Four years ago, I promised Nate I'd make him coq au vin for his birthday.  Coq au vin, or chicken with wine, is a famous French preparation, and I had planned to make it in honour of Nate's heritage; some of his ancestors come from the Alsace Lorraine region of France.  My Mom sent me the recipe in an email, and I had talked through all of the potential problems with her.  Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate waking up, the morning of his birthday, with a neck spasm that rendered me practically immobile.  Cooking was out of the question.  The plan was salvaged by taking Nate for a fancy dinner at a French-style restaurant in Halifax called Chateau Briand. But ever since, I have threatened to make this.    

Today, we had a bottle of red wine that neither of us wanted to drink and so, almost exactly four years late, Nate finally had his French, birthday meal! 

Many people make this dish in a cast iron pot  that can be transferred to the oven, but as the title of this blog implies, there is only a hotplate involved.

Ingredients
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs olive oil
10-12 chicken drumsticks
200g slab bacon, chopped into small pieces.
1 large onion, halved and sliced
1 large carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
3 ribs celery, roughly chopped into bite size pieces
15 pearl onions (blanched)
4 Tbs flour
3 sprigs fresh thyme
15 button mushrooms, cleaned
4 cups chicken stock
1 bottle red wine (750ml)
1 cup tomato sauce
3 bay leaves

Heat butter and olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Add the chicken pieces to the pot, skin side down so that they fit snugly yet have room to colour. Turn them after 2 mins and cook for another 2 mins. Remove the chicken to a plate.  

Add the bacon to the pot and cook until golden. Reduce the heat to medium, add the sliced onion, carrot and celery and cook for 2 mins.

Stir the ingredients well, lifting the browned bits off the bottom of the pot. While stirring, add the flour and cook for 1 min. (This will create a roux and hold in all the flavours that have been created.)

Next, add the thyme, blanched pearl onions and the mushrooms to the pot and give them a stir.  Then add the chicken and chicken stock. Simmer for 5 mins.

Next, add the red wine, bay leaves and tomato sauce. 

Allow everything to simmer for about 20 minutes until the liquid reduces.  Then cover the pot and simmer over medium heat for about forty minutes (until the chicken falls off the bone). 

The liquid will reduce, and the stew will thicken.  Taste and adjust the seasoning.  Add more salt and pepper if you like.

Serve hot with some boiled potatoes or a nice French bread.
Nate really liked this--and he always tells the truth about the meal!

You may have noticed that everything we eat is orange.  The culprit is gochujang (click it for a picture and description).  Here's a variation on a Thai curry that substitutes gochujang for red curry paste. 

First, chop up a pile of vegetables. 

Marvel at the size of that carrot.  Despite it's gargantuan proportions, it's not mealy at all--actually quite sweet and tender!

Saute some onion and garlic in a pan, and then add the other vegetables.

When the veg is semi-tender, add half a can of light coconut milk.  Stir in a Tbs. of gochuchang (could be replaced with Thai red curry paste), a Tbs of soy sauce and a tsp of sugar.

Throw in some chopped cherry tomatoes and some peeled shrimp and bring to a bubble until the shrimp are pink and cooked. Serve over rice with some toasted cashews. 

I promised a picture of real bibimbap, as opposed to my earlier homemade version.  This one came from the nearby Kimbap Nara (a popular type of restaurant serving a fairly standard menu of Korean food).  Bap means rice.  (Kimbap is a form of rolled rice sandwich wrapped in nori--could be called Korean sushi, but it is far more pedestrian than sushi--and much cheaper).  

Bibimbap is, we are told, a very healthy dish.  It is contains a medley of vegetables (some raw, some cooked, some marinated), warm rice and an egg in some form (raw, cooked or in between).  Underneath the egg is a large dollop of gochujang (Korean red chili paste). 

To eat the bibimbap, you mix all the ingredients together with your chopsticks.  It tastes pretty good.  I think it makes an eggcellent breakfast. 

Okay...this was more for drama than for taste:) But it did taste good!

First chop your perfectly ripe Butternut Squash and remove the seeds and fibrous innards.

Also peel and chop two sweet potatoes, one regular potato, an apple, an onion and a little bit of carrot.
Saute the onion and carrot in one Tbs. of olive oil.

When the onions are soft, add the rest of your chopped vegetables and the apple.

Next, make some stock using a boullion cube (homemade works too) and add to the vegetables with some salt and pepper.  Simmer on medium high.

While the vegetables are cooking, you can blanch some thin slices of lotus root (I bought mine pre-sliced) in some boiling water for about two minutes.

When all the vegetables in your soup are soft, add a Tbs of Korean hot chili paste (gochujang).  If you do not have gochujang, a pinch of cayenne will do the trick.  Next, puree the soup (if you have a hand blender), or do your best to mash it to a fine consistency if you only possess a whisk. Ladle some into a cup or bowl, top with a lotus round and drizzle a little chili oil into the holes--as you can see, hitting the holes is a challenge.  Garnish with some cilantro (that you bought at the foreign market in Itaewon). 

While the lotus root is attempting to be oh so zen, another nice topper is plain yogurt with cilantro and a drizzle of chili oil.