Secret Kitchen menu, 27th October 2012
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Bourbon, calvados & thyme cocktail
Chicken liver paté with quince
Chicken heart soup
Coq au vin,
celeriac pommes Anna and kale
Homemade liqueur
About tonight’s menu
For tonight’s dinner I bought six 100 day old cockerels from the Ginger Pig via my lovely local delivery company, Hubbub. To be traditional, coq au vin should be made with an old, spent bird, specifically a cockerel. They taste very different to chickens (which are usually slaughtered at just 43 days in the UK) – with much stronger-flavoured, denser and gamier meat. You may or may not prefer the flavour and texture to what you are more used to.
In an effort to use the whole animal and waste nothing, I have used chicken carcasses to make stock for the soup and chicken livers to make paté. Oh, and I’ve put chicken hearts in the soup, recalling a soup I was once given in Romania. The vegetarians are eating beetroot & apple soup and roast squashes filled with fennel, chickpeas and tomatoes instead.
The cocktail recipe is from the Gramercy Tavern in NYC. Pommes Anna is a classic French dish. The chef Adolphe Dugléré created this dish in honour of Anna Deslions, who was a favoured regular at the restaurant where he worked in Paris, Café des Anglais. Anna was rumoured to have provided services to 3 kings, 2 emperors, 8 princes, 34 dukes, 2 princesses and several actresses in the upstairs private dining room.
Special thanks go to Olga, who helped waitress on the night, and educated us all about the mooli…
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