Richard Olney, author of The French Menu Cookbook, recently voted the best of all time by an Observer Food Monthly panel, observes "it is only logical that a bird no more than 2 months old, though perfect for a sauté … should be less satisfactory in a dish whose qualities depend on the flavour and gelatinous material which, over an extended period, may be drawn from the meat into a reduced and concentrated sauce." As a compromise, he suggests using leg and thigh pieces (which lend themselves better to this type of preparation than do breasts) and replacing half the wine with a "rich gelatinous veal stock". The sauce is good, the chicken is tender, but there's no denying they look disappointed – chicken 'n' sauce is not what they came here for. Twenty-six hours after I first uncorked the wine, this is not entirely true – having made a thickened red wine sauce in the onion pan, I must then strain the cooking liquid into it, swirl in 2 tbsp butter, joint the chicken, chuck in the golden bits, and then "dazzle friends with brilliance". "Your work is pretty much done," Bourdain chips in at this point. The chicken then stews in this for an hour and a quarter, in which time I cook the lardons, mushrooms and pearl onions until golden brown. Setting it aside, I sauté onions, celery and carrot until golden brown, add flour, and then stir in the reserved marinade. Searing a chicken on all sides is hard, even with tongs – it's a cumbersome, slippery beast at the best of times and even harder to grasp when gruesomely Pinot-purple with wine. "You should, with any luck, reach a Zen-like state of pleasurable calm." (Note that this will not happen if you fail to clock the first instruction, to marinate the bird in red wine and various aromatics overnight, before cooking it for that evening's dinner party.) Just take your time," he says reassuring. "I know it looks like a lot of ingredients, and that the recipe might be complicated. I discover why when I try Anthony Bourdain's recipe, from the Les Halles Cookbook, which calls for a trimmed, 1.35kg chicken, amongst about 15 other things. The name coq au vin suggests a poule au pot type arrangement, but curiously one rarely sees the dish made with a whole bird.
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