French Cooking - Coq au Vin

The other night I thought I would have a crack at cooking something uniquely French. After all I have been here for many months, and I am not sure that buying some cheese and eating it with a baguette really counts as putting together traditional French cuisine.

After scouring some recipe sites on the internet, I came up with something that looked not overly difficult, and would hopefully be pretty tasty. I settled on 'Coq au Vin' (chicken in wine) a traditional French dish, the variation of which I made was Alsace (because I used Reisling) as the major wine.

So I ventured out to the supermarket (in the freezing cold, its like 5 degrees here at the moment) and bought my ingredients, chicken thighs, mushrooms, lardons (cubed bacon) thyme, reisling, onions, garlic, chicken stock, flour and a bay leaf (which I could not find).

After preparing all of the ingredients the first thing to do was to give the chicken a coating of flour mixed with some salt and pepper. Once the chicken was coated, I was to lightly fry both

sides of the chicken in some oil in a large pot, that was to be used for actually making the dish. I gave the chicken about 3 mins on both sides, so the peices were slightly yellowly/brown. (About the same colour of the pretty autumn leaves outside)

I then removed the chicken from the oil with some tongs, which I had to go all the way to IKEA to purchase. Apparently French people do not use tongs. I had looked in pretty much every shop in Paris that sells kitchen utensils for some tongs, with no luck. So I had to go and buy some from the Swedes. I have no idea how they go about cooking sausages here without tongs. I told my French friend, that a kitchen without tongs is like having a car without a steering wheel.

So i removed the chicken from the oil and put it aside on a plate. I turned the heat down a little, and added to the oil, the mushrooms, lardons, onions and garlic. I cooked this for about 5 minutes until the onions and mushrooms began to turn a little brown.

At this point I added my chicken stock and Riesling and mixed it all together throughly. I also added my thyme (and would have added a bay leaf at this point had I had one). It created a

wonderfully fragrant broth. I then turned the heat right up, in order to bring the broth to a boil. Once the broth came to a boil, it was time to pop the chicken back into pot with the broth, turn the heat down, pop the lid on, and leave it to simmer for about half and hour.

After the half an hour, the smell of the dish was wafting tastily throughout the house, making me very hungry.

I had prepared with the dish some mash potatos, couscous, and some green beans. I removed the chicken from the broth and placed it on the plate. I then spooned some generous portions of the broth to cover the chicken as well as all over the potatos and couscous.

We sat down at the table and then it was time for the all important first taste. Smelling the aroma whilst I was slaving over the stove for a half an hour or so, left my mouth keen to jump straight in. I put the first forkfull in my mouth and I was pleasantly suprised with the taste. It wasn't as terrible as I had feared. In fact if I do say so myself, it was pretty bloody good, and we began to eat away at the Coq au Vin. It had the sweetness of the Reisling as a dominating flavour but it was well balanced with the aromatic thyme, salty lardons and

the mushrooms providing a good balance to the sweet wine.

All in all it has left me keen to try something a little more difficult and hopefully even more tastier next time.

Part 2 - Things I ate and Drank

For the 2nd part of our weekend in Courjon & La Rochelle, I am going to go through this in chronological order.

We hopped of the train in La Rochelle on Friday afternoon and after a bit of a wander around town headed to a cool little wine bar called "La Guignette" Here they specialise in flavoured local wine. All they do is get some white wine, mix it with some fruits and volia! We tried, 'Le Rince-Goret' (citrus fruits) 'La Rouge' (red fruits) and 'La Verte' (Apple). They all tasted pretty good, and the best bit is that the wine on tap at the bar. Just take up your empty bottle when you have finished for a re-fill.

After filling up on wine we headed to a local restaurant, for dinner. For dinner I had what

was described in the menu as the "Duck Pyramid"(pictured left after I had eaten half). However it was more of a cylinder than a pyramid (but I wont hold it against them). It had a bottom layer of mashed potatoes, on top of which was a some caramelised onions. On top of this was a big fat slice of foire gras. Finally on top of all of this was a whole leg of duck. It was easily one of the best things I have ever eaten. It was also one of the fattiest things I have ever eaten. But I think thats what made it so good.

Blotting to copybook slightly we headed off for lunch at McDonalds on Saturday. This was only a precursor for the cheesy goodness we were going to experience at dinner on Saturday night.

Saturday night started off quietly with a bit of foire gras on some toasted bread. To wash down our foire gras, we did so with a bit of the local specialty from the region called 'Pineau'. Pineau is

effectively is a fortified wine and is made by mixing traditional fortified wine, with grape juice, and the result is a very strong very sweet liqueur. After this it was time for dinner, which was a traditional French meal of raclette. What is raclette, you may ask? Well I think the best way to describe it, is its basically Korean bbq, but with cheese. You have a big grille in the centre of the table which you use to cook you meat on. However under the large grille there are also small paddles for each person that you place a square of cheese on. You then put your paddle with cheese into your slot, this slot heats up your cheese until it melts. Then you take your cooked meat off the grill ontop, take your melted cheese on the paddle below, then scrape the cheese off your paddle and all over your cooked meat. Then you eat. Yum yum! The meat we enjoyed with our cheese, was Jambon sec, saucisson, salami as well as baked potatoes. Dinner was washed down with a nice local red. It was cheesy but oh so good.

After dinner it was time for what was my highlight of the weekend. We had a chance to try some cognac which was bottled in 1865 (yes thats not a typo). So we had some 144 year old cognac and my god, I had only the smallest sip, and it felt like my mouth was going to explode. It was like someone had punched me in the face. But it was a fine way to finish off the evening before some more feast the next day.

