Fall Pumpkin Recipes

The weather has been cooling down and I've been particularly tempted to make some fall-inspired dishes. Some of my favourite fall ingredients are pumpkin and squash, so those took a major place in the dishes that I cooked this week.

I've made several pumpkin pies in the last few years, but I've never made one with fresh pumpkin puree, as the canned always seemed more convenient. Today, however, I purchased a pie pumpkin for $2 with the purpose of using it in pumpkin pie. I chose to follow the joy of baking website's recipe for the filling, while I used the "Earth To Table" cookbook's recipe for a pate brisee crust. Since the recipe for the filling didn't give directions on how to prepare the puree, I improvised by cutting the stem off the pumpkin, cutting the pumpkin in half, and roasting it in the oven for approximately a half hour at 450 degrees Fahrenheit until the flesh was tender. Once the puree was done, making the filling was easy by scraping two cups of the flesh out of the pumpkin and mixing it with just some eggs, spices, brown sugar, and evaporated milk. I really enjoyed the flavour of the pie as it was slightly more pumpkin-y and less sweet than other pumpkin pies.

Pumpkin Soup

Since the recipe for the pumpkin pie filling used such a small amount of the pie pumpkin's flesh, I decided to use the rest of it to make a pureed pumpkin soup. My family has sage growing in our garden and so my sister and I decided to use it to gain some earthiness in the soup. It ended up being really delicious and fresh tasting. Here is a recipe of what we did:

Ingredients

1/2 a roasted pie pumpkin
4 tbsp butter divided in half
1 onion, diced
chicken, beef, or vegetable stock, or water to cover (we used a cup of chicken stock, and lots of water to cover)
6 sage leaves, julienne
salt and pepper to taste
2 or 3 pinches nutmeg
3 or 4 tsp brown sugar

Directions

1. Melt two tablespoons of the butter in a saucepan and saute onion until translucent
2. Scoop the roasted flesh out of the pumpkin and add to your saucepan
3. Cover immediately with water or stock, and season with sage leaves, salt and pepper, nutmeg, and brown sugar, and heat through completely
4. Puree soup with a handheld blender or in a food processor
5. Finish by melting in the two remaining tablespoons of butter
6. Check seasonings and serve

Julia Child Recipes

 Recently I've been making different Julia Child recipes like boeuf bourguingnon, ratatouille, and chocolate mousse. My sister and I have owned her books "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 and 2" for a couple years now and have tried several recipes from them, namely leek and potato soup, french bread, and chicken in wine, but the books are so chalk full of things to make that we barely made a dent in them.

Boeuf Bourguingnon

The boeuf bourguingnon is something I made only once previously and is a wonderful lesson in several good cooking techniques that amount to a flavourful dish. I get annoyed by stew recipes or crock pot recipes that assume that throwing everything in and letting it simmer is going to create something extremely delicious, because while they usually taste fine, they are never amazing. With the series of techniques that this stew uses, it turns out to be something that you would want to eat all the time.

Bacon is browned and then the beef is seared, and later the vegetables are sauteed, directly in the bacon fat. The beef is then set in the oven with a coating of flour to help brown it. Then you add the sauce, which consists of red wine, beef stock, tomato paste, garlic, bay leaf, and salt and pepper. Similar to the coq au vin recipe, which I've written about in a previous post, you finish the stew off with sauteed mushrooms and brown-braised pearl onions.

Ratatouille

Later, I tested out Julia Child's ratatouille recipe which is time consuming with a step-by-step process necessary to getting both the fresh and stewed flavour of this dish. For starters, each vegetable is cooked separately by sauteeing in olive oil. Then they are layered prettily and slowly cooked on the stove until done. Since I don't have a casserole dish that works on my stove, as well as oven, I chose to do this last step in the oven. Although you could eat this on its own, I chose to serve it with sausage and roasted garlic potatoes.

Chocolate Mousse

The chocolate mousse is one of my favourite recipes of Julia Child's that I have tried and trumps any other chocolate mousse recipe that I know of. It doesn't use any cream, but rather thickened egg yolks and sugar that the melted chocolate and butter mixture is stirred into. Then the whipped egg whites are folded in and the mixture is refrigerated until set. The part that really makes this mousse great is the addition of orange liqueur. I'm not really knowledgeable when it comes to buying spirits, but the salesperson at my local liqueur store assured me that Triple Sec would be a terrific choice and it was.

