Barefoot Bloggers: Coq au Vin

Flambé better late then never! I love a good flaming pot of food, especially when I intentionally set it ablaze and not accidentally. This post is late due to my unfortunate incident with the exploding water. My hand healed really well and I can use potholders and everything now just like a big girl.

Coq au Vin. Chicken au vin, coq and wine, chix and wine (which is what we really have here when I'm with my friends, versus cooking like a fool right now) and at last we settle on chicken and wine. I really chopped up this recipe and made it my own due to extreme laziness and the fact that my kids don’t eat anything with “weird” ingredients like small frozen whole onions or (heaven forbid!) cremini mushrooms. DH HATES ‘shrooms, so there’s no point throwing them in just for myself to hear everyone whining and moaning about it and then having to pick them out.

The chicken part was easy – I used boneless skinless chicken breasts as I was too lazy and cold to walk downstairs and shuffle thru the freezer to dig out parts or defrost the bowling ball that is a whole chicken down there. Parts is parts. I also just used up every last shred of carrot in the house – literally just shredded from making a carrot cake - so I used parsnips. If anyone asks, they’re albino carrots. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So, I blithely start making the chix wit’ wine in my Colossal Pan. Yes, it actually IS called the Colossal Pan. This is one of my favorite pans - it's a big 6 quart puppy and because it’s so big, it’s almost a pot. Would that make it a pant? Hmmm.

Anyhoo, I cooked the bacon (I crumbled it after frying it whole because who wants to dice when they can crush?) I browned the chicken, I sautéed the onions. I added the garlic. I’m thinkin’ to myself – WOW 5 large cloves of garlic? You go girl! Alas, I have the cookbook open to page 2 of the recipe and forgot that my ingredients are on the page before – the pot roast on page 117 uses 5 cloves of garlic, if anyone’s interested – so my c.o.v. had 5 cloves instead of 2. Good thing I love garlic.

Moving forward to the flambé part.

I got the Colossal Lid to my Colossal Pan, just in case I needed to smother the flames before setting my kitchen alight, and grabbed a long fireplace match. I lit it from these cute little penguin candles from Bath & Body Works. Aren’t they sweet? Cinnamon scented, discounted with purchase, you can get coupons from their website if you sign up for email. But I digress. I pour in the cognac and light the match and POOF! Up in flames goes the pan. Coooool. Messy one comes running thinking I’m about torch the place and also says Cool when he is assured that I MEANT to set fire to dinner this time.




Now, I know you’re thinking, well Lisa, that Colossal Pan doesn’t look like it has an oven proof handle. And of course, you’d be right. It always usually helps to actually READ the recipe – I missed the whole preheat your oven thing or else I’d have started out in the other pot that can go in the oven.

Presto changeo. Through the miracle of the internet and my DH who washes the dishes without complaint, the dinner is now clad in stainless steel.



40 minutes later, we’re good to go. I thickened up the sauce with the flour/butter paste and stopped there as we weren’t partaking of the ‘shroom and onion action. Served with egg noodles and they liked it. What? Oh, those are albino carrots honey. No? Oh, silly me those are actually potatoes. You like potatoes. Eat them. No whining, Santa knows when you whine. Trust me.

Many thanks to Bethany of this little piggy went to market for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to see exactly how easy, simple and tasty this Coq au Vin is, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s new book, Back to Basics on page 116. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.