Cocotte de poulet au cidre (French chicken stew with cider)

For ➍
1 large chicken, cut in 6
pepper & salt
1 tbs butter or oil
250 g mushrooms, quartered
2 thick slices salted bacon, diced
3 celery stems, diced
50 cl cider
5 sprigs lemon thyme
2 leaves laurel
10 cl cream*
1 tbs mustard
parsley, cut

Heat the butter or oil in a large pot. Add the chicken pieces. Add salt and pepper. Brown lightly. Remove from the pot.
Add the mushrooms, bacon and celery to the pot. Sauté for a few m.
Put the chicken pieces on top. Add the cider. Add the thyme and laurel.
On low fire, cook for 1.5 h**, half covered.
Remove the meat and thicken the sauce. Add the mustard and cream. Add the chicken pieces. Sprinkle with parsley.
Serve with a crispy baguette*** to dip the sauce.

*Use fresh creamed goat cheese (or Philadelphia cheese) instead.
**Reduce cooking time with smaller or fewer pieces to 45-50 m, such as a pair of chicken legs of +/- 500 g.
***Bake or toast slices.

Moules de bouchot de la baie du Mont Saint-Michel au cidre (French mussels Mont Saint-Michel way)

For ➍
2 kg moules de bouchot*
6 dl Normandy cider (or white wine)
3 red onions, finely chopped (or shallots)
3 cups finely chopped parsley
60 g flour
60 g unsalted butter
3 dl cream
pepper

Clean the mussels. Remove the threads between the mussels, then wash in 2 baths of cold salted water. Keep them cold.
Pour ½ of the cider into the pot, add the mussels and pepper, then cook over high heat. When the mussels are open, remove them from the pot and strain the mussel juice.
Reserve the juice and keep the mussels warm. Place the butter in a pan, then add the chopped onions, cook until they become golden. Add flour, stirring with a wooden spoon to avoid lumps, then gradually pour in the cooking juices, cider and reduce to ⅓.
Stir in the cream, stirring, parsley, make a broth and remove from heat.
Serve and top the mussels with the cream sauce.

*The 'moules de bouchot' are cultivated on wooden stakes planted in the sea to avoid predators. It produces small, delicious mussels. A shipwrecked Irish or Scott seems to have invented the poles to hunt birds in the 13th century, but when mollusks attached themselves to the wood, it became a better trade. It was widely spread along the French Atlantic coast, and was regulated in the late 17th century. After WWII, the production was reactivated in Vivier-sur-mer, and has become a main succes in Normandy, followed by new mussel fields on the Atlantic shores.

Matelote de roussette au cidre (Normande dogfish cider stew)

For ➍
600 g skinned & emptied dogfish (a small shark)*
500 g firm potatoes, peeled and sliced in chunks less than 1 cm
1 onion, chopped
½ bottle of Normandy cider
salt & pepper
flour

In a large frying pan, sauté onions in oil.
Cut dogfish into 5 cm chunks. Sprinkle them with flour.
Peel and cut the potatoes into slices less than 1 cm.
Brown the onions and the dogfish.  Add the potatoes. Cover slowly with cider. Add salt and pepper.
Cover and cook over low heat for 30 m.
Adjust the seasoning before serving.

*'Roussette' is sold, cleaned and skinned, as 'saumonette' in France (though visually similar fish like eels might be sold as saumonette.
Instead use regular shark or swordfish, cut in chunks, lightly floured.

Try a similar recipe: peel and slice 3 onions. Sauté them with 60 g butter. Add 800 g dogfish pieces and brown them lightly. Remove fish and onions. Stir in 30 g flour into the melt butter, then pour in the 75 cl cider slowly, continously stirring. Add salt and pepper. Put the dogfish and onions in the pan. Cover and cook in the oven at 200°C for 30 m. Serve the fish in sauce and garnish with watercress leaves. Serve with potatoes or mashed watercress (blanche it, mix it, then add the cream, salt and pepper.

Poulet au cidre (Normandy chicken)

For ➍
4 chicken parts
4 Golden Delicious apples
8 cl Calvados
8 cl fresh cream*
50 cl sweet cider**
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
2 branches of thyme
1 shallot
2 pinches of ginger powder
sugar
salt & pepper

Peel 2 apples. Cut them in quarters. Put in a bowl. Add the Calvados. Let rest for 1 h.

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Brown the pieces of chicken in a frying pan. Add cut shallot, salt and pepper the meat.

Put the pieces and the apples in a large oven-dish.

Arose with the cider. Add thyme, bay-leaves, cinnamon and cloves.

Cook for 30 m.

Cut 2 apples in small pieces. Sauté them with some butter. Add ginger, sugar and a pinch of pepper.

Set chicken and apples aside and half the sauce on low heat. Add the cream* and thicken the sauce.

Serve chicken and apples with some sauce.

*Optional.
**All French cider is American 'hard cider', with an alcoholic component. For this recipe, use cidre doux, the sweet variation. For drinking, serve the dry variety, cidre brut.

Read the chicken cooking tip.