Good Cook (7 page)

A rich and winy sort of assembly, here, that would be very good eating on a wet and wintry night. There is also something of a Swiss-chalet flavor about it, too, after a day out in the snow. A very nice accompaniment would be a side dish of big fat gherkins, which further affords a pleasing contrast to the lavish dairy notes of the dish.

Preheat the oven broiler.

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan. Season the chops and fry on both sides until golden. Tip off any excess oil, turn down the heat a little and pour in the wine. Allow to bubble and then reduce the heat to low, so that the wine simmers gently and reduces by about half. Turn the chops once again during this process, which should amount to about 10 minutes’ cooking time in all.

Meanwhile, mix together the cheese, peppercorns, cream, mustard and sage in a small bowl. Spread this paste on to the cooked chops and place the whole assembly under the broiler, until all has bubbled and melted to a golden finish.

Remove the chops to a hot serving dish, then take the pan and place it back on a low heat; some of the mixture will have slipped off the chops into the winy juices, so just whisk it in. Gently reheat this sauce and pour it around the chops. Plainly boiled potatoes are best, here, I think.

The first time I made coq au vin, aged about sixteen, it turned out as a bit of a purple, watery mess. The wine was cheap (I think Dad may have gone down the Hirondelle route, assuming you may recall that particular vinous delight), with the taste insipid as a result. The bacon—well … it was just any old bacon, probably. The chicken itself, then, was probably quite a good one, but I had overcooked it so much, the breast parts turned to rags. Mum, bless her, thought the mushrooms were the best part. “Nice and juicy,” she said. I certainly remember that bit.

You may be pleased to know I’m better at it now. So, read on … Try not to miss out the preliminary cooking of the wine, together with its useful aromatics.

Put the first 9 ingredients into a stainless steel or enameled pot and bring to the boil. Leave over a medium flame until reduced by one third. Strain through a fine sieve and cool completely. Marinate the chicken pieces in this for at least 5–6 hours or, preferably, overnight.

Warm the olive oil and butter in a solid-bottomed pot or frying pan and gently fry the pancetta until golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. Season the chicken joints and roll in the flour, then fry until golden brown in the olive oil/fat remaining from the pancetta. Remove these, too, and put with the reserved pancetta.

Now tip the onions and mushrooms into the pot and gently cook until well colored—about 10 minutes. Tip out all the fat, return the chicken and bacon to the pot, turn up the heat and pour over the Cognac. Set alight, allow the flames to die down and then add the reserved, reduced wine. Shake about a bit, allowing everything to settle down, then cover and put on a very low heat. Simmer at a merest “blip,” partially covered, for about 1 hour. Alternatively, use an oven preheated to 325°F.

Serve the coq au vin with simply boiled or steamed potatoes, lubricated with melted butter. You may also like to garnish the dish in a classical manner, by frying some little bread triangles, dipping their edges in some of the red wine sauce, and then in chopped parsley.

Note: a good coq au vin tastes infinitely better reheated the next day. This also allows for any fat that has collected on the surface to be easily removed, having solidified in the fridge.

And here is a delicious way to use up leftover sauce from a coq au vin. If there is not enough pancetta left, cook a bit more, but don’t bother to add any mushrooms or onions; this is all about eggs, bacon and red wine. You may want to do the bread triangles here, too (see opposite). Pop one under each egg and omit the dippy-parsley thing; just sprinkle some over the eggs.

Incidentally, if you have ever read Edouard de Pomiane’s
Cooking in Ten Minutes,
you will understand how very nice a dainty little dish such as this can be.

Put the freshly poached eggs into a small, heated dish. Heat up some of the sauce and pancetta from leftover coq au vin. Pour over the eggs and garnish with chopped parsley. Eat at once.

An underrated little fish is the trout. Yes, it may now be farmed, but it is generally as fresh as a daisy because of this. Long gone are regular supplies of wild brown trout from British rivers, more is the pity. But also, pity not the delicacy that a carefully farmed fish will give to the following, traditional French preparation.

