Ingredients

• 1 cock (rooster or young male chicken), approximately 6 lbs. or 2.7 kg. in weight

• Marinade for the cock

• 3/4 litre good red burgundy wine (1 bottle) to cover – possibly more

• 1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced

• 1 carrot, peeled and thinly sliced

• 1 celery stalk, thinly sliced

• 1 medium bouquet garni (parsley, bay & thyme)

• 1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced

• 6 peppercorns

• 2 tbsp. olive oil

• Other Ingredients

• 4 oz. or 110 gm. bacon; in one piece (streaky or English bacon from the belly)

• 1 oz. or 25 gm. butter

• 2 tbsp. tomato purée

• 4 fl. oz. or 120 ml. brandy (see notes)

• 5 fl. oz. 140 ml. heavy cream or beurre mani; optional

• 1 medium bouquet garni (parsley, bay & thyme)

• Salt & pepper to taste

• 1 tbsp. chopped parsley ; flat leaf is best

• For Garnish 1 (Button onions)

• 1/2 lb. or 225 gm. button onions, peeled

• 3/4 oz or 20 gm. butter

• 1 tbsp. (15 ml.) oil

• 5 fl. oz or 28-30 ml. stock, bouillon or wine

• 1 medium bouquet garni (parsley, bay & thyme)

• For Garnish 2 (Mushrooms)

• 1/2 lb. or 225 gm. button mushrooms

• 1 oz. or 25. gm. butter

Instructions

1. Preparation and Marinating

2. At least two days before you want to eat this dish (or about a week if cooking by stages, see additional notes, below), prepare the marinade and the cock; slice the vegetables, tie up the marinade bouquet garni (parsley, bay & thyme).

3. Place them with the other marinade ingredients in a large, non aluminium, saucepan. Bring to a boil, simmer 5 minutes and then allow to cool completely.

4. Lift out and cut up the cock into serving pieces. As the bird is normally pretty big, it is best to cut into about 12 pieces or even more. Also, cut up the feet, neck and carcass, they'll be removed right at the end.

5. When the marinade is cold, put in the meat back in, cover and leave for minimum of 24 hours in a cool place. If needed, add a second bottle of wine to ensure that all pieces of the cock are submerged in the marinade. You can marinate up to 5 or 6 days in a fridge.

6. Long Cooking

7. At least one day before you wish to eat this dish (or three if cooking by stages, see additional notes below), remove the meat pieces from the marinade and dry them thoroughly with a paper towel. Keep aside.

8. Strain the marinade and keep both vegetables and liquid - separately. Discard the bouquet garni.

9. Cut the bacon into lardons (batons) of approximately 4 cm X 6 mm square.

10. If the bacon is very salty drop the lardons into boiling water, cook for 10 minutes and then drop into cold water to cool, before drying them on a towel. Skip this step if the bacon is not very salty.

11. Preheat the oven to moderate (gas mark 3/300?F/160?C) or to low if cooking by stages, see additional notes below.

12. In a large casserole dish, capable of being heated on the top of the stove, melt the butter and gently fry the lardons until very lightly browned and the fat extracted. Remove the lardons and reserve/keep aside.

13. Brown the pieces of cock meat (you may find you have to dry them again before browning) in the remaining hot fat in the casserole pan, in small batches (do not crowd the meat in the pan). Due to the marinating, the meat will not go the usual brown colour, but somewhat redder from the wine. Keep aside.

14. When all the meat is fried, put the strained marinated vegetables back into the same pan. First sweat them gently, then raise the heat and fry, stirring from time to time until they are lightly golden coloured. Remove from the pan, keep aside.

15. Pour off any excess fat from the pan, but making sure that any crusty bits are retained.

16. Return the casserole to the heat and return the meat to the pan. Quickly warm the brandy a little in a ladle or small pan, and pour over the meat. Instantly, give it a shake and light it with a match or a gas lighter. The flames will flare up briefly. Keep shaking the pan, to burn off the remaining free fat, and to make sure that as much brandy as possible burns. As the flames die down, pour the strained marinade liquid over the meat. Bring to the boil.

