Coq au sauvignon blanc

“This popular dish may be called coq au Chambertin, coq au Riesling, or coq au whatever wine you use for its cooking.” Julia Child

Based on, based on, probably ad infinitum is the story of tonight's proposed dinner. And for want of a better description I'm calling it Coq au sauvignon blanc - or 'sav blonk' as some would say..

But of course it's not coq at all, so let's begin there on this tiny ramble around a classic french dish.

For every group of chickens that actually has a resident cock, there would probably only be one cock or else there would be fights. Which is why cock fighting has been a tradition all over the world since time immemorial. Which just proves that tradition is not always a good thing.

There are two somewhat opposing views therefore about who was first making this dish. The rich? - because cocks were rare and therefore a delicacy or the poor who made something out of nothing - i.e. the cock who was long past his usefulness as a - cock? Oh dear.

Apparently there was no written recipe for Coq au vin until the early 20th century, which I confess I find rather amazing, but of course, such a dish must surely have been made since chickens and wine appeared on the scene. And when was that? Well once again AI has the answer - roughly 8,000 years ago in the Neolithic period. That's a very long time ago, but it's not hard to imagine some of those first cooks throwing a chicken in a pot with some wine and other things - specifically in this case - bacon, garlic, onions and mushrooms. Did they have bacon? Maybe - it' and ancient way of preserving the ubiquitous pig after all.

But jump to 52BC and there is another story, and one which also plays a part in explaining how the cock became the national symbol of France as a nation. (Marianne is a symbol of France, the state - and somehow Joan of Arc doesn't get a look in.) Wikipedia tells us:

"the association between the rooster and the Gauls/French was developed by the kings of France for the strong Christian symbol that the rooster represents: prior to being arrested, Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed on the following morning. At the rooster's crowing, Peter remembered Jesus's words. Its crowing at the dawning of each new morning made it a symbol of the daily victory of light over darkness and the triumph of good over evil."

There's a rather more interesting, and actually, in some ways, more likely, origin story however, that adds in the origins of coq au vin as well and takes us back to 52BC - when the latin word gallus not only meant somebody from Gaul (France) but also a cock/rooster. 52BC is significant because that was the moment when Julius Caesar was beseiging Gergovia in central France and Vercingetorix (which means Great king of warriors), was in opposition. He sent Caesar a cock as 'a symbol of the fighting spirit of the French forces.' In return Caesar invited him, the day before the battle, to a meal for which the gifted cock had been cooked in wine - maybe symbolising defeat and lots of blood? Anyway it was viewed as offensive and stirred on the 30,000 troops under Vercingetorix to a resounding defeat of Caesar. Thus combining a national symbol and the origins of a national dish at the same time.

But really? Probably not. If cocks and wine had been around since Neolithic times, then it had already become a regular meal. You use what you have to hand don't you?

It seems that Julia Child and her two friends who wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking were the ones who really made Coq au vin a thing that every French bistro around the world latched on to.. bakc in 1961 when they published Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And you can watch the lovely Jamie of Jamie and Julia make Julia Child's coq au vin - in a rather more speeded up way than usual - I think it lasts about 7 minutes. His videos are reassuring, because he makes mistakes along the way and yet it all turns out alright. Mostly - as it did with this one.

And it doesn't look too different from this one from a French website (in English) called Comme des Français. No recipe alas, but they do tell us what they think of as the classic format:

"the composition is the same: cuts of rooster marinated then braised in a red wine, the result being embellished with a bouquet garnished with lardons, mushrooms, carrots and onions."

Carrots? I don't think anyone else does carrots.

Nevertheless, very similar to Bœuf Bourgignon.

However, what we are having tonight is not Coq au vin - well yes it technically is, but certainly not Coq au riesling, but Coq au sauvignon blanc - Coq Loireais? I was going to roughly follow Nigel's recipe for Coq au riesling which can be found on the Simply Delicious website, but which I have in his book Real Food. However, it won't be quite the same because it's not coq - well neither is Nigel's - there won't be riesling because I have an opened bottle of sauvignon blanc in my fridge, and it won't be made with the right cuts of meat - for Nigel bone in, skin on, cuts of chicken. I have just one large, skinless and boneless chicken breast - for which I partly blame David - he doesn't like drumsticks or thighs much - and also the supermarkets, who, these days don't do skin on, bone in cuts of chicken any more, other than Marylands - sometimes - or a whole chicken. I have no idea why this is as so many recipes these days call for skin on and bone in. Chefs rarely use anything else because of the golden glow of crispy skin - even if it isn't so crispy after a bathe in some kind of sauce - and extra taste from the bones. I'm also not using double cream - just standard reduced cream and, I almost forgot, my mushrooms are just ordinary white mushrooms rather than the brown ones that Nigel recommends. So, alright, not Nigel's recipe at all really.

