Coq au vin

Unfotunatley no pics for this unexpected return to form post, but we'll plunge on regardless. Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

The Gorgeous C and I cooked up a gnarly, mean, bitter and pugnacious old cockerel during the week, It's quite a thing to cook a thing you've killed. I'm not going to come over all Hugh Firmly Whippngboy about the whole affair, but it is a difficult thing to do.

We set about it seriously, thought it through, and tried to do it as quickly, humanely, and calmly as we could. That said, we killed him not beacause we had to, or needed to. We slaughtered him because he had become difficult to deal with, territorial, and, well, cocky.

And, having dispatched the feisty little cock, ( I almost used throttled there, careful, careful), it's different. I don't have the Huffingly Firmly Jumblestall cheerful solemnity about it. It wasn't sacred, or reverential, or cheerful. It was work. And grim work. And work with responsibility attatched. And work that needed to be done well.

Having plucked, gutted ( an unpleasant task, cutting the anus out of a creature, and inserting your hand inside it's still warm carcass - thanks the Gorgeous C) and stowed him in the fridge for three days, we settled on co au vin as a good way to use him up.

He was a three year old cockerel, free range, and likely to be as tough and stringy as Margaret Thatcher in the Kinnock years.

We looked up a You Barely Noticedatall coq au vin recipe, and follwed it, largely, to a t (minus the bacon)

The results were....terible. Abysmal. Unpalateable. The meat collapsed into juiceless dense nuggets of leather, unstrippable from the carcass. And unchewable. Terrible. Terrible.

I blame the 2.5 hour cooking time. My instincts told me it wouldn't be enough. But Huffers exhortations seduced me.

I salvaged the carcass and meat, stripped him by hand, and slow cooked what I salvaged at a gentle simmer over 6 hours - what I should have done to start with.

And he turned out wonderfully. An umami packed broth with nuggets of succulent leg meat that shredded happily in the mouth. That really deep down doing you good hit of healthful taste that earns the otherwise bland chicken broth it's place in the culinary hall of fame. So, here, for posterity, is my recipe.

For the broth base

A soffrito ( two stalk of celery, chopped, 2 smal onions diced fined, 2 carrots cubed) fried gently in butter and olive oil for 15 minutes. I added two fat and juicy cloves of garlic, crushed, and three fresh bay leaves, after five minutes, and a few pinches of salt.

After fifteen minutes, I ground out about 8 twists of black pepper, threw in the denuded and raw carcass of chicken, and all the scraps of meat I salveged from the carcass, and the bones. On top of that I poured 1 litre of vegetable stock, a half litre of dry white wine, and a healthy fist of bouquet garni, and set it on the stove, on the lowest heat I could, for 5 hours.

I fished out the carcass, added a little seasoning, to taste, and slurped him up with some buttered homemade bread.

A delicious death.

The Pantry and Corkscrew, Westport, Co Mayo

Recently opened - circa two months ago - this narrow little gem sits just off the square in Westport, Co Mayo. We walked in off the street. Frankly, it just looked inviting, and the menu made all the right sounds. I ordered up a pork sausage casoulet, with apple and cider, topped with a thin strip of potato rosti, in place of that typical crucnhy bean topping so beloved by the French.

Absent from the dish were the beans, but the broth was delicately and sweetly flavoured with the owners own cider, a complex, earthy, sweet and layered taste. The sausages were from Newport, Kellys butchers, who have just won a prize from the Black Pudding Confraternity of Good Food Lovers in France - they took bronze for their black pudding.

The sausages were meaty, with that texture you get from low meal/crumb content, and quite subtly flavoured. An almost perfect match for the broth and cider. One quibble. The sausages were a little undersalted. And casoulet needs beans.

At 8.95, an absolute steal of a meal, and the best by a country mile that I had all holiday.

The Gorgeous C had a cheese salad - can't remember the cheese, but it was tangy and mature, salty, sweet, a fantastic product, with thinly cut slices of ripe fig, dressing and chutney, all of which married perfectly. Care had obviously been taken in designing the dish.

The chips were good, fluffly, hand cut, well cooked, but the homemade ketchup was marvellous. Notes of cinammon, coriander, and, frankly, I don't know what else. Superb.( though, again, in need of a little salt).