Mexican Birthday

Sweet Potato Soup with Lime-Yogourt Garnish

My sister and I decided to make a special meal for a friend's birthday, and since she requested Mexican, Mexican it was! I have to say, it was very loose Mexican though. It was still delicious, however, and it seemed our friend appreciated it very much!

Firstly, we made a sweet potato soup with a yogourt-lime garnish. This soup is so delicious, yet so simple. You cook onions and add chili powder, then you add five cups of diced sweet potato and cover with water. Once the sweet potato is tender, the soup gets pureed and some yogourt gets stirred in. The garnish was simple as it was just a 1/4 cup yogourt with 1 tsp lime zest and 1 tsp lime juice stirred in. The addition of the juice makes the garnish easy to drizzle over top of the soup.

Nachos

Tomato-Mango Salsa

Next, we winged it on some nachos. We figured we purchased so many types of Mexican ingredients that we wouldn't use all of, so it made sense to use those to top our nachos. We used taco cheese, some homemade fajita seasoning, pickled sliced jalapenos, re-fried beans, and a homemade tomato-mango salsa, then baked them off. They were very pretty and tasty to eat!

Chicken with Fajita Seasoning for our homemade tortillas

For our main, we made homemade corn tortillas and chicken with fajita seasoning. You can buy bags of corn flour at the grocery store, which you simply add water and salt to, then form into tortillas, and fry. We topped our fajitas with the tomato-mango salsa.

Bean and Corn Salad

For a side dish, we made a bean and corn salad, as this was something specially requested by our friend. It was a mixture of beans, corn, avocado, red pepper, tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro, and then it had a tangy dressing of lime juice and olive oil. I cut back the olive oil to 3 or 4 tablespoons, as opposed to the 1/2 cup the recipe stated, and it worked really well.

Caramel Flan

Finally, for dessert we tried our hand at a caramel flan. Despite the lengthy time to allow for setting this dessert, this dessert had one of the fastest preparation times of any dessert I have made. It was light and custardy with the caramel finish on top.

Strawberry Pie

Strawberry Scones

Strawberry season is just finishing up here in southern Ontario, but my family managed to get a strong jump on it this year by both freezing bags of fresh strawberries and making jam. Additionally, my sister and I used them for baking, like for some delicious strawberry scones, or this strawberry pie that I'm going to talk about now.

Strawberry Filling

I'm not a terrific pie maker, although I've been making them on and off for four years. It's really important to find a recipe for pie crust that won't fall apart when you attempt to transfer it to the pie plate. The crust recipe in the joy of baking's strawberry-rhubarb pie recipe did the trick, because it was durable while also being flaky and moist once baked. I followed the recipe for the filling as well, but I doubled the amount of strawberries I used because I didn't have any rhubarb.

Strawberry Pie before it hit the oven

All said and done, the main issue I had with the pie after it was baked was that there was a lot of liquid in the filling that never thickened up. This was odd to me considering the large amount of sugar and the several tablespoons of cornstarch that were used. We came to the conclusion that the berries we got this year must have had some extra water in them. Other than that, the pie was very tasty with sweet strawberries and buttery, flaky crust. I would make it again!

Baked Strawberry Pie

Mother's Day Afternoon Tea

Place Setting with Menu

I know it's late, but since I posted what my sister and I made for our stepfather for Father's Day, I wanted to post what we made for our mother on her special day. We were planning on taking her to a local tea place for an afternoon tea they had for Mother's Day, however, they were all booked up. It was my sister's brilliant idea to make an afternoon tea at home and it was my idea to complete the theme with menus!

Curried Egg Salad

For beverages, we made a pot of hot wild blueberry tea, a blend from said tea shop. It is a delicious black tea with just the hint of fruity blueberries and is really tasty with just some honey stirred in. We decided that an iced tea would be nice to accompany our meal too, so we chilled some strawberry fields white tea from teopia and flavoured it with some honey, lemon slices, and fresh strawberries.

Cream Cheese and Cucumber Sandwiches

We made three types of sandwiches, the traditional cucumber and cream cheese on white sandwich bread, curried egg salad on dark rye, and sliced chicken deli meat with brie and apple butter that was toasted on sliced baguette. Our mother enjoyed the sandwiches a lot, but I think the egg salad was a clear winner for taste and presentation as we topped those sandwiches with some radish slices and chives.

