Hello sweet treasures! I made so many delicious meals this week it’s hard to choose a winner. Just like it must have been hard to choose the winners at the Canadian Comedy Awards this past Sunday. I had the honour of being nominated for “Best Female Stand-up”. I didn’t win, BUT I had a blast partying the night away with the who’s who of the Canadian comedy scene. Because I’ve made this an award themed blog, I guess I’ll crown my “slow cooker coq au vin” as the winner! Congrats coq au vin!

I had a wee dinner party on Friday with some of my best gal pals from Ottawa. It’s been a long time since we’ve all been able to hang out and it was a perfect eve of food, wine and conversation. I played softball during the day so I set up the coq au vin in the slow cooker before I left. This is why I love this thing. I can galavant around town all day and when I get home, all I have to do is serve! This is the basic recipe that I followed. I used shallots in place of pearl onions, chicken stock in place of cognac(I mean, who has cognac these days?) and 4 large chicken legs.

http://www.thezenofslowcooking.com/slow-cooker-coq-au-vin-a-la-julia-child-2/

Coq au vin makes a nice jus so I thought mashed potatoes would go very nicely with it. Egg noodles would be good too but one of my friends has a gluten intolerance so that wasn’t going to fly! I peeled and cooked 3 large potatoes and mashed them up with greek yogurt, salt and pepper. I didn’t have milk or butter so I thought the yogurt was a healthy, suitable alternative.

My friend Christiana made a delicious salad with raspberries, goat cheese and chia seeds, Erica brought an appetizer of asparagus wrapped in proscuitto, pan fried with fresh lemon (they are addictive and amazing), and Carla made gluten free brownies, berry sauce and brought some coconut ice cream. My friends should have food blogs, that’s how good they are! Especially Carla, because she makes such amazing gluten free food. Here’s the thing though. If you read the coq au vin recipe you’ll notice that you lightly dredge the chicken in flour. Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking and I did this step, not realizing at the time that I had RUINED the dish for Carla. She couldn’t eat it and it broke my heart. Luckily we had enough proscuitto to feed an army but still, I felt bad.

I felt bad because the chicken was SOOOOOO good! Fall off the bone, magical winey, rich broth, warming goodness. The potatoes soaked up the gravy and and the acidity and lightness of the salad complimented the robust chicken flavours. It happened to be rainy and shit outside which made this taste even better!

Sometimes you love your slow cooker SO much, you use it twice in one week. I had leftover coq au vin but not enough for Matt so I made some very simple chicken drumsticks to bulk up my leftovers. I pan seared them for about 2 minutes on each side before adding them to the slow cooker with carrots, onion, 1 cup chicken broth, 1 tbsp tomato paste, splash balsamic vinegar, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper and fresh crushed garlic. I put the slow cooker on high for 4.5 hours. Look how beautiful! It tasted great with leftover mashed potatoes. It was a nice hearty meal to have before the Canadian Comedy Awards!