[France]

Every time I said the name of the dish, someone told me to pronounce it differently. My mom said coke a va, my boyfriend said coke a veh, and Google told me everything from cwoke a vu to cock a vee. There is a reason that I filled my language requirement with Spanish instead of French. Regardless of how the dish is pronounced, coq au vin is a dish of rooster cooked in a burgundy wine. Most modern interpretations use chicken legs instead of rooster. Everything about this dish screams French, from the beurre manié to the use of multiple fats to the pinot noir, which I substituted for a cab that I had on hand. To truly immerse myself in traditional French cuisine, I also used mise en place, literally meaning “putting in place,” to ensure all of my ingredients were cleaned, measured, and chopped before the first pat of butter hit the pan.

My reference recipe for this dish came from Masterclass; I decided to use this one after reading an article about the fundamentals of French cooking on the same site. I made several decisions to keep the meal simple and affordable, including a bolder red wine, baby bella mushrooms instead of button mushrooms, and omitting the pearl onions altogether, which were unreasonably pricey at Meijer. What I did adhere to was carefully chopping and measuring ingredients beforehand, ensuring that the dish would be well balanced and uniform in every bite. My next decision was to work in batches with the bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. My studio apartment has a small kitchen with limited equipment, and my only pot could only handle two thighs at a time to avoid overcrowding. As soon as the chicken skin hit the leftover bacon fat, I wished I had used a pinot noir. The thinner wine wouldn’t have clung to the chicken skin, which left me with something more chewy than crispy. Sad chicken skin aside, the rest of the cooking went smoothly. Having the ingredients prepared beforehand was useful, however, this dish required so much simmering that I found myself lounging on the couch and checking Instagram. My time might have been better spent had I chopped mushrooms, onions, and carrots during the recipe’s natural downtime.

After adding the beurre manié--and a dash of cornstarch to speed up the process--the result was a tender, juicy chicken thigh smothered in a rich gravy. I quickly made a bed of white rice with parmesan cheese, knowing that I’d need something to soak up the deliciousness. I was sure to get a little bit of everything in each bite. Knowing the work that went into those consistently chopped carrots, I wasn’t about to miss out on a single flavor. I ate slowly, savoring the layered taste of wine and aromatics in the sauce. There was still a tasty hint of smokiness from the bacon lingering in the sauce. However, I quickly found that I couldn’t eat too much of it, and opted to scrape some of the sauce away so I could focus on my chicken. The fatty thigh meat made me want to swear off chicken breasts altogether. Each bite exploded with flavor, complete with notes of parsley and thyme. Using wine both in the marinade and in the sauce brought the two parts together in a lucious, earthy way.

As delicious as the dish was, however, part of me felt a bit deflated. This was supposed to be the French-est of French dishes, and in some ways it seemed predictable. Maybe it’s because I’m accustomed to these flavors, and I try to incorporate wine sauces in other dishes. Or it might just be me; I’m sure a better chef in a professional kitchen would have done many things differently. Still, I have enough faith in my recipe-reading skills to believe I couldn’t have been too far off. The dish was great, but it didn’t blow my mind. To me, so many other cuisines have flavors that are just as good, if not better. If this is the height of what this country has to offer, why is French cuisine considered one of the best in the world?

To answer my question, I went back to the beginning. Tracing a cuisine’s rise to the top meant it had to be at the starting point somewhere along the way. As it turns out, a lot of France’s claim to fame is due to first-mover advantage. Many credit France for the invention of gourmet restaurants in the first place, once the chefs for the aristocracy found their employers guillotined and themselves out of a job. Our word for restaurant comes from the French word restaurer, which means “to restore oneself.” Not only that, but the French were responsible for styles of cooking like sauteing, braising, and poaching. In my experience, many of these techniques are used to bring out natural flavors of the selected ingredients. Compare braising a chicken to cooking it over a charcoal grill; one uses salt and the flavor of the braising liquid to release natural juices in the chicken, and one imparts a smoky, charred flavor on the chicken that cannot be attributed to any ingredient. This points to a broader characteristic of French cuisine: cooking is about elevating each ingredient. A French cook would want chicken to taste succulent, juicy, and exactly like chicken. Based on my meal, this made a lot of sense. Coq au vin tasted like chicken and wine.

My generation of Americans has been exposed to more cuisines, spices, and flavors than ever before. The United States offers global cuisines everywhere, especially in large cities or areas with high populations of non-Americans. From my perspective, the majority of these cuisines impart bold flavors onto dishes, ones that I’ve grown to love. When cooking chicken, my first instinct is to reach for six containers on the spice rack, whereas a French chef would stick with a pat of butter and a pinch of rosemary. One way isn’t necessarily better than the other, but I suppose I prefer my chicken to taste like something more.