Coq au Vin

I wasn't at all prepared on what to cook for dinner tonight, and all I have were frozen split chicken breasts. I'm tired of roasted or baked chicken. And I hate frying!!! 

As I looked over the counter, I saw a few of half-opened bottles of red wine, all of the sudden I had an Aha! moment! So, I decided to make Coq au Vin, a classic French dish which simply means Chicken in Red Wine. I quickly scoured the internet for a Coq au Vin recipe on my iPod Touch and saw Tyler Florence's version online. As I quickly glanced over the ingredients, I pretty much have everything in stock except for a few items like cognac to flambé, pearl onions or burgundy wine. Instead I skipped the flambé part, which I thought would be so cool to do.  Boo Hoo :'(   So then, I substituted the pearl onions to sweet Vidalia onions, regular bacon to wild boar bacon and the burgundy wine to my leftover red table wines. And since I'm not following Tyler's recipe to a tee, I've also decided to add a few more things to this gracious dish; like the a can of diced tomatoes and frozen peas as you will see.

This is an easy dinner to make yet so flavorful. And if you have tons of leftover red wine, now you know what to do!

Ingredients:

4 Split Chicken Breasts

Flour

Salt and Pepper

6 Wild Boar Bacon

1 small Vidalia Onions, chopped

5-6 Garlic Cloves, crushed

1 can of Mushrooms

1 can of Diced Tomatoes

1 small package of frozen Peas

1 can of Low Sodium Chicken Broth/Stock (14.5 0z)

4 cups of Red Table Wine

2 tsp of Dried Thyme

2 tsp of Herbs de Provence

3-5 Bay Leaves

Olive Oil

Directions:

Rinse chicken breasts in cold water. Pat dry with paper towels. Season with salt and pepper.

In a dutch oven, fry the bacon over medium heat until nice and crisp. Transfer bacon in a plate lined with paper towels to drain oil. Brown chicken in bacon fat on both sides. Remove chicken from bacon fat. Add onions and garlic. Let it fry until tender and translucent. Then, add mushrooms, diced tomatoes and peas. Let it simmer for a couple of minutes. Then bring  the browned chicken back into the pot. Slowly add chicken stock and wine. Add all of the remaining herbs. Let it simmer for an hour and fifteen minutes, uncovered. Remove chicken and transfer them on a rack over baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and broil in the oven for about 5 minutes. 

Serve chicken over mashed potatoes, then spoon over some of the red wine sauce with veggies. Finish it off with crumble fried bacon on top!

Dinner is served. Bon Apetit.

P.S. In Tyler's recipe, it says to add cornstarch or tomato paste to help thicken the sauce during the last 15 minutes of the simmering process. In my dish, however, I didn't have to do this, partly because the starch on the peas helped thicken it up! :)