Vin Jaune

It is said that the ingredients of an authentic peasant dish will be prohibitively expensive outside their country of origin. I told this to Phillipe the other day over coffee, as he was describing the food of the Jura region in his native France. One of the dishes he liked to prepare was Coq au Vin Jaune aux morilles. Now, in order to make this you need an organic grain fed chicken. In France, these are pretty easy to come by, and are so revered that they have special tricolour cockades attached to their still-intact claws to show their provenance and eclat. They kind of look like skinned sans-coulottes.

You also need morel mushrooms- morilles - which are the most expensive kind of mushroom. At Urban Fair (or as I like to call it Urban Unfair) dried morels go for 50 dollars per 100 grams. This greatly upset Phillipe - he could understand paying 1000 dollars a month for an apartment in a city that wasn't even Paris, but that much for morels was criminal. You see, where Phillipe comes from you can just walk out your back door and pick them for free. I suggested substituting another kind mushroom, but he would not hear of it - "the morel mushroom has tiny pockets that soak up the sauce in a very unique way" he explained , as if I were some sort of stone-age creature who dines on raw mammoth. We bought the morels.

Coq au Vin Jaune would not be Coq au Vin Jaune without Vin Jaune. And what is Vin Jaune?
Yellow wine. Duh. That is what I said. But Phillipe said that the taste of Vin Jaune was absolutely distinct - like lifting up a rock and licking moss. He picked up a stone and told me to smell it. I just laughed. But he was serious, so I smelled it. The rock smelled like a rock, and spearmint (there was some gum stuck to the rock). Apparently, Vin Jaune is fermented in the same way as sherry. It comes from a temperamental grape that must be handled gently. So I guess you could say that if I were a drink I would be Vin Jaune.....

Unfortunately, we were unable to find Vin Jaune, as apparently people here do not appreciate its earthy flavour. We made do with Chablis, but Phillipe insisted it was not the same.

It never is.