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Coq au Vin

Chicken in a Red Wine Sauce
Years and years ago my folks got me Monet's Table, a beautiful book with great color plates of Monet's home at Giverny, all about his entertaining guests. The second half of the book has a bunch of his recipes, with photographs of his original recipe journals. Now I'd made coq au vin before loads of time, but never found that it was truly amazing. And that's because I wasn't using bacon. So I borrowed that idea, integrated it into my recipe, and whoa... so nice, so velvety.

For 4

Ingredients

4 Chicken Breasts, with skin, on the bone
½ # Bacon
16 Pearl Onions
6 Cloves Garlic (sliced into slivers)
16 Small Mushrooms
4 T Butter
Black Pepper
Salt
2 T Thyme
½ Cup Brandy
1 Cup Chicken Stock
4 Cups Red Wine

Directions

Cut bacon into 1 inch pieces, slice garlic into slivers, remove skin from pearl onions. In large pot over medium-high to high flame, cook bacon, garlic, and onions with 2 T butter, for about 15 minutes (until the bacon is crispy and the garlic and onions are starting to brown. Remove bacon, garlic, and onions from pan and set aside.

Add 2 more T of butter to the pot, salt and pepper your chicken breasts, sprinkle your thyme over them, and sear the chicken breasts off in the pan. Add your mushrooms, flip to sear thoroughly, after about 10 minutes add brandy and fire off pan.

Add chicken stock and red wine, when reaches a simmer turn heat to low, cover, and simmer for about 25 minutes, rotating the breasts a few times. If sauce appears to be too thin, add a couple of tablespoons of roux (equal parts butter and flour quickly cooked together). Chances are you won't have to, though.

After the 25-ish minutes are up, kill the heat and transfer the contents of the pot to an oven dish (like a Pyrex pan). Add your bacon, garlic, and onions to the pan.

This doesn't have to be served right now. You can let it cool, put it in the fridge, and heat it up the next day (which is usually what I do, and it tastes all the better).

So when you're about an hour out from serving, set your oven to 350°. After about 15 minutes, put the dish in oven for 35 - 45 minutes to re-heat and finish cooking.

Serve over garlic mashed potatos or orzo, with asparagus or green beans.