"coq au vin" news and stories

If you're a hungry carnivore spending any amount of time in the Carolinas, you will undoubtedly be stuffing your face with signature dishes like Carolina pulled pork or deliciously greasy fried chicken. And while you may enjoy an ice cold Carolina Pale Ale with your meal, the most cheerful way to wash it all down is with a nice glass of Carolina-born Cheerwine.

For all you Yankees who aren't privy to this sweet southern concoction, Cheerwine is a sweet and bubbly cherry soda unlike any other, with a deep burgundy color resembling a fine Pinot Noir. It's a popular soft drink in the south that is more "cheer" than "wine" (and more "cherry" than "cheer"), but we're going to pretend it's Pinot -- it looks like wine when you pour it into fancy stemware anyway.

Read on about Cheerwine and find the Fancy Fast Food "recipe" for Coq Au CheerVin after the jump...

Happy Coq au Vin Day!

The French pride themselves on this traditional dish, featuring a wine braise that produces succulent, fall-off-the-bone tender chicken. In fact, the dish is so prized that one French tale has the well-known chef Alexander Dumaine denying one woman's praise for his coq au vin, pleading that he was not yet satisfied with it. She wondered, after 30 years, how it could possibly improve. According to legend, Dumaine responded, "That, madam, was practice."

We'll trust Julia Child for her perfected recipe, which she shared on Good Morning America in May 1995. Never one to spare any calories, Child would appreciate the additional steps of this recipe to brown the chicken in bacon fat and flame it in brandy. Pull our your Le Creuset and start simmering!

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured on the site.

Photo: Food Network

We should've known better. You can't expect a figure skater to lay off the sparkles forever, and sure enough, our man Brian Boitano was back to his old tricks this week: goofy skits, crudely animated fantasy sequences and laughing at his own jokes.

But while his aesthetics are regressing, at least his cooking is maturing, from the fussy appetizers of the first two shows to something resembling a real meal.

The fabricated meal-making scenario this time followed an eager Brian ready to impress his handyman in order to gain acceptance into an "international dinner club" -- cue many references to the Wonder Bread-ish Brian's Italian heritage.

For the moment, we'll ignore the incongruous fantasy of a dashing, 40-something French handyman willing to whip up his mother's coq au vin recipe for a bachelor client. (And is it just us, or do the shots of Brian's spacious, garden-facing kitchen and his narrow San Francisco living quarters seem a little... lacking in continuity?)

You guys are right: The problem with The Next Food Network Star is that it challenges the contestants with tasks that I can't imagine them having to face if they actually win. I watched last night with a friend who had never seen before, and he was pretty much laughing out loud. That said, I still kind of really like it. Agree? Disagree? Read on.

• Eat your vegetables!
• Forget all those other sauces. Red, tomato-based sauces are the way to go.
• Pastrami gets all fancy.
• What does your city taste like?
• When I was in grade school, everyone was saying I had to learn the metric system because that's what we'd be using in the future. I didn't, and we don't.
• Karl's Sausage Kitchen is a legendary place around Boston. It was even mentioned in one of the Spenser novels.
• What is Katylyst Kombucha?
• This week's recipes: Winter Cake, Seattle Salmon Dip, Bratwurst in Beer, and Coq au vin.