Frankly, a damned fine dining experience. Considering the place has been open only two months, when the menu is fine tuned, it's going to be great. Right now, with locally sourced and made ingredients, an artisan slant, good pricing, and thoughtful cooking, it's acomplished. It's a little jewel, well on it's way to being polished.


The Pantry and Corkscrew, Peter st, near the Octagon and Wyatts Hotel, Wesport, Co Mayo, tel: 09826977


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Smoky Polenta Chips

Culled from the pages of last weekends Guardian, Ottolenghi's Polenta chips.


It's an actual good thing to do with that box of fast cook polenta we all have lurking amongst the skeletons in our larder. If, like me, you bought a box of the stuff in the vain and misguided illusion that the infernal goop was anything other than just about tolerable, and are at a complete loss with how to hoodwink your loved ones into polishing off the perfidious stuff, then this is the recipe. It's an actual good thing to do with the stuff.


And, it kinda mirrors Dhruvs cool fish and chip deconstruction on Masterchef.


Here's the skinny

375ml of vegetable stock

60g of fast cook polenta. None of that standing by the pot for two hours stirring a thick pot of corny goo with forearms as thick as intelligent design for me. No. Fast cook is the one.

60g of cheese. I used a smoked gubbeen, mixed with parmesan, grated, to good effect. Smoked cheese, smoky chips.

20g of butter.

Seasoning, to taste. I used salt, lack pepper, and a little pimenton ahumado - smoked paprika, which really picked out and underscored the smoky note with all sorts of interesting extra tastes.


Boil the stock. Add the polenta and stir. The polenta will spit like a trapped cat that hates you because you kick it. With boiling saliva. That glues stuff. By burning.


Spread the polenta out on a cling filmed tray, about 1.5 cm thick. I tried to trim and straighten all corners and edges, and I think it's worth the effort, bot in terms of presentation, and becuase it makes handling them easier.


Season, and mix in the butter and cheese, and leave to cool.

Then chill for 30 minutes

After 30 minutes of so, cut the polenta platter into chips - I went with a 1'5cm thickness, and breadth, and varying lengths. Next time, I'll form it better to get uniform length chips.

He recommends deep frying. Which I tried, and found frustrating and difficult - the chips broke up, or bound to one another, and were difficult to remove - the tongs was too indelicate a tool to use, and I may not have chilled my polenta enough. Also, deep frying, I think, would give that perfectly even colour and texture on all sides.

So I shallow fried, and here's what I'd recommend if you choose to do so too.

1.Do small batches - they reserve, drain and crisp up well in the oven while you wait.

2. In the pan, don't let them touch - it's easy for them to bind.

3. A good layer of oil, and a non stick, or really good cast iron pan are a must.

4. Don't flip them until the undersurface is nicely browned - they're fragile until the crust forms, and they leach liquid and make the oil spit if you break them. When the crust forms, it's much easier to flip them. On max heat, on a small ring, it was about 60-80 seconds.

5. I used a fork, and a thin bladed knife to gently flip them over. I found a tongs too rough.

6. Pain is a quick teacher. The first couple of oil spatters gave my flipping a fast learned speed.

I served it with a homemade ketchup, but I think next time I'll go with a mustard or garlic mayonnaise.

And it is a genuinely good recipe, that gives polenta a beautiful texture and taste. Wonderfully crunchy, with a nice quite soft and somewhat fluffy interior. Also, they don't seem to suck up tooo much oil....



It also strikes me that, as polenta is quite good at taking up other tastes, the variations on this theme are endless. There's lots of room for experimentation. Genuinely curried chips. Garlic, or maybe a chili and lemon version. Some duck fat mixed in, or pancetta fat with some herbs........



Ottolenghi's book looks cool (and from reports the restaurant is fantastic). It's on my to buy list. Interesting recipes - with the occasional one that does not quite seem to work, but stuffed with all sorts of savoury and sweet concoctions that are genuinely fantastic.

In search of cappucino perfection

La Boulangerie, on Dublins Chatham Row, off Grafton street, in the heart of the city. The service is good - imprecise, but with such warmth and welcome that the occasional wrong table can be easily forgiven. This is a nice space to spend time in.

Not because of the decor - marbletop tables, bentwood chairs, a little too close to one another, in a relatively charmless room, but with a full glass door wall looking onto the street.