17. Return browned vegetables, tomato puree and a new bouquet garni to the pan and bring to the boil. Put on the lid and place the casserole towards the bottom of the oven ). Cook until the bird is nicely tender, but not falling off the bone. For an elderly cock, this will take around 5 or more hours, for a fully grown but young cockerel, or a boiling fowl, from 2-3 hours. Alternatively, split this stage of the cooking over 3 days, according the to additional notes, below.

18. Remove the casserole from the oven, and leave to cool before placing overnight in the fridge. De-fat as much as possible.

19. Last Stage Cooking and Garnishes

20. Shortly before the meal, if the dish isn't hot already, remove the casserole from the fridge and heat gently on top of the stove, shaking from time to time.

21. Meanwhile, prepare all the garnishing vegetables: Peel the button onions, blanch for 10 seconds, then immerse in cold water. Brown them in butter and oil, in a saut? pan. Shake them about and cook them for about 10 minutes. They won't brown very evenly, but it doesn't matter.

22. Now put in a new bouquet garni and the liquid (which can be red wine, white wine, stock or water). Place a lid on the saut? pan and simmer, shaking gently from time to time to ensure the onions cook on all sides, until tender - about 45 minutes, by which time most of the liquid will be absorbed.

23. While the onions are cooking, saut? the carefully cleaned (but not washed or peeled) mushrooms in very hot butter in a frying pan, ideally without allowing them to exude their liquid.

24. When the vegetables are done, add to the reserved lardons and keep to one side.

25. Now turn your attention to the cock casserole again. Strain the sauce from the rest, and then discard the marinade vegetables and bouquet garni, keeping the meat to one side (this would be an appropriate moment to remove the bits of carcass without meat on them) and return the sauce to the casserole dish.

26. Fast boil to reduce the volume of liquid if necessary, especially if you used more than one bottle of wine to cover the meat in step 5. There is no fixed level of reduction, taste from time to time as it reduces, and stop when the sauce tastes powerful but not too salty.

27. Adjust seasoning and stir in cream, if using. Simmer for a few minutes to allow the sauce to meld. I prefer to add beurre mani to thicken the sauce: Work together butter and flour on a board with a spatula or knife, whisk this in little blobs into the boiling sauce until the sauce is thickened to the desired extent.

28. Now add the meat and the garnishes. Reheat.

29. Serve, sprinkled with chopped parsley, in a large serving dish, surrounded by fried bread triangles, and with plain boiled potatoes and the best red burgundy wine you can afford!

Notes

• As always, when cooking with wine, the better the wine the better the results. Don't go mad, but especially in this dish, where the wine plays an important part in the finished dish, don't spoil the results by skimping on the wine.
  
  

• My personal preference, is to carry out the cooking in stages. This has the advantage that the meat becomes perfectly tender, but doesn't become stringy or fall off the bones.

• To do so, use a much lower cooking temperature, of around 125?C 250?F.

• The day you start the cooking, cook in preheated oven for about 1 hour, turn off the oven and leave to cool down for an hour or two. It's safe enough to do so, as long as the cover is not removed. Remove from the oven and cool thoroughly (best to do this in cold water), before transferring to the fridge to leave overnight.

• Next day, remove from the fridge, de-fat as best you can, cover again and return to the cold oven. Turn on to around 140C, and cook about 1 hour. Allow to cool a bit in the oven as before, then remove from oven. cool thoroughly and refrigerate overnight.

• Repeat for a third day.

• If eating on the fourth day, remove from fridge, de-fat more thoroughly. I have a sprinkler attachment to my tap, and I find that by now the sauce is so set, that you can hold the casserole vertically over the sink and spray with hot water to melt just the fat away! How ever you do it, try to get the dish as fat free as possible.

• Cover again, return to the cold oven and heat again. This time, test the meat to see if it's tender as soon as it's hot. If it is not, continue cooking for longer. As soon as it's both hot and tender, continue from step 21. Prepare the finish and garnish according to the instructions above.