But it will be Nigel's method. Mostly because it's less onerous than others. LIke - I am not going to marinade it. I am not going to complicate things by adding stock to the mix - Jamie of Jamie and Julia added beef stock (in the form of stock cubes) to his Coq au vin. Beef stock? For chicken? The cubes may have been him, but I'm pretty sure that he would have followed Julia in principle and gone with beef stock if she said so. I am also not going to thicken anything with flour or an egg yolk - I'll just be boiling it down if there's too much liquid. I don't want to end up with something like the writer of Cook's Gazette noticed:

Traditionally prepared, it’s often a disappointment, with a thin acidic sauce and overcooked chicken."

I guess really what I am making is some sautéed chicken in white wine and cream, with onions (maybe leeks?) and mushrooms, not forgetting the garlic and bacon, and the parsley to make it look pretty at the end. Interesting that there is no tarragon mentioned anywhere however - just some parsley to sprinkle over or stir in right at the end.

Felicity Cloake had some interesting things to say in her attempt at a perfect Coq au riesling - and look her chicken doesn;t look that brown either. the most interesting of all was to note that none of her French cookbooks including the Larousse Gastronomique had a recipe for Coq au riesling:

"Its extensive entry on coq au vin solved the mystery, however. Although the red wine version is far better known in this country, in regions such as Alsace, it would of course have traditionally been prepared with the more plentiful local white. This is a matter so obvious to les editeurs at Larousse that they do not feel the need to pass comment on the fact that one of their recipes demands red wine and one white.

Thus enlightened, I return to the shelves to discover that, among the plethora of recipes for coq au vin, a handful concede they can also be made with riesling “along the same lines” – somewhat surprisingly, given that rich, dark coq au vin and tangy, creamy coq au riesling seem two very different spins on the same basic ingredients to me." Felicity Cloake

Which for her - begs the question:

"So is it possible to simply substitute white for red in the quest for perfection?" Felicity Cloake

Or for me - is it possible to substitute sauvignon blanc for riesling? Well of course it is, even if it comes from Australia - not even New Zealand. A gourmet might notice a difference in flavour. I certainly won't. And it may even not be as much as required - there's less than half a bottle there.

Could you substitute beer or cider - or is that where you leave the Coq au vin/Coq au riesling behind and move into different territory? For then, I can see you might be tempted into adding other things like mustard, pickles, maybe even cabbage or sauerkraut. Like human emotions it's a spectrum isn't it from an actual cock cooked in red wine with mushrooms, onions and bacon to chicken cooked in beer with cheese - a much richer and a rather different dish? Although you can see the progression. Or perhaps not a progression, just one technique that is used with different ingredients in different places.

Well that's fundamentally what cooking is isn't it? Rather than an actual recipe, learn a technique that uses a fairly standard set of ingredients. The kind of thing you would find in an everyday fridge raid meal, and then adapt. It will make a good example of a sauté in my yet to be completed grandkid's cookbook.

The final picture is from the one website that had the nerve to include sauvignon blanc - well 'sav blanc' as they said, in their title - Bottle & Brush Studio, although you have to pay to get the actual recipe.

Mine probably won't look as good - I rarely get my chicken to brown, and I think I shall probably be cutting my chicken into smaller pieces anyway - and of course it doesn't have the skin. I think it will probably taste alright though and it won't take long either. I'm going to serve it with some garlic and plain but warmed bread, and a green salad. I think that's all it needs. And it's 34 degrees here today, so too hot to make a potato gratin - which would otherwise be an option. And as I've said many times before - David doesn't like mashed potatoes - which would also be good.

YEARS GONE BY

December 17

2024 - A small triumph

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Nothing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Pecorino

2018 - Nothing

2017 - A bowl of cherries

2016 - Blanquette de veau