Thursday, October 15, 2009

Food for thought... Coq au Vin

Recently I have been thinking about Coq au Vin and I was trying to think of a way of refining it without disrupting the flavors tremendously. My thoughts were to remove the skin from the whole chicken in one full piece, pounding out the breast meat, making a confit with one leg and deboning and making a forcemeat with the other leg adding the gizzards, and slab bacon. From there my mind told me to combine the confit leg to the forcemeat, folding it in gently, and twisting it in some plastic wrap into a cylinder. Now I plan on laying out the sheet of skin dusting it with some TG, topping it with the pounded breast meat again dusting with TG and placing the forcemeat in the center and rolling it like a burrito. Time to seal it in a bag with the vacuum sealer and cook it in a bath at 68 degrees Celsius for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile peel fresh cipollini onions and sear them hard on top and bottom then add red wine and thyme and reduce au sec then add chicken demi and braise gently. Also this dish required a mushroom component and I'm think ragout but I do want to think a little harder about this part of the dish ( think morels). Next I want a simple celery root puree as a base for the dish. Once the chicken is out of the water bath it is time to sear the skin to caramelize and crispen it. I picture this dish with a swipe of celery root puree, a small mound of mushrooms, three cipollinis and a single round cut from the chicken cylinder placed onto the mushrooms, finally the plate is sauced with the braising liquid from the cipollinis. This seems like and interesting take on Coq au Vin, but for now it is just food for thought...

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