Making a FUN French Dinner for My Book Club! Easy & Delicious!

Good morning everyone. I hope you are having a fantastic day. My book club is having its monthly meeting tomorrow and it's my turn to host. Now the book we've read is Swan's Way by Marcel Proust and the whole story takes place in France. So we are going to make a French dinner and I'm going to make most of the dinner a day ahead of time and we're going to do coq au vin for the first course with a side of mashed potatoes and dessert will be madeleines. Madeleines are actually mentioned in this book and for the coq au vin the first thing I need is bacon which I'm going to slice crosswise into lardons. Now fortunately my friend Steve is bringing some cheeses and crackers which we can have pre-dinner. If you've never had coq au vin it's a symphony of delicious flavors. It's chicken and bacon and mushrooms and onion and carrot and thyme and cognac and wine and now I want to brown off this bacon which I'm going to do in my yellow dutch oven. You need a little oil to get things started. In goes the bacon and while the bacon is sizzling away we can prepare the chicken. I'm using chicken thighs skin on bone in because they are so forgiving because I do plan to reheat this dish and I've already patted the pieces dry so now I want to salt and pepper them. My bacon has some good color on it now so I'm going to remove it to a platter and I'm using a slotted spoon here because I want to save the bacon fat. Now I need to brown the chicken in batches. I'm going to brown it right in that bacon fat and while we're waiting on this second batch of chicken to brown I'm going to preheat my oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Also I can finish chopping my veggies so I already sliced up an onion and then I have some carrots here that I'm going to cut into fairly good sized pieces. Now I have cremini mushrooms over here but these get added towards the very end of the recipe. And how many are we for dinner? I think it's going to be six people so I have doubled the recipe. Oh and I will link the recipe that I am more or less following in the description box below. And here is the last of the chicken and now we can brown off the onions and the carrots. I also need some garlic but I have that in my freezer. These are garlic pucks from homegrown garlic. And into the pot they go. And to deglaze the pot I'm going to add, you're supposed to use cognac, I'm actually using brandy. I need a nice pinch of salt and a bit of black pepper. So by deglazing the pot I mean to scrape up all of the stuck on bits on the bottom of the pot because those bits are loaded with flavor. And now we can return the chicken and the bacon to the pan. The bacon plus all of the juices from this platter. I also need to add some fresh thyme to the pot. I'm going to tie up my thyme with kitchen string so that it will be easy to remove once all of the cooking is complete. I love the scent of thyme. And in it goes. Right on top. And I need to add about a half bottle or so of a dry red wine. You could use a good cabernet. I'm using Malbec today because I happen to have it on hand. The wine has come to a simmer so I'm going to cover the pot and then pop it into the preheated oven for one hour. In you go. Now while our stew is cooking in the oven I'm going to go ahead and either slice or quarter these cremini mushrooms. I'm going to sauté them separately and then add them to the stew. Otherwise the mushrooms might disintegrate during the long cooking period. I'm not sure how many I need here. You could use any kind of mushroom for this kakaban. You could even use the button mushrooms that every supermarket sells. And I think this is more than enough mushrooms. So I'm going to sauté these in a little oil. A little salt. So I want these mushrooms to release their moisture. That way I end up with just pure flavor instead of a lot of water. And my mushrooms are nicely browned. They have given up their liquid. So I am going to let these just sit here while we wait for the stew to finish. So the kakaban has been in the oven for exactly one hour. This smells just spectacular as you can probably imagine. Now I need to add the mushrooms. I need to remove the, what is this, the thyme. That will be easy to do. Put you over here. So I need to add the mushrooms. I need to thicken the sauce. So first the mushrooms. In you go. To thicken the sauce, you could thicken it with a, what is it called, a bourbon, which is butter and flour mashed together. I'm going to thicken mine with some chicken stock. It's cold chicken stock and cornstarch. Now since the liquid in the pot is already bubbling, I'm simply going to add the cold cornstarch mixture. Give it a stir. And you can see a lot of the chicken has turned purple. That's from the wine. And our main course is done. I'm going to get cleaned up here. Then we can make the madeleines. I decided to make madeleines for the book club meeting because in Swan's Way, the adult Marcel Proust tastes a madeleine that he had dipped into hot tea and it stirred up all kinds of childhood memories. He then writes all about those memories and they are really something. And madeleines are very easy to make. The only special equipment you is a madeleine pan. So this pan has these really wonderful little shell-shaped openings. I have my mise en place over here, meaning all of my ingredients are ready to go. So in a small bowl, I need flour. And I will link the recipe I'm following in the description box below. Then I need baking powder. In you go. And salt. Give this a whisk and I can set this aside. In a somewhat larger bowl, I need sugar. This is just regular granulated sugar. And the zest of one lemon. The scent of lemon stirs up all kinds of memories for me. Mostly about lemons. In you go. Then I'm going to use my impeccably clean fingers to rub the sugar and the lemon zest together until I have a very fragrant mixture. If you have a young child in your home, mashing the sugar and lemon zest together could be their job. It's a fun job. And to the sugar mixture, I'm adding two eggs. These are at room temperature. Then I'm going to beat this vigorously with a whisk until the mixture turns pale and thick. That's going to take probably two minutes. And two minutes later, the mixture has turned pale and thick and my arm is ready to fall off. Now I'm going to beat in one teaspoon each of pure vanilla extract and rose water. Now we can beat in some melted butter and cold milk. Now I can tip the flour mixture into the liquid ingredients. I'm going to just fold with a spatula until the flour mixture is thoroughly moistened. I'm reading, rereading my recipe. This batter needs to chill in the refrigerator for one hour or overnight. Since it's getting rather late, what I'm going to do is let this chill overnight and then we can bake this off first thing in