Chicken, Brie, and Apple Butter on Toasted Baguette

For dessert, Megan made lemon curd tarts and I created my own cupcake with a spiced chocolate base and a caramel buttercream. I think we all enjoyed the lemon tarts the most with their tart lemony sweetness and velvet texture. My cupcake was delicious too except that the icing was quite rich after so much food.

Lemon Curd Tarts

My sister and I loved creating this menu and it was finally an excuse for us to use our nice tea sets!

Chocolate Spice Cupcakes with Caramel Buttercream

Father's Day Meal

Sirloin Steaks With Sauteed Mushrooms

My sister and I thought it would be really nice to make our stepfather a meal for Father's Day as opposed to taking him out, especially since we are so often disappointed with restaurants nowadays. We decided to make him grilled sirloin steak with sauteed mushrooms over top, boiled corn on the cob, roasted potato salad with a sour cream and horseradish dressing, tatsoi sauteed with an Asian dressing, and a blueberry cake for dessert. The entire meal was very delicious; my step dad said he enjoyed it immensely! It was also very reasonably priced to make by comparison to a restaurant meal and we had leftovers for the next day.

Grilling Steaks

The sirloin steaks, I am happy to say, were cooked beautifully on the grill. I'm always afraid with overcooking meat because it tends to get tough and some meats, like beef, really don't need be to left on for too long. I'd say we got our steaks to a tender medium rare to medium.

I even managed to get some nice crosshatched markings on them making them look extra pretty! When the steak doesn't stick to the grill anymore, you just turn the steak about 90 degrees and leave on for an extra minute or two before flipping to get the crosshatched markings.

The mushrooms we sauteed were white mushrooms. What we do is we first get a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and get it very hot until it bubbles. When the fat stops bubbling you can add the sliced mushrooms in and watch them absorb all that fat, before they'll start to brown. We presented our steaks on a platter with the mushrooms draped over top.

Roasted Potato Salad

We found the recipe for the roasted potato salad in the "Earth To Table" cookbook in the winter section, but we figured it would work just as well now as in winter and would be a perfect accompaniment to the steak. The only thing was we couldn't find fingerling potatoes which the recipe calls for, and instead had to use baby potatoes. We roasted them off with some olive oil, white wine, and thyme leaves until tender and then tossed them in our creamy dressing of sour cream and grated fresh horseradish. Topped with green watercress it was an elegant looking salad and accompaniment to our meal.

Tatsoi

My sister was responsible for cooking the tatsoi, which is an Asian mustard green. She chose to wilt it with rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds which amounted to a very yummy side dish.

The blueberry cake is something that I've tried several times before and have even spoken of in a previous post. This cake is so delicious with a thick layer of blueberries on a cornmeal cake and is a light way to finish a meal.

Mexican Omelette

Today for breakfast I chose to make a mexican-style omelette. The idea really struck when I looked into the fridge and saw a lonely cob of corn that we boiled a few nights ago, leftover sweet red pepper, leftover diced onion, and leftover chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Along with the eggs, it was a pretty obvious idea to make an omelette with all those ingredients.

For my sister and I, one chipotle pepper adds good spice to this dish, but if you're hesitant about spice you can use a quarter of one or a half depending on the amount of spice you like. I wouldn't cut the pepper out alltogether though, because along with the spice, it also imparts a nice smoky barbecue flavour to the omelette.

For the cheese, I used a taco cheese that I bought from the store, but shredded cheddar or mozzarella, or anything else that you prefer should work well too.

For the garnish, I used chives because that's what I had, but for more authenticity some cilantro would be nice as well.

I should add that I didn't really measure anything for this recipe, so the amounts listed below are approximate, but I think they should be pretty close to what I did.

