A chicken by any other name…..

I am uni-lingual.  I used to be able to speak Afrikaans and can still understand a bit but other than that never really learned any other languages. However, my restaurant French, Italian and German are not too bad.

We seem to have moved from menus having everything in French to having lyrical descriptions of each dish. I remember an hilarious dinner with (British) colleagues in San Francisco when the waiter came to our table to tell us the specials for the evening and started with “Smoked Scotch Salmon from Norway”.  I am not sure he quite understood even after we tried to explain it to him

One of my mother’s favourite dishes was Chicken in Red Wine. There seem to be many different recipes for Coq au Vin so this is as good as any. I use a mixture of olive oil and butter.

Coq au Vin - Norma’s recipe

1 chicken, jointed into 10 pieces                   

110 grams butter

4 Tab sherry                                 

1 tab tomato paste

3 tab flour                            

12 shallots peeled but left whole

12 button mushrooms                   

350 ml red wine                            

350 ml stock *

salt, pepper, garlic and bouquet garni

Salt and pepper chicken.  Put garlic into butter and brown chicken.  Pour over sherry and cook for a few minutes.  Take out chicken. Cook onions and mushrooms for a few minutes and put with chicken.  Add tomato paste, herbs and flour.  Cook for a few minutes, add hot stock and bring to boil stirring all the time. Add 150 ml wine and taste for seasoning.  Strain if necessary and pour over chicken. 

Simmer for 1½ hours, adding rest of wine gradually – can be cooked on the hob or in oven – probably around 160C.  Leave to cool, skim off fat: reheats and freezes well. 

If you wish you can strain the sauce and reduce it before pouring over the chicken and reheating thoroughly.

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 *if no stock was available she used half Oxo and half Telma chicken cubes– works for me