Season the pot with salt and pepper, and bring the liquid to a boil. Then add the turkey and pancetta back into the pot, and follow with the red wine, chicken broth, and little packet of fresh thyme. Then, add the Cognac, and stir it into the vegetables and flour. Then add the flour, and stir to coat everything in the pan. Add the garlic and shallots and stir through for about 15 seconds. Add the mushrooms to the hot oil and cook until they dark and shrunken down-just a couple of minutes. Remove the pancetta with a slotted spoon, and place next to the turkey on the plate off to the side. Then remove them to a plate, and set off to the side.Īdd the pancetta to the hot oil, and cook until just crisp. Season the turkey legs with salt and pepper, and add them to the pan. In a very wide nonstick skillet or Dutch oven medium-high heat, add the olive oil. 10 sprigs of thyme, tied together with kitchen twine.Another thing to be thankful for!Įxcerpted from my weekly column French in a Flash on Serious Eats. It’s definitely for a French-American Thanksgiving, but it also works wonders if, like me, you’re only cooking for a few. I serve it with mashed potatoes or buttered gnocchi and a big green salad or my warm roasted shredded Brussels sprouts salad. The sauce is thick, and sweet, and savory in that way good coq au vin is. Some flour, some cognac, some wine, and some stock later, and the turkey legs blip away in their little bath until the meat falls off the bone three hours later. Then whole shallots (who can be bothered with pearl onions when there’s a whole holiday to deal with?), slivered garlic, fresh thyme. In go the mushrooms-I use thickly cut Portobello for texture. I brown off the drumsticks (two will do for four people), and then the little cubes of pancetta. And I came up with this version of turkey leg “coq” au vin. I was blown away by Suzanne Goin’s turkey leg confit in this month’s Bon Appetit. So I’m concentrating on my favorite part: the legs. As our celebration this year here in London will only be three people, we don’t need a giant bird. So this year, I am inspired by French takes on turkey. Our turkey is pretty is standard: herb-stuffed and butter-rubbed. I have to admit, usually it’s our side dishes that are francophone. So it’s very appropriate that we all sit down to some version of turkey and potatoes and pie, but the accent the turkey has is decidedly different across the households that stitched together form our country. Because part of what makes Thanksgiving American is that we come from so many different places, to be together with the same ideals. I have always been thankful for the transatlantic jumble that is that meal. And we always, whether it’s considered French or not, start the night with a champagne toast and a list of what we are each thankful for. Haricots verts instead of regular, sturdy green beans.

Gratin Dauphinois instead of mashed potatoes. Growing up in a French-American family, Thanksgiving was always a happy confusion.

Coq au vin serious eats