coq au vin

I think Bourdain puts it best..... "like the very best dishes, this is one of those that goes on the stove looking, smelling and tasting pretty nasty". Yep, I pulled this bowl of marinating chicken & aromatics out of the fridge, took the plastic wrap of the top and went, "blech". It smelled and looked pretty bad. But, after all was said and done it tasted pretty darn good.
I used the Les Halles Cookbook recipe, except that I substituted some big fat leg quarters that I had in the freezer. In retrospect, I probably could have cut down on the marination time because of that.
After marinating them in some merlot/cab blend or another (drinkable, eh...), some chopped up aromats and a bouquet garni overnight, I browned the chicken (kind of hard to tell with the purply skin, lol) and the veggies, then added the marinating liquid back to the pot (yes, I thought about the germy implications of this .. but realized it would all be slowly simmering for the next hour or so), and then prepared the garniture...
Fancy, huh? Thick bacon (since for some reason slab bacon is impossible to find around here), mushrooms browned in the bacon fat, and some browned pearl onions. Yes, I cheated and did frozen pearl onions. Next time I will invite you over to peel fresh ones.
Some fresh wine was then reduced in the onion browning pan down to a syrup, then the strained cooking liquid and garniture were added. Wow, wow, wow. The sauce for this was great on its own! The chicken was just ok, blah grocery store chicken, a tad overcooked (my timing was a bit off), but the sauce was really great with some buttered noodles.
Although we would have preferred rice and maybe some crusty bread next time instead. I guess I just don't get buttered noodles as a vehicle for sauce, it doesn't work for me.