It's been a while...

and the four chefs still are not all on the same continent. In the meantime, one chef's glorious sunday dinner will be featured.

The purpose behind this menu was that it features the use of a dutch oven. A nice Le Creuset dutch oven. The 7.25 quart one. Because the 5 quart one would be too small. Even though the 7.25 quart one might weigh more than this chef might hope....

So Coq au Vin. There are actually two CI versions of this classic available online. One takes longer than the other and includes carrots and shallots. A blend of these two recipes was used for this night's meal. Carrots, but not shallots.

This was the first meal that involved this particular chef using a real bottle of wine. This required the first purchase of a bottle of wine, as well as the first opening of a wine bottle. Thankfully the Sunday Night Chefs are a friendly bunch, and are open to lending out corkscrews as necessary.



Look at that cork! All out and all in one piece!

This wine was combined with some chicken stock, thyme, and parsley and reduced to 3 cups.



At the same time, in the dutch oven, things were getting quite heated. The chicken was browned and the fond was used to cook the vegetables. In this case, pearl onions, carrots, and garlic.



This was the first time ever that frozen pearl onions were purchased in Minnesota by any of the Sunday Night Chefs. And let this chef announce for all the world that frozen pearl onions are at least one-hundred times easier to deal with than fresh. None of the blanching or peeling is involved.



After the vegetables were cooked, they were mixed up with some flour and tomato paste and then the wine and chicken were added (or in some cases returned) to the dutch oven.

Stew on the burner for at least 25 minutes. Yum yum.



Since this was one chef making Sunday night dinner, the (delicious)
Coq au Vin was served with Healthy Harvest whole wheat egg noodles. Not anywhere near as good as fresh pasta, but still a lovely accompaniment.




[Agh! If anyone knows how to make blogger realize that you do in fact know how to orient your own pictures, please let me know. I don't know why it thinks this picture should be rotated this way.]