This is a great dish hut there is no doubt that it has fallen out of favour. The reason is simple: the central ingredient - a farmyard cockerel of a certain age (nine to twelve months) - is almost impossible to lay your hands on. At least, you won't find it in the supermarket, or your average high-street butcher's.

In fact the 'cog' in question is a by-product of traditional small-scale egg-laying systems rather than meat bird production. Any eggs hatched to provide replacement laying hens will, of course, produce around 50 per cent cockerels. These cockerels, usually of the skinnier, egg-laying breeds, were traditionally hatched in the spring and allowed to scratch a living in the farmyard until late autumn or Christmas. At this point, the finest specimens might he kept on as replacements for the ruling roosters, while the others would he knocked on the head. They might be a hit scrawny and, having had the run of the yard, on the tough side but, with a diet comprising largely natural forage, by God they'd be tasty. Perfect, in fact for coq au vin.

To find such a bird you will have to be resourceful: use the Internet, explore farmers' market connections or ask anyone you know who keeps hens to put a bird by for you. Or consider some 'mainstream' alternatives: a good organic roasting chicken will be slower grown and more appropriately fed than its intensively farmed equivalent and will respond very well to this recipe, though it won't take much more than an hour to be cooked. Or you could substitute a pair of guinea fowl or a brace of pheasants, to make a dish that would no longer be coq au vin hut is delicious nonetheless.

The other cunning ruse is to use the legs, wings, neck and giblets of a good free-range turkey, of which you may then roast the breast without overcooking it. The results are invariably superb.

I've made the mushrooms optional - in the sense that I don't think their absence is a reason not to make the dish, though I usually include them. Finally, do include all the giblets, if you have them. They will all end up as tender, edible morsels, to be fought over by the cognoscenti.

Ingredients
1 chicken, ideally a farmyard cockerel or similar
Its neck, heart, liver and gizzard, if available
50g butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
250g salt pork, pancetta or bacon, in chunky pieces
250g small (i.e. pickling) onions, blanched and then peeled (or use medium onions, cut into quarters)
Up to 50g plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
1/2 wine glass of brandy 500ml red wine
500ml chicken stock (could be made from the giblets see pp.470-72) or water
A bouquet garni of parsley stalks, bay and thyme
4 celery sticks, cut into 3cm lengths
4 garlic doves, bruised
4 tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and finely chopped
Beurre manie, if necessary
250g button mushrooms (optional), sweated in a little butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper