Recipes and stuff

Like all good peasant recipes, it's labour intensive. If you think it's too much work, open a Homepride cook-in-sauce. You chav

A great big cock. Or a large chicken, quartered, legs, wings, you get the idea

Litre of red wine
3 carrots, sliced
2 sticks celery, sliced
Bouquet garni (not one of those teabag things, make your own. It ain't exactly difficult, PM me if you're too embarrassed to ask here)
10 black peppercorns
150g of fatty bacon
Butter, oil, lard, goose or duck fat. Whatever your favourite artery clogger is.
4-5tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and black pepper
chicken stock
12-16 baby onions, or shallots
200g button mushrooms

Reduce the wine by about a third and let it cool (you don't have to do this, but it gets rid of that harsh alcohol 'bite'). Pour it over the chicken, add the carrots, celery, bouquet garni and peppercorns. Cover and stick it in the fridge, preferably overnight.

Heat your oven to 200C. Drain the chicken, pat it dry and shove it the hot oven for about 10 minutes. You can alternatively brown it in a hot pan, you philistine. Remove chicken, turn oven down to 160C.

Cut the bacon into strips and fry in a hot pan until it browns. Remove the bacon, keep the fat that's cooked out. Roll the chicken pieces in the seasoned flour and fry them off in the pan with the bacon fat. Shove the chicken with the bacon and brown the marinated carrot and celery.

Chuck the lot into a casserole with the bouquet garni and peppercorns, deglaze the pan with the wine and add that. Give it a good stir and bring to the boil. Skim off any scum. Add the chicken stock to cover the lot.

Cover, and bung it in the pre-heated oven for about half an hour

Peel the onions/shallots and trim the root. Cook them in a small pan with a bit of water, a pinch of sugar and some of your favourite fat until they caramelise a little.

Cook the mushrooms in the same pan with some more fat. Add a squeeze of lemon.

At the end of cooking, sling the mushrooms and onions into the casserole. Give it another 10-15 minutes.

Oh yes. The secret ingredient.

The cockerel's blood, added just before serving, to thicken the sauce.
I wouldn't bother