Ferdinand and I went shopping with I think everybody else who is living. We started at Grand Central at the Christmas market but nothing there; over to Toy’s R Us at Times Square. Hot diggity dog. Jackpot. Dumpling trucks and Starwars lookalikes outside and inside, once you get past the ferris wheel, every toy, ever. We were in there for a while. Then without eating or even drinking, we walked down Broadway to Macy’s and talked about a remote control helicopter for a very long time. In the end we didn’t get it. We came home and watched a movie and ate plain pasta and hard boiled eggs for dinner. Pineapple and on the side pistachio ice cream for dessert. I don’t think I have had such a colorless plain blah meal since I was pregnant. I told Ferdinand, maybe we were trying to conjure snow. With or without the snow today is the day I’m making Christmas cookies. Every year the same and every year I love them each the same: jam dots, nut crescents, gingerbread, date bar bites, mini chocolate brownies and biscotti. For dinner, in honor of my mother who when she needed to do her baking would always choose the most complicated thing she could think of that she had only half the ingredients for: Coq au vin and all the fixings.
To start: a frisee salad topped w/sliced toasted baguette with an ever so slightly melted piece of Bucheron (goat cheese)
Coq au vin: saute onions with bits of slab bacon til the onions are tender. Remove from pan. Add a bit of butter and spill of olive oil. Sear off a cut up whole chicken, (or just the breasts) but everything ON THE BONE. Get the onion and bacon back in the pan with the chicken. Add a cup of stock and a cup of your best French red wine wine. Add a bouquet garni. Cover with a piece of parchment and the lid askew. Cook just until the chicken is done (the blade of the knife will be hot to the touch of your finger or lip after stabbing the thickest part of the chicken.)
Serve with buttery potatoes with fresh tarragon, parsley and chive and buttery carrots with a bit of sugar, red wine vinegar, also cooked w/bouquet garni (bundle of celery, bay leaf, leek, parsley, thyme.)
More cheese, if that’s where you’re headed and chocolates
Or
Full on dessert. You name it. Keep it French.
xo