Fair or Fowl

http://www.garfield.com/comics/comics_archives_strip.html?2007-ga071226

So, the thing is, I really love Christmas. Like a whole lot. Like more than you do. Neener neener, so there.

No, wait, come back. Let's not fight. I don't mean it, any of it. I'm just lashing out in a pathetic attempt to avoid the pain of post-holiday letdown.

It's simply my favorite time of year. I love the decorations and the special foods and toasty fires and gaudy Christmas sweaters and cheesy Christmas movies and the excitement and the happiness and really just about everything.

But once again, it's zipped right by me, and all I have to look forward to are months and months of Not-Christmas in which I feebly attempt to recreate the holiday spirit by adorning my house with seasonally appropriate hearts or shamrocks or bunnies or flags that do little to fill the gaping Santa-shaped void. Alas, that this day has come! Woe to us all!!!

I've decided that my ideal job would be running a year-round Christmas store. If it were at all a viable business model where I live, I'd go for it. I can't express the sheer rage I felt when I heard that this is precisely Linda Tripp's current endeavor. Why, a grinch like her simply does not deserve to live my dream! Bah, humbug!

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Anywho. A few years ago I found a great recipe for coq au vin. I've been making it for Christmas Eve dinner ever since, and it's been a big hit. 'Cuz it's all yummy and stuff.

This year, I was in a huge rush to buy all of the ingredients on the 23rd. I had so little time that, rather than copying the necessaries to a shopping list, I just ran out with the recipe in hand. The store was a madhouse, and though I wielded my shopping cart with full battering force, sending old ladies and small children scattered trembling in my merciless wake, it nevertheless took so long that I ended up missing the movie I was supposed to see that night. In all the hubbub, I somehow left my precious recipe behind.

Fortunately I realized it before I got home, and I went racing back into the store in full panic mode, only to find it innocently lying at the register where I had forgotten it. But for a few moments there, I knew the fear, that chilling ice-water gush of fear that everyone experiences at some point in their life – that of a Christmas without fancy French stew! The horror, it truly is too great to contemplate.

And the worst part is that, while I usually type out my recipes so that they are incorporated into my fancy self-coded, fully-searchable-by-multiple-parameters, cross-referenced, really-really-pretty Recipe Database (it's called OCD – deal with it), I somehow neglected to do so with this one.

So you see, the recipe would have been lost! Lost, I say! Lost beyond all recovery!

In the interest of preventing such a dreadful disaster from ever occurring, I decided to present the recipe to you.

It's from Parade magazine, but I note that recipes are subject to limited copyrightability, and only to the extent that they encompass some creativity beyond that of listing ingredients with basic factual instructions for preparing the dish. Ahem. In that regard, I have taken some liberty with the recipe.

(Comic strips, well, those are, like, copyrightable and stuff. I figure that there is an exception somewhere southeast of fair use, covering permissible reproduction in the event of post-Christmas depression....)

Coq au Vin

3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound bacon, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
4 pounds chicken (I buy chicken breast strips that are easy to trim and cut into manageable pieces; the recipe calls for 2 chickens of 3 pounds each, simply quartered)
3/4 cup chopped shallots
2 pounds carrots, cut into appr. 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons chopped garlic
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 pounds white mushrooms, quartered with stems removed (I omit the mushrooms)
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups defatted chicken broth (fat-free canned is fine)
2 cups Burgundy wine
1/4 cup cognac
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tablespoon red currant jelly
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper, to taste
6 tablespoons chopped parsley
Parsleyed potatoes or egg noodles

1. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add bacon and cook for 10 min. until slightly browned. Remove with slotted spoon to paper towel-lined bowl to drain.

2. In the same pot, brown the chicken pieces (about 4 minutes per side). Set aside.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

4. Add shallots and carrots to pot and cook over medium-low heat, about 10 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook 5 minutes longer.

5. Add butter (and mushrooms, if including mushrooms) to pot and cook for 5 minutes. Sprinkle the vegetables with flour and cook for 2 minutes longer.

6. Add chicken broth, wine, and cognac. Bring to a boil, cook until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Keep stirring throughout, scraping bottom of pot occasionally.

7. Stir in tomato paste, red currant jelly, brown sugar, thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Add bacon and chicken and incorporate into the sauce. Bring to a boil.

8. Cover the pot and cook in the oven for 30 minutes.

9. Remove the cover and cook in the oven for an additional 30 minutes. (I left it in much longer at a lower heat this time when people were late for dinner, and it turned out better than ever – I'd almost recommend letting it stew for an extra hour or more at very low heat, then increasing the heat for serving.)

10. Stir in parsley and adjust seasonings as desired.

11. Serve with potatoes or noodles. Can be cooked beforehand and reheated later.


Now it is saved for all posterity.

I also make a punch that is loved throughout the land. Might as well throw it in while I'm at it....

Poinsettia Punch

Pour together into a punch bowl:

2 cups cranberry juice
5 ounces Cointreau or Grand Marnier
2 bottles sparkling wine (I find that the sweeter the wine, the better – I prefer Asti Spumante)