Mike van de Elzen: Chicken Coq au Vin

Chicken Coq au Vin 

Cook time: 25 minutes 

Prep time: 30 minutes 

Serves: 6 

6 large bone-in chicken thighs or legs  

2 cups red wine  

12 baby white onions, outer skin removed  

2 tbsp sunflower oil  

Flaky salt and white pepper  

200gm button mushrooms  

6 rashers streaky bacon  

1 cube chicken stock dissolved in 1 cup water  

¼ cup chopped Italian parsley + extra for garnish  

6 serves mashed potatoes 

Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper and marinate in red wine for at least two hours in the fridge.  

Preheat oven to 180*C.  

Place the baby onions and mushrooms into a large casserole dish, toss with oil, salt and pepper and roast until the onions are tender (about 10 minutes)  

Next heat a large cast iron pan and saute bacon till coloured. Remove bacon and chop into large pieces.  

Remove chicken thighs from marinade and brown in the pan with a touch of oil. Cook the chicken in batches to avoid stewing. Once coloured place the chicken into the casserole dish Cover with bacon, onions, mushrooms, red wine, stock and parsley. Cover with tinfoil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove tin foil and continue to cook for a further 25 minutes.  

To serve: spread a generous amount of parsnip mash on each plate. Spoon over the coq au vin and garnish with chopped Italian parsley. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks A'B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Mike Vander Ellison is with us now, our resident chef.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
So busy week on the farm this week.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
That was, well next week, actually, we've got a lot
of events coming up that require eggs, and so I
thought I'll give our chickens a little bit of pampering
because I haven't been laying a lot.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Later, so I went and I cleaned their.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
Heart out, put on some nice straw, laid some more
straw in their little nesting boxes, got on some nice
brand new nibble wheat to feed them, and I even
cleaned the water out, and I gave them some budgies
from the garden and.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
They repaid you. How Mike, we have twenty.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Six chickens, and in the last ten days, guess how
many eggs I have received from those twenty six chickens.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh, twenty six we got head.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
How many?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
How many eggs would you? I know that you grew
up on a poultry fundn't you?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
I did, Yes, you.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Know something about this, So how many eggs would you
expect a day from a chicken?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I would expect at least one.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Okay, so twenty sacks wasn't too bad a guess.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
Right, Yeah, so I'm going, I'm going there's only one
chicken out there, there's lane. So it got me thinking
about it might be time to replace part of that flock.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Okay, so how do you how do you do?

Speaker 4 (01:35):
You? Just do?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
You just sit and watch and work out which chicken
is the lucky chicken to.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
Make it, I've got I introduced two young ones not
so long ago, so I pretty much know which ones
are laying and which ones are not. And so yes,
the next week they potentially will be getting moved on.
So it started me thinking about what am we going
to do with the chickens, because they asked they're old
pot roasters. You know that they're not your most tender

(02:00):
sort of chicken.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
They're moving on but coming back in a different stage.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Okay, they're coming back in a delicious way.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
So they're going to go back in a delicious way.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
So what did you come.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Up with so perfect dish for old older birds? And
even back in the day when this dish was invented,
it was actually for the roosters. So it's called chicken cocovan.
It's a traditional French dish, and going by the weather
today and what's coming tonight, it's actually probably quite a
perfect dish for a daylight today.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Wouldn't mind it if it turned up on the doorstep
at all, Mike.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
The chicken or the cocovar the cocovan, of course, yeah,
absolutely you could have. You could have twenty four of
mine if you want. So you don't need to go
out and curl all your chickens out of the back
and you're in your roosty dess. Just go to the supermarket,
get some large chicken thighs bonin.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
And what we want to do start the soft is
to marinate chickens.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
So take chicken thigh season up, live it, salt, little
bit of pepper, chuck them into a container and then
cover them with red wine. So that's the most important
part of cocovarn is the red wine. Make sure the
nicely covet is going to take a couple of cups
to cover those chickens. Put them into the fridge and
then let them sit. If you've got time, you could
put some garlic in there. You could put some baileies

(03:23):
in there. You can put some time in there, some peppercorns,
and preferably leave them overnight. The longer they marinate, the
more they're going to take in that red wine color
and also the flavor. So next while that's marinating, heat
up your oven hundred and eighty degrees. And then the
other components are twelve baby onions, so like your little
pickling onions, yep, peel them, tuck them into a roasting tray,

(03:45):
along with some mushrooms. So I've just got button mushrooms
like container button mushrooms. Toss them into a roasting tray,
a little bit of all, a little bit of salt,
and fire them into the oven one hundred and eighty degrees.
We're just going to pre cook those, so about ten
minutes after that, pulled them out. Then heat up a
cast iron pan. Add in some rations of bacon. So
I've got six freshings of bacon into their cast iron pan.

(04:05):
Cook them in so it's nice and crispy on the outside.
Remove them from your pan, and then chop them up roughly.
Now in that same pan, remove your chicken from the
marinate a little bit of oil, fire them into that pan,
and cook off your chicken. So basically everything's getting pre
cooked for this dish. Cook it off until it's nice
and colored, maybe season them up a little bit more,

(04:26):
and then take those chickens once the colored, put them
into the casserole dish. Cover them with your chopped up bacon,
Cover them with your onions and your mushroom. Pour in
that red wine that's been marinating, and then I also
get like a little oxocube. Maybe fire one of them
with probably about a cup of water and some parsley.
Cover that and some tinfoil. Fire them into the oven

(04:47):
one hundred and eighty degrees. It's going to be about
forty minutes. After forty minutes, take the tin fall off
and fire it back in for another twenty five minutes.
And what you want is you want those juices to
rejuice down and the top of the chicken just to
color up a little bit. And then I would serve
that with a generous amount of either parsonate mash. I'm
still going on a bit while part also potato mash,

(05:08):
spoon your coco bar and over the top and garnishap maybe.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
With a little bit more Italian parsi.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
And that is cocovar done simply and really, really tasty
using up those old birds.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
When you get new chickens, when you get your new
young ones, and how long does it take before they're
giving you an egg?

Speaker 4 (05:24):
Day? Wow, you got to separate them because the chickens
is a real pecking order that goes on, and those
chickens in that you would be amazed to see. The
chickens are quite bullies, or they are bullies compared to
younger chickens. So chuck them in, separate them out. A
half day chick from half day to when they start laying,
I would have to say about nine to ten weeks.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Okay, you got a bit of a shortages. You gotta
be a shortage on your hand then, Mike. But best
of luck with that. We look forward to hearing how
things are progressing with the chickens.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news talks they'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.