The Joy of Coq-ing

Coq au vin is a classic dish, but a classic few have ever eaten in its true form because while the “vin” is easy enough to find, locating a source of “coq” is well-nigh impossible. The real dish is made with a rooster. Not a roaster. Not a stewing hen. A rooster.

Try finding one in a supermarket, or even a typical butcher. They can reportedly be had occasionally in a decent Chinatown or in a rare carniceria, but I’ve never seen them, so for years I made coq au vin with stewing hens and left it at that.

Then my neighbor, an Italian immigrant from Puglia, wandered over to my back yard and asked if I wanted some of his roosters. Dominic keeps chickens, and he knows I hunt, and he had too many. I said sure. The hitch was that I had to catch them. And kill them.

Now I’ve traveled great distances, shot all kinds of wild game and caught fish far out in the open ocean in search of the best ingredients for my table; but I’d never actually killed a domestic animal. Nevertheless, I leapt at the chance to make real coq au vin for once in my life, and eagerly told Dominic I’d come by his chicken yard.

Then a funny thing happened. I found myself putting off the day of execution for reasons that surprised me – after all, wasn’t I a killer of wild game? Yet I felt vaguely uneasy about this. Weeks passed, and the feeling hardened into this: Hunting requires you to find and kill a creature that has all kinds of ways to avoid you. At its best, it is a chase that the hunted win at least as much as the hunter. Yet when I contemplated “harvesting” a domestic animal sheltered by man, fed by man and which lacks the defenses its wild kin possess, the faintest whiff of murder seeped into my mind. I was shocked at my own feelings.

The majority of the meat I eat fell by my own hands, but I do not live on wild game alone; and in those cases, someone else did the killing. Well, I thought, I am not about to stop eating chicken or steak, so I might was well make myself an honest man and get this thing done. I walked over to Dominic’s.

Dominic’s chickens live the old way; they are truly yard birds. His flock lives comfortably under olive trees with several ducks and a goat, so at least these roosters led a decent life. Dominic and I walked into the fenced yard together. He had an old feed sack; I’d do the catching, armed with a big fishing net. We tried to exude calm, and ambled close to an old Rhode Island red. Fwump! Down went the net and the squawking began. Rooster No. 1 went into the bag easily enough, but the other two we had to chase down. Capturing an ancient Leghorn took some doing; but we got all three.

Back at my house, the roosters appeared resigned to their fate, which I meted out as quickly and cleanly as I could. Processing poultry is a nasty, smelly business: plucking in scalding water makes the feathers stink, and then they were all over my garage’s concrete floor. Clean-up was extra tough because chicken blood is unusually quick to coagulate, and forms a hard stain where it falls. Afterward, I was struck by two things: One, how huge these birds were – they had to be 10 pounds apiece, far larger than any hen I’d ever handled. And two, how narrow their breasts were – “meat” chickens are what the industry calls double-breasted, with a broad chest that provides lots of meat. These roosters had the sunken chest of an octogenarian.

I’d read that real coq au vin uses only the legs, thighs and wings of a rooster, leaving the breasts, backs and necks for the broth. So I removed the legs, thighs and wings and tossed the rest into the pot, along with onions, carrot, fennel, celery and a little lovage – my secret weapon. God, the aroma! It was the deepest, richest chicken-y smell I’d ever encountered from a broth, and was the perfect antidote for the nastiness of processing them. Roosters were becoming “coq.” I stuffed the legs, thighs and wings into a Ziploc with some herbs and cabernet sauvignon and let them marinate overnight.

The next day I rendered some lardons of homemade pancetta, then browned the roosters in the fat. I added mushrooms, onions, the rest of the bottle of cab, some broth, covered it tightly and set it in a low oven for several hours. The house filled with that chicken-y aroma again, this time laced with wine.

When it was done, I served the stew alongside some polenta (yes, yes, another deviation from the classical presentation) and it was dreamy. Using rooster brought body to an already muscular dish. It’s bolder and just a touch gamier than coq au vin made with a stewing hen.

I’m glad I went through all this, not so much from a culinary standpoint as from a personal one. In making this dish, I’d crossed a road I had avoided before and emerged on its far side a little stronger, a little wiser and yes, even a little sadder; but I came by that meal honestly, and I would do it again. Maybe next weekend.

A former commercial fisherman and line cook, Hank Shaw has paid the bills as a political correspondent since 1992, but now works full time on his meaty blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (Jennifer just did the site’s redesign, so he’s in some happy new digs). He spends his free time making Old World-style salami at his Orangevale home when he’s not fishing, hunting or foraging around Northern California with his bemused girlfriend.

This article was originally published in September 2007.

Photo: Kazi Faiz Ahmed Jeem