Traditional French Cooking
I just love old fashioned cooking, slow and simple, with the most honest and best ingredients, especially if you can source artisan products, no complicated cooking methods that deliver great depths of flavour, rich, decadent and sumptuous elevating all the flavours to their maximum and even more so when shared with family and friends who add that final magical ingredient.
I was recently able to source my first free range woodland raised cockerel from COPAS, who I have been buying my annual organic woodland raised Christmas turkey from since I saw their farm on Rick Stein’s cooking programme. A huge impressive 5kg bird, that tasted of times gone by, a deeper chicken flavour, not too strong or gamey.
1/2 hour preparation / 45 - 60 minutes cooking time
Ingredients
(serves 8)
1 free range cockerel or 2.5kg chicken
(butchered into 8 cuts)
(thighs, drums, breast & supremes)
50 ml olive oil
50g butter twice
100g dry cured pancetta
300g button mushrooms
150g wild mushrooms optional
300g silver skin onions (frozen)
(substitute with small peeled shallots)
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 small bunch parsley / extra to serve
1 bay leaf
Sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper
1 bottle burgundy red wine
1 litre chicken stock
150ml brandy
ROUX TO THICKEN STOCK GRAVY
(optional)
50g butter
25g flour or gluten free gram flour
Marinate the chicken in the red wine, thyme, bay leaf, parsley, salt and black pepper for a few hours or overnight even better.
Remove the chicken, pat dry with paper towel and reserve the marinade.
Heat a sauté pan, add one portion of the butter and olive oil, sear the chicken until golden brown and crispy skin, remove and reserve to a casserole dish along with the reserved red wine marinade and chicken stock.
In the same pan melt the remaining butter and pan fry the pancetta and onions until nicely browned, remove and place with the chicken, add the mushrooms to the pan and sauté for 3 minutes, remove and add to the chicken casserole dish. Add the tomato puree to the pan and cook for 2 minutes, deglaze the pan with the brandy simmering for a minutes then pour over the chicken.
Cook in the oven at 180 C / 356 F for 45 minutes or until the chicken is 85 C / 185 F.
If you want to thicken the stock sauce, optional, melt the butter, add the flour/gram flour and stir in until smooth.
Remove the chicken from the pan and set to one side, stir in the butter flour roux, simmer for a couple of minutes stirring all the time until the sauce is thickened. Add back the chicken, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.