Here is my recipe:

Mexican Omelette

Serves two people

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced sweet red pepper
1 cob of corn, boiled, kernels cut off
1/4 to 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, diced
1/4 cup shredded cheese (I used taco cheese)
4 eggs
chives or cilantro for garnish

Directions:

1. Heat olive oil in frying pan
2. Add onion, red pepper, corn, and chipotle; cook until onions are translucent and vegetables are tender-crisp; set aside on a plate
3.  In a bowl, mix up eggs
4. Add eggs to frying pan and cook until halfway done
5. Add vegetables to half of the omelette and top with cheese
6. Once cooked enough that the egg is pliable, place empty half of omelette over the vegetable side
7. Remove from pan onto a plate and place in microwave for approximately 30 to 60 seconds until all the egg is cooked
8. Cut in half and place halves on their own plate; garnish with chopped chives or cilantro

French Onion Soup

French onion soup, especially with the rainy cool weather that we're having right now, is something that I love to eat. I've actually made Julia Child's recipe for it twice recently as it's so delicious.

The recipe includes the same sorts of ingredients as other onion soup recipes, but one that is quite unique to the recipes I have tried in the past is the addition of wine. I find that anything acidic like that brightens up the flavour a bit and makes it more complex.

The first time I served this soup, I simply dished it out into individual bowls, placing a slice of ciabatta bread in the center and sprinkling parmesan cheese over top. The second time, the soup was ladled into individual onion soup dishes, some toasted ciabatta on top with grated gruyere cheese, and set in the oven until the cheese melted. I really enjoyed this recipe and would try it again.

Chocolate Mousse

I've seen several chocolate mousse recipes before, some which utilize gelatin and other which simply fold in whipped cream. In fact, a mousse recipe by Nigella Lawson I used once even required marshmallows to be melted down. The chocolate mousse recipe that I tried last week was the best I have ever made and used a much more traditional method to gain a silky texture, beaten egg whites.

The first step of the recipe is simply to melt your chocolate down with some butter, adding egg yolks to it and setting it in the fridge. The next step is to whip your egg whites. Then you whip your whipping cream before folding both the cream and egg whites into the chocolate mixture. At the stage of melting the chocolate I added some strong coffee for extra flavour.

I chose to pipe the mousse into dessert bowls to give it a more elegant finish. Then I chilled it for several hours. The mousse was really silky and smooth, although I would use less coffee than I did because it overpowered the chocolate slightly.

Vanilla Cupcakes With Butter Frosting

I've definitely been on a cupcake kick over the last week or so making red velvet cupcakes a few days ago with friends, and shortly before that, baking some vanilla cupcakes with butter frosting. My sister and I used the recipe from the Joy of Baking website for these cakes, and while very sweet, I found myself enjoying them immensely.

I think that my sister's and my real motivation behind making these was to practice our piping technique, because thus far, we've simply been using a star tip to create a swirl topping for cupcakes. We thought we would try the star tip for other effects as well. The blue ones that we used the star tip on ended up reminding me of lilacs. Despite our piping technique not being expert yet, these cupcakes still ended up being very pretty.

Rosemary Foccacia Bread

The Italian Food Forever website is fast becoming one of my favourite spots for recipes on the internet. I've only made their pasta dough recipes thus far, but a few days ago, I attempted the Rosemary Foccacia recipe. My sister had made this recipe before (see Megan's Blog), but I didn't have a hand in it. I thought I would try it myself this time.


As far as bread dough goes, this was a quick one to come together. All the ingredients go in the bowl at once and then there is a period of kneading followed by letting the dough rest until doubled in size. Then, you shape your dough, set it on a pan and give it another period of rest. Afterwards, you dimple the dough all over so that you can fill the holes with olive oil, which makes this bread so moist. Part of what makes this bread so delicious, including addictive, is the sprinkling of freshly chopped rosemary and course salt over top. My family and friends couldn't get enough of it!

Homemade Fettuccine Alfredo

A few weeks ago, I purchased a Remy Olivier pasta machine for $30 which manually rolls out pasta dough and cuts it into fettuccine or spaghetti. This machine makes it so easy to make pasta at home, which I had never done before. My sister's and my first attempt of fresh pasta with this machine was butternut squash filled ravioli in a garlic cream sauce, which my sister blogged about at Megan's Blog. We purchased a circular ravioli stamp which both cuts and seals the edges of the ravioli. The effort to make these was long, but well worth it!



For our second attempt at making homemade pasta, we chose to invite a few friends over to make Fettuccine Alfredo. The recipe we used for the noodles was the same we had used for our ravioli, found at the Italian Food Forever website. For our Alfredo sauce, we simply poured whipping cream over the cooked pasta, and added grated fresh garlic, lots of parmesan, and butter to melt in, and let sit until thickened. This recipe was based on the garlic cream sauce we made for our ravioli, although I can't remember the website we got it from.


