Chicken in White Wine Sauce — The French Bistro Sunday

Saturday morning at ten I drove the truck up to Iris’s house in Bristow for the anthology party her parents had invited me to at Thanksgiving. Karen had made the house smell like five different things at once when I walked in — a beef bourguignon in the slow cooker that had been going since seven that morning, a pan of cornbread cooling on the kitchen counter, a chocolate cream pie and a sweet potato pie on the table, fresh coffee in the carafe, and a vanilla candle on the mantel that smelled like a department store at Christmas. Iris’s parents had invited her grandparents in from Tulsa, two of her cousins her age from Glenpool, and Marcus Wells, who’d driven over from Sapulpa in his sedan with a stack of fifteen anthology paperbacks under his arm because the library had given him a few extra copies for events.

We read in the living room around a fire her father had built in the brick fireplace, on couches and the carpet and the two armchairs and a pair of folding chairs Karen had pulled from the garage. About fourteen people. The eight published-anthology pieces got read by the eight of us in alphabetical order, except this time it wasn’t the launch event at the Tulsa Library with a hundred and twenty strangers in the room — it was a family living room with the fire popping and the smell of beef bourguignon drifting in from the kitchen and Karen’s grandmother on the couch with her glasses on the end of her nose. I read the whole sixteen-page Cody piece. I read it slower than I had at the launch because the room was smaller and the audience was already on my side. Iris read the grandmother piece. Karen cried in the middle and Marcus cried at the end. The reading took two hours. Then we ate beef bourguignon over egg noodles and three of the cousins fell asleep on the couches and Iris’s grandfather told a long story about the Korean War that nobody, including me, fully understood but everybody enjoyed.

I slept in the Bowman guest room with the quilt Karen’s mother had made her in 1973. Iris and I stayed up in her bedroom until two in the morning sitting cross-legged on her bed in flannel pajamas talking about colleges, about boys neither of us was dating, about what we wanted to be when we grew up versus what we secretly were afraid we might end up being instead. She told me she was ninety percent decided on Tulane — full-tuition scholarship plus a campus job for living costs — and that her parents had agreed to let her go even though New Orleans is a long way from Bristow. I told her I was a hundred percent locked on TCC in my heart and trying not to be in my head, because the decision wouldn’t come for two more days and nothing was guaranteed and I had been training my brain to stay loose on it. We both said we’d visit each other no matter where we ended up. We pinky-swore on it like we were eight, and then we went to sleep.

Sunday I drove home in the truck arriving at Sapulpa around four in the afternoon, tired in a good way, warm in a good way, the kind of warm you only feel after a weekend of being properly fed by other people’s mothers. I walked in the back door into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Cody had made dinner the way he’d promised on the couch Thanksgiving night, except he’d gone bigger than I’d expected. The kitchen smelled like a French bistro. Like wine and cream and butter and thyme. He was at the stove with a wooden spoon, a dish towel over his shoulder, a single glass of white wine half-drunk on the counter beside him.

He’d made chicken in white wine sauce, French bistro style. He’d looked it up in the Paul Prudhomme cookbook I’d left out on the counter from the homecoming planning — not a Prudhomme recipe but a French recipe in the back of one of his other library books I’d returned, which Cody had then re-checked-out from Sapulpa Public Library in his own name on his second Tuesday home, because he’d wanted his own copy on the counter. Bone-in skin-on chicken thighs seared deep brown in butter, out to a plate. Two finely diced shallots and four cloves of garlic in the rendered fat. A whole bottle of Chardonnay reduced down to about a third of its volume with a few sprigs of fresh thyme and a bay leaf. Heavy cream stirred in off the heat. The thighs back into the pan to warm through in the cream-wine sauce. Buttered egg noodles on the side. Cracked black pepper at the end.

Mama told me later, when I was helping with the dishes, that Cody had hummed the whole time he was cooking. He’d hummed for two hours straight. He’d set the table with the good cloth napkins from the Thanksgiving cabinet. He’d poured himself a glass of the same Chardonnay that was going into the sauce. I came home tired and warm and my brother handed me a plate of his cooking, and I sat down at our kitchen table and ate the dinner he’d made me for the first time in our entire shared life.

Reduce the wine all the way down before the cream goes in — that’s the bistro trick. Here’s how the sauce builds.

Chicken in White Wine Sauce

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 lbs bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces (thighs and drumsticks work best)
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup dry white wine (or low-sodium chicken broth)
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
• 1/3 cup pitted Kalamata olives, halved
• 2 tablespoons capers, rinsed
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
• 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

1. Season and sear the chicken. Pat chicken pieces dry with paper towels and season all over with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven or deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken skin-side down and sear without moving for 5–6 minutes until deeply golden. Flip and sear the other side for 3 minutes. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. In the same pot, add the sliced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until softened and lightly golden. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
3. Deglaze and build the braise. Pour in the white wine (or broth) and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Let it simmer for 2 minutes to cook off some of the alcohol. Add the chicken broth, drained tomatoes, olives, capers, thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf. Stir to combine.
4. Braise the chicken. Nestle the seared chicken pieces back into the pot, skin-side up, so they sit partially submerged in the sauce. Bring to a gentle simmer, then reduce heat to low. Cover and cook for 30–35 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and tender (internal temperature of 165°F).
5. Finish and serve. Remove the bay leaf. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. If you prefer a slightly thicker sauce, remove the chicken and simmer the sauce uncovered for 3–5 minutes. Serve chicken over crusty bread, rice, or egg noodles, spooning the sauce generously over the top. Garnish with fresh parsley.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 390 | Protein: 36g | Fat: 21g | Carbs: 9g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 680mg