CHICKEN IN COCA COLA

Some of you may think I have gone out of my mind. I did when I saw a recipe for “butt in Coca-Cola.”

Photo Courtesy of thebestblogrecipes.com

I searched the Internet to see if there were some meanings of butt that I was missing.

There weren’t.

Just these: “ass, backside, behind, bottom, bum, buns, buttocks, can, derriere, fanny, fundament, hind end, hindquarters, keister, nates, posterior, prat, rear, rear end, rump, seat, stern, tail, tail end, tooshie, tush.”

Did any of these taste better in Cola?

When I saw that recipe, “Le Fooding” was the latest food term in France. In the tradition of fad food terms, no one knew what it meant. The lead article about it in the French press it did mention the chicken in Coca-Cola at the new hip restaurant on Paris’ rue Marbeuf called Korova.

There was an immediate storm in New York, albeit in a teacup, when the article appeared. “Chicken in Coca-Cola,” with several exclamation points. “The final ruination of French food by the French!” 

But nothing new in the USA if ham and not chicken. Haven’t Southerners cooked with Coke since it first appeared on the back porch? 

When I decided to try cooking with Coca-Cola I was living in New York. My biggest problem was how to get a huge bottle of Coke into the building past the eagle and sometimes evil eyes of the doormen.

All of them too willing to spill the beans on what the famous resident chef (I was only accepted by the Board because I knew and had filmed with Julia child) was shopping for. 

It’s bad enough to have to go to the local Gristedes and face the sullen, never looking at the customer, talking amongst themselves but never to the customer with the money in hand, and whining about their job, checkout cashiers.

“Triple bag it” I begged. Getting no response, I proceeded to put four see-though bags together to completely camouflage and disguise the huge Coca-Cola label that was going to give me away in the lobby of my building.

There was no boiling hen that would withstand a few hours of cooking, so I bought a ham butt for my first attempt at cooking in Coca-Cola.

Photo Courtesy of www.foodabovegold.com

Take a real ham, and I don’t mean the ones like Smithfield, because they are a pain to cook as well as very expensive. 

Get one from the supermarket that is close to a ham as possible. Cover the ham in Coca-Cola (not diet or light) and raise the ham lovingly at 300 degrees for a couple of hours. The first hour covered in foil, the second hour basted in Coke every 15 minutes, and you have some genuinely delicious back-country Southern cooking. I say “delicious” because I’m assuming there have been a couple of bourbons on the rocks or Manhattans before the meal, and that there’s a dish of yams cooked with molasses and plenty of fresh lime juice beside the ham. 

But back to the chicken in Coke.

The incomparable Frederick, wife of Pierre Herme, France’s most famous young pastry chef, put it on the menu she designed for Korova. Even though it is registered with a little ‘R’ in a circle as if trademarked, it was not really the star of the show for me. It was the “oeufs mayonnaise”, or boiled egg served in halves lightly covered in lemon mayonnaise with some mustard and more highly salted mayonnaise on the side. No such thing as too much mayonnaise. The eggs were correctly “hard-boiled.” Put them cold from the refrigerator into a heavy pot with cold water deep enough to cover them by two inches, bring to the point just before the water boils, remove from the heat, cover for ten minutes exactly, then put in cold water with ice. These are now fit for the A. S.O.M., or ASSOCIATION DE SAUVEGARDE DE L’ŒUF MAYONNAISE, the society for preserving the existence and the quality of oeufs dur mayonnaise. I hope they make me an honorable member.

Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia

Here the mayonnaise looks perfect. But there should be three halves, (as in photo below) and no lettuce or chives. The glory of these eggs alone on a white plate is quite enough.

And in this photo, once again no garnish is necessary, though pretty. The black pepper is not. Nor is the lumpy mayo.

Photo Courtesy of Paris with Scott

As for the ham, the braising juices were delicious, as was the jelly that formed in the bottom of the casserole the next day.

But with 50 mg of salt in a 12-ounce Coke, very salty. 

I am a devoted fan of putting a little bit of salt in anything sweet to encourage the flavors. But salty Coca Cola! That was a surprise.

But not this from a 2018 New Yorker magazine by Hannah Goldfield.

“The oeuf arrived hard-boiled to perfection, so that the yolk was fully cooked but ever so slightly jammy, and the white was supple but not rubbery.

It was sliced in half lengthwise, placed face down on a plate, draped in a thick, custardy coat of house-made mayonnaise that hugged its curves.

It was unassumingly elegant and absolutely delicious, somehow transcending the sum of its eggy parts, especially when eaten with a basket of crusty brown country bread, a dish of vinegary lentils laced with lardons, and a glass of crisp rosé.”