For us newbies, it took us approximately two and a half hours in total to make the pasta dough, cut it, and cook it, which isn't so bad when you have a weekend to do it on and friends to enjoy it with!

Leek and Potato Soup

Today I made leek and potato soup from Julia Child's cookbook which is extremely simple in both its ingredient list and cooking techniques. The soup consists only of leeks, potatoes, water, salt, and whipping cream, while the recipe only requires that you boil the vegetables until tender, puree them, check seasonings, and add cream just before serving. Despite the simplicity of this soup, it is a treat to eat with that onion and potato flavour, and richness of cream.


I served this soup for dinner with a delicious green salad tossed with cucumber, celery, blueberries, and strawberries, and some oatmeal molasses bread that I made the other day.Why not eat a simple dinner of soup, salad, and bread?

Homemade Sweet and Sour Meatballs

I know that sweet and sour meatballs don't typically get the stamp of being homemade, because usually a person purchases packaged meatballs, chili sauce, and grape jelly all from the grocery store, but  my recipe for sweet and sour meatballs is literally made from scratch. This is because, last year, my sister and mom did some canning and the expiry dates on those jars were coming up fast so they needed to be used. My sister made delicious currant jelly with currants from the currant bushes in our yard, while my mother made an exceptional chili sauce.

Now, you don't have to use a homemade jelly or chili sauce for these, but it is highly recommended because it gives these meatballs a whole other dimension of flavour than the store-bought products. Suffice it to say that the flavour is even more sweet and sour. I do, however, want to turn people on to making their own meatballs at home though, because they aren't really that time-consuming to make and the searing of them in a pan prior to hitting the oven adds some flavourful char on them that will not be achieved with the store-bought variety. Here is my recipe for sweet and sour meatballs:

For the meatballs

2 Ibs ground beef
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
3 tbsp ketchup
4 slices of bread, toasted and crumbled
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
 2 tbsp vegetable oil

For the sauce

1 cup homemade chili sauce
1 cup homemade currant jelly

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a mixing bowl, add beef, milk, egg, ketchup, bread crumbs, salt and pepper, and mix until well combined.
3. To form meatballs, use a 1/4 cup to adequately measure the amount of meat you will use in one meatball. Then roll the meat into a ball with your hands. You should end up with twenty meatballs using this method.
4. Place a frying pan on the stove and heat the vegetable oil over medium heat until it is very hot.
5. In the frying pan, sear the meatballs in batches until they are brown and have a nice char on them.
6. Place meatballs in an oven dish.
7. In a separate bowl, combine the chili sauce and currant jelly.
8. Pour the sauce over top of the meatballs.
9. Place meatballs in the oven for approximately 1 hour until the meat is cooked and the sauce is thickened.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting

With the call of a snow storm here in southern Ontario the other day, I felt like having a treat. My initial attempt was to make a chocolate sponge cake roll with chocolate whipped cream, but after my sponge cake failed I was forced to try something different. The only problem was that I had already made my whipped cream. As such, I made chocolate cupcakes, because I figured the whipped cream would work well as an icing for them.

These cupcakes did not use the baking soda/vinegar trick that the red velvet one's did in a previous post, but somehow they were actually fluffier than the red velvet. I think this was due to the addition of one cup of boiling hot water to a 1/2 cup of cocoa powder that was added into the mixture at the end.

I decided that I like a whipped cream icing even better than a butter-based one or one with a lot of icing sugar, because it's not nearly as sweet and is easier to pipe.

Turkey Vegetable Soup

For Valentine's Day, my family had a turkey dinner since we had a leftover turkey from Christmas that went unused. Since I am an advocate of head-to-tail cooking, which is using all parts of an animal, I made a turkey vegetable soup for lunch today. Making flavourful soup stocks from a turkey carcass is very simple and you could easily substitute turkey with chicken in this soup as well. Here is my recipe for turkey vegetable soup:

Ingredients:

 2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 chicken or turkey carcass
water to cover
2 medium sized potatoes, cut into cubes
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 chicken or vegetable bouillon cube
1 tsp dried rosemary leaves
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
2 bay leaves
ground black pepper to taste


Directions:

1.  Heat olive oil in a large soup pot; then, add the onion and celery to cook until softened; add garlic and cook for approximately one minute until flavour comes out (you don't want to add the garlic any earlier or else it will burn).
2. Add the turkey carcass and cover with water. Allow to simmer for 1 hour approximately until you have a yellow turkey-flavoured broth.
3. Add potatoes and carrots, the bouillon cube, and seasonings. Let simmer until vegetables are tender.


 Note: If you have any turkey meat leftover or any still on the carcass, as I did, add that to the soup as well. I find that the meat should get added after the vegetables start cooking, or else it might get tough cooking in the broth. You basically only want to warm the meat through.

I ate my soup garnished with some freshly chopped parsley and a turkey sandwich on the side. For a delicious turkey sandwich, try adding some cranberry sauce in addition to your regular mustard.

Red Velvet Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Frosting

With Valentine's day so nearby, Red Velvet Cupcakes are a perfect treat to make! The red cake has a slight cocoa flavour that's delicious and it has a wonderful light texture. Additionally, it's topped with a tangy cream cheese frosting. I followed the recipe from the all-famous Joy of Baking website, which is an incredibly accurate recipe, because it makes 12 cupcakes as the recipe states, and because it makes enough frosting to generously top the cupcakes. I even had frosting leftover.



As I said, the cake was exceptionally light. This is because of a technique I have never heard of before, where once the batter is made, you add a 1/2 tsp of white vinegar to a 1/2 tsp of baking soda so that it foams, and then fold it into the mixture. I don't understand the science of this entirely, but I think that the chemical reaction makes the air bubbles in the cake larger, hence a fluffier cake.



I've had a challenging time often with getting an icing that pipes well, but the cream cheese frosting in this recipe was a cinch to make and pipe. I think the pipeability (not a word, but I like it) factor comes from the fact that a main component is whipping cream, which you whip with the softened cream cheese, vanilla extract, and confectioner's sugar. This is my favourite cream cheese icing that I've made and will use it with all things that require a frosting of that nature.



If you choose to make these, don't forget to add something festive to these luscious desserts! I added a nice cinnamon heart to the top of each cupcake for some festivity.

Balsamic Glazed Brussel Sprouts

Simplicity of food and using a few purposeful ingredients to create something delicious is very important to me. Additionally, I think that every part of one's meal should be enjoyable, and that vegetables or side dishes should not be an afterthought. This interpretation of Balsamic Glazed Brussel Sprouts, I feel, meets with these requirements for being a simple, well thought out dish, as well as a tasty side dish. Here's my recipe:

Ingredients

4 cups Brussels Sprouts, sliced in half
4 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Place Brussels Sprouts in oven dish, toss with Balsamic Vinegar, Olive Oil, and Salt and Pepper
3. Roast in oven for approximately 30-40 minutes, or until Brussels sprouts are tender

Julia Child's coq au vin

Tonight's dinner was Julia Child's coq au vin recipe. For those that don't know, coq au vin is simply French for 'chicken in wine'. This recipe uses very similar techniques to Julia Child's recipe for boeuf bourguingnon, which is a beef stew braised in red wine, except that you don't need as long a braising time for chicken as you would for beef. As such, coq au vin is a less time-consuming recipe to make, taking me 1 1/2 to 2 hours total.

You begin your recipe by browning some bacon lardons in butter and setting them aside. This leaves you with the rendered bacon fat to brown your chicken pieces in. Finally, you cover the meat with the bacon, red wine, and stock, and add your seasonings before letting it simmer until the meat is cooked through.

Some other crucial ingredients to a coq au vin

recipe are the sauteed mushrooms and braised pearl onions that you place over top of the stew when served. The onions and mushrooms each have to get prepared separately with very detailed instructions on just how to correctly brown your mushrooms or cook your onions. For the onions, you can braise them in water, red or white wine, or beef or chicken stock. I chose to use red wine since I had it and the onions came out beautiful with a brownish-purple colour.

I made some parsley potatoes (not Julia Child's recipe for them) as an accompaniment. They were simply boiled until tender and then tossed with salt, pepper, margarine/butter, and freshly
chopped parsley.

Despite the apparent simplicity of the coq au vin recipe, it tasted completely delicious. I haven't previously been a wine fan, but the beaujolais that we chose added such depth and richness to the sauce. One would not think that such complexity of flavour could come from a sauce with so few ingredients.