For most of my young adult life, my dad lived in rural south-west France. Unlike Keith Floyd, my father’s one for me, one for the recipe approach to wine meant that all of his meals looked like a sticky dark pile of roadkill. In spite of this, I picked up some nice recipes and eating traditions! I like bread so crusty that it will make your gums bleed and cheese that is so ripe it could run away at any minute!  

  
My favourite times to eat were: homemade continental breakfasts with my friends/family or the weekly, evening markets held in different villages. At those markets, you could buy your meat, salad, ‘frites’ and local delicacies. There would be a nice band and you’d have to scrunch up on a trestle table in order to avoid getting scorched in the blazing evening sun! The best part was barbecuing your own meat on blazing hot manhole covers- there was something delightfully caveman about it. The men always barbecued so there was always a nice opportunity to make a subtle feminist statement (they also hated it if I kicked their arse at ‘boules’ but it’s not worth the three rematches!)

  
Anyway, I’ll talk about various favourite French recipes but this one is dedicated to my friend’s mum who kindly lent us her gorgeous flat in Brighton for the weekend. My friend loves it when I make her ‘Coq au Vin’ and she always tells her mum about it. When leaving the lovely flat, I joked about leaving her mum my ‘speciality’ with all the wrappers left to the side consisting of ‘Chicken Tonight’, ‘Lambrini’ and a bag of nuggets but that would be a bit of a waste of such fine ingredients!

Coq au Vin

The best ‘Coq au Vin’ recipe is Nigel Slater’s in my opinion. He’s tweaked it to perfection and the only thing I’d add is to but free range/organic chicken to be fair to the little cluckers and make sure you have some kind of fat skimming device! I just like it with a hunk of bread and butter. 

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/nov/25/foodanddrink.shopping

If you haven’t eaten in a week and you fancy a treat, his ‘Coq au Reisling’ is also delicious in spite of my rather unappetising looking picture!