eating practically an entire ham left over from New Year's Day luncheon, I am a bit weary of too many leftovers...and ham, dammit. I really like ham, but I am a bit overdosed.

I also am not a big fan of the darker parts of the chicken...yes, Virginia, I know that's where the most flavor is, but I'm just not as thrilled about the taste of those pieces. Although, after braising them in a lot of wine, all the parts will probably taste the same anyway.

So, I set out to make a 2-piece coq au vin, using the bone-in breasts that I had originally bought with a quick chicken soup in mind. (And, to be perfectly honest...the real reason I wanted to make coq au vin was so I could make something with pearl onions. I love those little buggers when you put them in a stew or braised dish--they are like little flavor sponges, soaking up all manner of goodness.)

Also put it out of your head that this is going to be a 30-minute meal. Is braising, people...br-aaaa-zing. Braising is long, slow cooking in a flavorful liquid...operative word being long.

The definition of "coq au vin" is basically "rooster in wine," and supposedly was a way to use an older, tougher bird, but most recipes I've ever seen call for chicken/hen. I found this definition on Wikipedia and thought it amusing:

Coq au vin is a French braise of chicken cooked with wine, lardons (BACON!), mushrooms, and optionally garlic. While the wine is typically Burgundy wine, many regions of France have variants of coq au vin using the local wine, such a coq au vin jaune (Jura), coq au Riesling (Alsace), coc au Champagne, and so on.

Well, at first glance, it's not *that* amusing, but when I tell you the part about my coq au vin should be called "coq au whatever bottle I found in the bottom of the china cabinet and then the stupid cork broke off in it and I had to push it all the way through, AND strain the stupid pieces of cork out," then, it gets amusing.

And, there's the quest to find frozen pearl onions, which seemed to have disappeared from every store but Kroger, which had 4 bags for $5, so I bought 4 to have for future use. (And, Kroger was the 3rd store I went to...at that point, I was ready to even prep fresh ones if I could have found them...did I mention that I decided to do this dish during the Great Southern Blizzard of January 2010? The one where my area closed schools for 2 days on the day before we had even received any snow? The one where there were rabid hordes at the grocery getting bread and milk as if was 2012 and the Mayan calendar had just fallen off the pyramid?)

So, go look at the AG's post--he remembers to post pictures during the important parts--and look at the stages of his coq au vin. Pretty much, mine looked exactly like his, with the exception of cutting the ingredients mostly in half...I made all the onions and mushroom parts! I almost overcooked the breasts, because I should have lowered the temperature of my oven when I flipped them. I cut the cooking time to about 35 minutes, and when I pulled that glorious pot of goodness out, it was boiling merrily away...not simmering, but boiling. Ack!

I also liked the idea that he served his leftovers with buttered egg noodles, so I decided to go straight to that step for the actual first service. The leftovers were still very awesome 3 days later...the chicken was a little overdone after being zapped, but that's usually the case.

This would also be a good casual company dish with mashed potatoes and some sort of green veg--maybe steamed green beans. Next time, though I think I'll use a better bottle of vin and hopefully avoid that whole picking of cork out of my teeth. Hadn't had to do that since college...when one of my neighbors down the hall, who was way more sophisticated than me, smuggled in bottles of Blue Nun, and invariably no one had a corkscrew. We were pretty adept at poking the cork through with a steak knife and drinking around the bits.

Not that I've looked for Blue Nun in about 20 years or so, but she's still around...and has gone high tech with the website and other offerings. Now, I'm going to have to seek out the ol' gal and see how she's changed with the times. I'll report back for the good of the Republic and let you all know. After all, if she was good enough for Elvis... Cheers!


Besides, I'm going to need something to do with myself as we begin the Rickety Fat Dog Tumor Watch 2010. Yep, it looks like the mass in his mouth is making a resurgence, and we are going to have to be aggressive, be! be! aggressive! with it. Which means a trip to a veterinary dentist/oral surgeon who has experience with this sort of stuff...and then, there's still no guarantee. The last few years have really sucked, and for once, it would be nice if Fate would deal me, if not a winning hand, a hand that allows me to stay in the game. Hand me that corkscrew...I need a medicinal dose.

I mean, how can you not want to throw your all your worldly possession into saving this little face?