the morning. Oh, and the cling film needs to come in contact with the batter. So you just press it down like this. So I'm going to pop this into the refrigerator now and then tomorrow morning we will bake off the madeleines. Now I'm going to get cleaned up here and then we can arrange some flowers. So I've just grabbed some boxwood from my garden and then I have some tulips that I found at the farm store this morning and they were just too beautiful to resist. I love the color. I need more water in this vase. I felt the first vase I used here was a little too small, so I swapped it out for a slightly larger vase. Well, I think this is a lovely, if humble, springtime arrangement that we can enjoy in the parlor tomorrow. Until then, we can enjoy the flowers right over here. My madeleine batter is in the refrigerator. My coq au vin is still cooling to room temperature over there. So I am going to get cleaned up here and then tomorrow we will bake off the madeleines and we will reheat the coq au vin. I will also make some mashed potatoes and then I will show you the setup in the parlor. Sweet dreams, my friends, and I will see you tomorrow. Hello again. It's the next day. My book club is having its meeting at 5.30 this afternoon. We've already made the main course. It's in the refrigerator. So now we can bake off the madeleine. So I looked up the history of madeleine and apparently they were created as early as 1750. So I have my oven preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and I preheated a baking tray in the oven. So I want to grease my pan here. I'm using baking spray which contains flour but you could also grease your pan with butter and flour. I'm going to brush these little shell openings just to make sure every little nook and cranny is coated. Now we need to fill these little shell openings about three quarters of the way full. I'm going to try to do this with two spoons although a piping bag would probably work best here. You don't have to worry about leveling out the batter because the heat of the oven will do that job. I can link this madeleine pan in the description box below if you are interested in obtaining one. As I recall it was not at all expensive. It looks like this made just enough batter for the 12 openings. Now I definitely overfilled some of these openings but I think they will still work out all right. And I'm going to pop this pan onto the preheated baking tray until little bumps appear in the madeleine and that will take anywhere from 11 to 13 minutes. Now as I mentioned yesterday my friend Steve is bringing some cheese and crackers. He said he was also going to make one of the appetizers that you and I made together in one of the appetizer videos. I'm not sure which appetizer he's doing so it will be a surprise. So once these little cakes are done I think the only work left to do is to set the table. Oh I forgot I need to prepare mashed potatoes. I like to make mashed potatoes from dehydrated potato flakes and I'm almost out of my kitchen stock so we need to go to the backup pantry to refill this container. We created that food storage pantry in the previous video so if you missed that episode I hope you will give it a watch. It was a huge job. I need to grab my other ingredients. I'm going to double my usual recipe because we have six people for dinner. I need milk. You know I don't have my mashed potato recipe printed out anywhere so I will just give it to you. It is, well I'm doubling the recipe, three cups of water, two cups of milk, one and a half teaspoons of salt, six tablespoons of butter, in you go, and four cups of the dehydrated potatoes. And I don't even have to stir this. All I need to do is cover it with cling film and then shortly before serving time I will pop this into the microwave for six to eight minutes, give it a good stir and we will have beautiful beautiful mashed potatoes. How easy was that? Into the refrigerator. And my madeleine are done. I'm going to let them cool for a couple of minutes and then I will slide them onto a cooling rack. So I'm going to pop these onto my baking tray and just look at these. They're really beautiful. You can see the little shell design and you can always recognize a madeleine because it has a little bump or a nipple in the center and I definitely overfilled some of the openings. My bad. But they will still be absolutely wonderful and I cannot tell you how fragrant they are with the rose water and the lemon. We're going to use rose water and lemon in the glaze. So I have a cooling rack set atop of a parchment lined baking sheet. Now I'm going to make the glaze and I need to increase my oven temperature to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. I want to do this in a fairly shallow bowl because I want to dip the madeleine into the glaze. I think I'll use this one and put you away. And the glaze is described in the recipe that I will link for the madeleine. So I need confectioner's sugar, the juice from the lemon that we zested yesterday, and just a small splash of rose water. My recipe says the mixture must be perfectly smooth and no thicker than heavy cream. So I want to dip the bump side of each madeleine into the glaze and then return the little cake to the cooling rack and just wash the glaze off my fingers. So now these madeleines go back into the oven until the glaze cracks and bubbles. That's going to take about one minute. Oh these are beautiful. Turn my oven off. I am going to let these cool on the rack to room temperature and when they reach room temperature I'm going to try one of them for you. I want to try one of these madeleines. Oh yeah. They are spongy, light, and just exquisitely perfumed. I adore them. I think this will give me enough energy to go set the table. So the way the book club works is we first get together. We have drinks and nibbles and we discuss the book and then we have dinner. So we will do drinks and nibbles in the parlor and then dinner in the dining room and it's just a super casual setup. So setting the table will be very easy. This book club dinner was a huge success. Just before guests arrived I brought the coq au vin to a simmer on the stovetop and stirred into the pot a bag of frozen pearl onions. Then I transferred the pot to the oven to keep it hot. Unfortunately I had miscounted the number of people in our club. The table was set for six but we actually have eight members. So at the last minute I squeezed in two additional place settings. Fortunately there was plenty of food for everyone. The coq au vin received rave reviews and there was not a spoonful of mashed potatoes left in the bowl. The madeleine were a big hit too. Everyone loved the intoxicating perfume and the sponge-like texture of the little desserts. I will have another video for you on Friday. Until then please treat yourself well. I can't wait to see you again.