Cape Coq au Vin Recipe with Vriesenhof Pinot Noir by Jan ‘Boland’ Coetzee.
Ingredients
3 kg chicken thighs and drumsticks
750 ml Vriesenhof Pinot Noir ( ‘I use my fresh, aromatic pinot PN115 straight out the barrel')
4 bay leaves
5 ml chopped fresh thyme
250 g bacon, diced
± 20 small pickling onions
250 g button mushrooms, diced
10 ml olive oil
30 g cake flour, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper
250 ml chicken stock
5 ml brandy ('any good Cape potstill brandy from your cupboard')
1 x 410 g tin tomato puree
10 ml chopped fresh parsley
Recipe
Serves 6
Jan Boland Coetzee marinates the chicken overnight in the Vriesenhof Pinot Noir, bay leaves, and thyme. ('I use the small dytjies and boudlies from my 60-day-old free-range chickens and remove the skin so the marinade sinks into the meat.')
In a pan, fry the bacon and onions together and set aside. Then fry the mushrooms and set them aside. Dust the chicken with seasoned flour. In a large, deep saucepan, heat the oil and then fry the chicken pieces over high heat on both sides until browned. Lower the heat to medium, add chicken stock and brandy, and stir, then let it cook for about 30 minutes.
Add the bacon, onions, mushrooms, tomato puree, and parsley to the saucepan and simmer for a further 45 minutes until the chicken is cooked. ('I add a bit of extra fresh wine too.') Serve with mashed potatoes or on its own with fresh crusty bread to soak up the sauce or with a slice or two of pumpkin pie.
Wine Pairing
Vriesenhof Pinot Noir
Cook’s Tip
'Don't cook with red wine in a potjie when the meat is from leaf eaters like kudu and eland: the wine's tannins are accentuated. But gemsbok, reedbuck, and springbok eat grass, so they're fine. This is why I cook some of my potjies with Sauvignon Blanc.
A fisherman friend from Lambert's Bay who also has a farm - we've been friends since we were kids - allows Adi [who has a wine farm in the Swartland] and me to run our chicks, our haantjes, in his wheat fields. You should see the size of those things when we slaughter them compared with a shop chicken of about 1.4 kg, our free-range chickens can grow to between 3.5 and nearly 5 kg in about 100 to 130 days!
They're as tough as hell then but full of flavour. But 1 normally slaughter between 30 and 60 days. You should see us try and catch those chickens; it’s actually quite funny.