Not because of the music, commfortibgly and familiarly bad as all French Pop really should be. It's bad in entirely the right and gallicly perfect way.

But because of the sevice. Quiet, friendly, a place that feels genuinely pleased to have you in it.

To the coffee. The presentation made me smile. A really nice touch that. The coffee itself. It's that milky style of cappucino, with none of the balancing bitter notes excellent cappucino needs. I didn't need suger - I normally take one for good coffee, two for bad, and three and a serving of self loathing for the IFI stuff. This needed none. Just a long, milky bland dairy sweetness, with a hit of cocoa, but nothing oif he dark and beautiful bitter heart good cappucino needs.

I'll be coming back, but not for the coffee.

One Pico, lunch, March 3rd

One Pico have a lunch deal on at the mo - who doesn't.

Two courses for 19.95, three for 25.

Situated just off Molesworth street, the room, somewhat neutrally appointed with a too severe kind of.... greywash, curious, indifferent art pieces on the wall breaking up the decorative monotony. I don't get the paintjob, tipping the balance over to the oppressive side of banal.

The seating is comfortable, spacious enough, and the room seems to absorb sound - tables are quite close together, but at no stage did I feel as if anyone was party to my conversations, nor I to theirs.

Now to the meat, or, in the Luscious Bs case, the two veg.

The menu had some vegetarian options. Some, is, frankly not enough. Pico's sister restaurant, Bleu on Dawson street, has, on occasion, sported no veg main option on their lunch menu. Hardly a menu then, hunting and hungry for all available custom in a recession and urban setting.

One Pico had two starter veg options, and one main. On request, they offered a second main of vegetables in/on puff pastry ("we could do you some vegetables, I'll check if chef has puff pastry - this was the dish description), so nebulously described by our wrongfooted waiter as to be both unorderable and meaningless (I'll have the puff pastry wotsit, in no obvious sauce....).

My starter, a ham hock terrine, was insipid. Underseasoned, with none of the fatty, earthy big baconed herbiness I expected. No big taste - not even of ham. It felt like it was straight from the fridge too, The mouthfeel was....well, not gelatinous, moist fat, or melting. None of that rich and trottery smoothness. It was big, roughly cut chunks of fairly flavourless, and coarsely textured pink meat adhering to one another by guilt of association. Insipid. The attached sauces were well made, but, again, could well have been far more robust. Ham hock terrine. It should be rich, and delicious, melting into a layered and gelatinous mouth coating flavours, and soft, slow cooked meat texture. This was... Well. It matched the decor. It was designed to go unnoticed.

A main of rib eye steak, with one of those curious forts of chips, and a bearnaise was fine. Good texture and taste to the bearnaise, the meat, rested, and competently cooked, rare as requested, nicely maillarded, and moist, juicy, though with a string of gristle running right through it. One of my chips - I had four - was made from a spoiled spud, having that mealy texture and distinctly off taste.

The desert, an Amalfi Lemon tart, with raspberry sorbet, and three fresh raspberries was the most interesting. Curiously, raspberries, being an autumn fruit, I was not expecting too much. But the sorbet was packed with a massive raspberry flavour, just the right side of sour, and enough sweetness to give that really moreish taste that an excellent raspberry dessert can deliver. Really characterful, and well balanced, each aspect confidently delivered. One small quibble, a raspberry with, again, off flavours. Too overripe, and thinking about rotting....

The Amalfi tart. Good texture, though the pastry was a little bland. The tart was, however, too tame for my tastes. Maybe the chef was worried about having two distinctly tart and acidic components on one plate, but diluting the lemon aspect was...well. It's a lemon tart. Without the crisp and really fresh acidity, it's missing it's most distinctive and intrinsic characteristic.

Cracking sorbet though. Cracking.

Service was attentive, without being encroaching. We had everything we could want from the staff, and nothing we didn't. Perfect actually. And distinctly friendly and pleasant as we left too. By far (sorbet and company excepted), the most pleasant part of the experience.

Overall. Technically proficient food, in a comfortable room. Some underwhelming tastes, some competent and good components, and only one dish really worth revisiting for. I have no particular interest, on this form, of revisiting. That said, on reputation, and a history of good reviews, it deserves a revisit.

And on price, many of the cities eateries would deliver a lunch of far inferior quality and ambition.

One Pico
Tel: +353 1 6760300
http://www.onepico.com/