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

Using half the butter, grease a baking dish (preferably oval and nice enough to present at table) that will accommodate the trout fairly snugly. Sprinkle the base of the dish with the shallots, then smear the remaining butter over the fish and lay them in the dish. Tuck in 3 or 4 sprigs of tarragon (keep the remainder for later), torn up a bit, and season the trout inside and out. Pour over the Chablis, then tightly cover with kitchen foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, foil intact, and leave to rest for a further 10 minutes.

Now, lift off the foil and invert it on to a large plate. Flick off any clinging bits of shallot from the trout and carefully lift them onto the foil. Transfer everything left in the baking dish to a saucepan, and clean the dish. Remove the skin and heads from the fish with a small knife and add them to the saucepan. Return the skinned trout to the baking dish and re-cover with foil. Keep warm while you make the sauce.

Set the saucepan over a moderate heat and allow the sauce to reduce until nearly all the liquid has been driven off and the mixture is syrupy. Add the cream and stir together. Bring to a simmer and cook gently for 20 minutes or so, until the sauce is a nice ivory color.

Strain through a fine sieve into another pan, pushing down hard on the solids to extract every last vestige of flavor. Taste for seasoning, add a touch of lemon juice and add the leaves from the remaining tarragon, finely chopped. Pour the sauce over the trout and serve with plainly boiled, buttered potatoes.

As with a salade niçoise (see
page 21
), the assembly for this Italian bread salad is a little bit about taste and balance, both for the maker and for those who enjoy to eat it. So, with this in mind, it would be far better to talk through the recipe rather than give a list of exact ingredients and amounts.

I have made and eaten plenty of panzanella salads, in the UK and in Italy, too—and once in California, which was, I happily admit, possibly the best of all; it was the tomatoes that were so very good. And that, apart from the bread, is what this salad is all about. There really is no point in making it unless the tomatoes are of fine quality and ripe, ripe, ripe. Some insist that the only ingredients for a panzanella are bread and tomatoes, with just a sprightly seasoning of garlic, basil, vinegar and olive oil and nothing else. The simple Tuscan bread and tomato soup, “pappa pomodoro,” comes to mind as a sloppy, warm version of this salad’s ingredients, in fact. The region, certainly, is common to both.

Both these dishes rely on bread—and leftover bread, at that. No self-respecting cook would make either the salad or the soup with a specially purchased loaf. Each is a peasant assembly; a seasonally filling dish for when there is a regular stale ingredient mixed with a seasonal glut of the other. This, however, does not mean that a panzanella salad cannot be a gastronomic treat. Just don’t be tempted to fuss too much over the thing.

Personally, I love
cucumber
in mine, as well as some thinly sliced
red onions
(the only time I ever use them), preferring sweet white onions most of the time. I peel my cucumber because I find the skin intrusive, here (use the skin in a pre-lunch Pimm’s, as it is here that it is most useful, strong and pretty in the glass). Cut the cucumber into small chunks, not dice, and set aside in a large, deep serving bowl with a little
salt
. Pile the onions on top, together with plenty of
pepper
. Think one
medium cucumber to one small onion, as a rough ratio. Now, for the staples … As with cucumber, I like to slip the skins off the
tomatoes
(pop in boiling water for a few seconds), then cut them into slightly larger pieces than the cucumber. Allow about double the weight of tomatoes to cucumber. Cover the cucumber and onion in the bowl with the tomatoes, scatter over about 3 finely chopped
cloves of garlic
and add a little more
salt
. Mix everything together—hands are best, here, and it is quite a pleasure to do. Add a couple of tablespoons of
red wine vinegar
, about 6–7 of fine and fruity
olive oil
, and leave to macerate for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, deal with the
bread
. It should be broken up into chunks of random size. Well, “should,” here, is moot; their size and shape will be determined by how stale the bread and how strong one’s fingers, and random will not be a matter of choice. In terms of quantity, allow about 4–5 handfuls of bread chunks. Thoroughly mix into the macerated salad (a good deal of juice will have formed), together with the leaves from a large bunch of
basil
, torn into pieces. Try not to leave longer than about 10 minutes before eating, so that the bread retains an inner crunch. Maybe not traditional Tuscan, but this is the way I like my panzanella.