Indiana Poodle and the Risotto of Doom

Even though I've been off the road for a couple of weeks, I've not been really inspired to cook like I had planned. It's a bitch to cook for 1, you tend to eat more if you cook more, or at least I do, and there's just only so many leftovers I can eat. Sometimes, I do remember to freeze things, but for some strange reason, it never crosses my mind until after I've eaten something for 3 days in a row.

Whine, whine, whine...so when I saw this recipe on SlashFood, I thought it sounded pretty good and it was designed for 1. So, I promptly decided to double it, so I would have leftovers. Yeah, so not the sharpest knife in the block, am I?

But, it really shouldn't be a big deal to double this recipe--it's rice-based, so you need to remember that cooking rice is ratio-based: 2 parts liquid to 1 part rice, and just make sure the liquid is doubled as well.

Red Wine Risotto

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 lb. ground beef
3/4 cup arborio rice
1 cup red wine
1 cup beef broth
Grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil and butter in a small or medium sauce pan over medium heat. Saute the garlic and onion until translucent but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add in the ground beef and cook until browned. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir in the arborio rice to coat it with the beef, garlic and onion mixture. Add 1/2 cup wine, stirring until the wine absorbs, about 1 minute.

Stir in 1/4 cup beef broth, allowing the rice to absorb it. Add the remaining wine and broth, 1/4 cup at a time, stirring regularly and allowing each addition be absorbed before adding the next, until the risotto is tender, about 20 minutes. The risotto should be creamy but still have some visible liquid.

Remove from the heat and serve immediately, topped with grated Parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.

The recipe above is the original recipe. I encourage you to click on the link in the earlier part of this post, so you can read the description of the dish, especially keeping this part in mind: "When cooking for one, it's calming, even therapeutic after a long day of work, to stand over the stove and stir."

Yeah.

Standing over a hot stove, stirring yourself into a repetitive motion shoulder injury is not my idea of ending a long and stressful day. This is what I get for not actually reading for comprehension when looking at the post...and then being dumb enough to double the recipe, because even though I followed the rules about the liquid to rice ratio, what did I not take into account? Oh, how about that it might take twice as long to make the damn dish!

Some days, it's a wonder I can dress myself, much less make food. Never again will I say anything snarky about the cheftestants on Top Chef when they make something and screw up their estimate of how long it will take to complete the dish. (Except for ice cream during the Quickfire Challenge...People! Have you not watch any previous seasons of Top Chef? The entire planet knows by now that the ice cream maker IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, and that the judges totally see through the whole "it failed as ice cream, so I'll make it a sabayon and no one will ever know the difference." They've all seen the other seasons of Top Chef--heck, they were there!)

So, I saute the onions and garlic and add the ground beef. While the beef is cooking, I get my wine and beef broth together and measure out my rice. I sauteed the rice for a few minutes, getting it coated with the beef and onions and add the first half cup of wine. After the wine is absorbed, I add some beef stock, and continue this for the next 45 freaking minutes. The rice was like a sponge, soaking up more and more liquid, but never getting soft. 1 quart of beef stock and 3/4 of a bottle of wine later, it finally becomes something that vaguely resembles risotto. (I am seriously considering buying a case of this arborio rice and using it to soak up the excess water in my yard from the monsoons we've been having for the last couple of months. Seriously.)

(Note that screaming at the rice to "cook, bitch, COOOOK!!" at the 40-minute mark, does not actually make it cook any faster, but it makes you feel better...until you realize you are yelling at rice.)

I felt that the original dish was underseasoned with the directions to just add salt and pepper, so along with a generous helping of salt, I added a lot of freshly ground black pepper. I used the Italian Spice Grinder of Doom to add a little flair (and taste!), and I adjusted the seasoning several times during the absorption process.

As I scooped out the risotto into a bowl for dinner, it dawned on me that this was the exactly (minus the wine of course) like one of the first things that I ever cooked for myself, when I was about 11. I would saute onions, mushrooms, and ground beef and add it to a couple of scoops of cooked Minute Rice...grand total cooking time was probably about 25 minutes, and the longest part was waiting for the water to boil so I could dump in the Minute Rice.

However, I must say, even thought it was more time-consuming than I had originally thought, this dish was pretty darn good comfort food, and a little more sophisticated than my 11-year old self's "original" creation...plus, I got to drink the leftover wine. Not exactly something I could do when I was 11 without some sort of incredible downward spiral that had me living under bridge and/or writing a best-selling autobiography.)

And, I'm really looking forward to the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.