Coq au Riesling: a casserole made for cold nights

My casserole dish is seeing heavy use at the moment: with each day seeming colder than the last, a blipping stew sitting on the hob feels like a defence against midwinter. This week I’ve been making a variation on coq au vin: coq au riesling. As the name would suggest, coq au vin is a French dish, made by cooking chicken in wine. Traditionally, that ‘coq’ would be a cockerel, older and tougher than the chicken, but the slow braising in the liquor-rich sauce renders it tender and flavoursome. But then, traditionally, the dish would also use blood for thickening. Don’t worry: I’m not going to suggest you try to procure either an ageing rooster or a bag of blood. Some traditions are products of their time, and best consigned to it. Instead, I like to use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, as the flavour is more robust than with breast meat, and I thicken with flour, which feels distinctly less intimidating than blood.