Kazza the Blank One

This is the second recipe from the Women's Weekly French Classics book.  It was a tossup between that and the cassoulet, but Stu didn't like the look of the cassoulet recipe as he said it needed duck fat and toulouse sausages.

So, the coq au vin.

First lay out the ingredients.  Chicken thigh fillets, bacon, mushrooms, spring onions (I don't think I had the right kind really, but didn't make too much difference), stock, wine, flour, tomato paste, garlic, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves.

Here's everything prepped (except the chicken that needed flouring, and the herbs that needed de-stemming)

Firstly browning the onions a little.  Next time I'll try to find the more bulbous ones that were in the picture in the book.

Because I was using the frypan for browning but a big saucepan for cooking, I just started chucking things in the saucepan when they were browned.  This is just the wine, I left the stock out so I could use it for deglazing later.  Also has the little bits of spring onion, tomato paste, garlic, bay leaves and herbs.

Next we're browning mushrooms.  These little buttom mushrooms brown up nicely.

Into the pot they go!

Bacon!  Two packs of bacon! (done in a couple of batches)

Chuck the bacon into the pot

It's important to stay hydrated during the cooking process.  And if there's a bit of a bottle of shiraz leftover from the cooking, well it may as well be drunk, right?

The chicken thighs get coated with a little flour

And they get browned nicely in bacon fat :)

Into the pot!  I used some stock to deglaze the frypan and chucked all that in too

Then simmer away for about forty minutes

The finished product.  Served with a little rice to soak up juices.  Not very pretty to look at .. but it was soooo good!  Super super tasty.

Loved this dish, but again, I'd probably halve the recipe so all the browning didn't take so long to do.