Sunday lunch is traditionally a big meal in French households and we certainly were in for a treat on this Sunday. Lunch time, and we had 'Confit du Canard' (ie some more duck) It was cooked to perfection in its own fat, and once again we washed it down with a local white.

So all in all a great weekend of gastronomy.

Bordeaux

Last weekend we travelled down to Bordeaux, located in the south west of France and of course home to one of the great wine producing regions.

We flew down there (as it was cheaper than the plane), it is only about 500km from Paris, so the hostesses on the flight had barely enough time to serve all of the drinks, when it was already time to begin our decent into Bordeaux.

We arrived late on a friday night. After a short bus trip into town from the airport, we quickly checked into our hotel and made our way out into city for some dinner. One thing that quickly struck us was the size of some of the churches there. Immense is easily the most apt word to describe them. They were enormous. With nice flying butresses (thanks Rach) and spires that seem to reach the clouds, they certainly were a little different to some of the grand eglises that we see around Paris.

We found a hearty local resturant, and despite the late hour (almost 11pm) we were greeted warmly, and with confusion over where our French accents were from. (The waiter thought we were from Canada). I think he was a little confused that some antipodeans could speak French relatively well. Personally I think our French was a little crap, (well mine was anyway). We ordered some local delicacies (including a salad with an entire wheel of camembert baked and sitting on top) and washed it all down with a nice bottle of local red before retiring back to the hotel.

Next morning was an early start in order to get going on our full day wine tasting experience. We arrived a little tired at 9am at the meeting point for the 1st half of our tour, which involved a trip around town, and a visit to the Bordeaux Wine Museum. This was to be followed by a hearty lunch at a resturant specialising in local delicasies, followed by the afternoon visit to a couple of local wineries for some wine tasting.

Lets face it, we went on the tour to sample some local wine, so the two hours we spent at the wine museum positively dragged on. Yes it was mildly interesting to hear about all of the history of wine in the local area and to look at all of the old machines etc etc. But everytime the guide said "Are there any questions?" I was itching to put up my hand and say, "Do we get to try the wine now?" Finally at the end of our tour of the musem, they cracked open a couple of bottles of local red, and we were able to get stuck right in. Although it was only 11am, I quickly polished off my two generously portioned glasses. I did however savour it properly first, with the nose and all of the other things that it is suggested you should do when you are a massive wine connoisseur.

After the musem it was onto a resturant for lunch. We had some goats cheese with cream thing

for entree, (i have no idea what it was called) and the main course was a confit du canard with some assorted vegetables. Very nice. I however, was most looking forward to dessert, which involved us all venturing down into the cellar. There we were all provided with a knife and plate, at which point they opened the door to a large refrigerated room containing about 100 different cheeses, and told to go for our lives. So we wandered into the cold cheesy nirvana, and immediately I went to work with my knife, cutting off large chunks of Brie, Camambert, Mimollete, Blues', Munster, Roquefort and any others that took my fancy in the cold cheesy heaven. We returned to the table to gorge ourselves on our soft creamy treasure. Full bellied and ready for a nap, it was difficult to pry us up out of our seats for the afternoon trip out to the wineries.

We left Bordeaux and headed North West to the Haut Medoc

region of Bordeaux, which predominately produces Cabernet Savingion and Merlot varities of wines. We arrived at the first winery after about 45 mins in the bus, and on the way we went past about 50 or 60 other wineries. Infact all you can see for miles and miles around are grape vines. We had a bit of a tour of the winery. Had a look at a few vats, some barrels of wine, and generally paid little attention whilst the winery owner lectured us for about 20 mins on the vagaries of wine production in the local area. (Its so dry that each vine produces less grapes than normal, but because they produces less, the grape bunches they do produce is more concentrated in its colour and flavour which is ideal for wine. All of the bunches are picked by hand) Again at the end of the talk, it was asked "Are there any

questions", I found it difficult to keep quiet and not ask, "When are we tasting the wine". My impaitence was rewarded however, as we wandered into the next room. Glasses were already being laid neatly on the counter, each with a generous helping of their quality Cab Sav contained within. A quick smell, a swirl in the hand, and then into the mouth it went, nice and sweet. This was then followed by a glass of their merlot, which was also pretty good.

After this it was back onto the bus and off to the next winery. We travelled along for another half an hour, and again went past another 50 or 60 wineries, before we came to ours. Once again out the window the view was mainly rows and rows of neatly laid out grape vines, with the occasional field of corn, smattered in amongst them.

The next winery, and the whole process was repeated. We got another long talk on how the wine is made, and how the grapes are harvested and how it is all transported etc etc. Again, we grew

impaintent and longed to get to the business end of the visit. It was finally obliged to us and we had a couple more glasses of some tasty red goodness. After which we piled back on the bus and headed back into town, with full stomachs and tired eyes.

The following day (Sunday) was spent wandering around the town, taking in the sights, checking out a few of the other large churches, and sampling some more of the local delicacies. Another famous delicacy from Bordeaux is called a Canelé which according to wikipedia is "a small French pastry with a soft and tender custard center and a dark, thick caramelized crust. The dessert, which is in the shape of small, striated cylinder approximately two inches in height, is a specialty of the Bordeaux region of France but can often be found in Parisian patisseries as well. Made from egg, sugar, milk and flour flavored with rum and vanilla, the custard batter is baked in a mold, giving the canelé a caramelized crust and custard-like inside."

They are really yum, and if you ever have the chance to have one, do not hesitate. Here are a couple of pictures of them.

Following on from this here are a few pictures of some of the sights around the town of Bordeaux.

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