We recently watched a movie in which a chef made coq au vin, and suddenly my wife had a hankering for coq au vin.

I don't think I had ever actually made it before. Coq au vin, which is a dish of chicken, mushrooms and onions simmered in red wine, always reminds me of my good friend and professional rival Carole Kass, who called her chicken-in-red-wine dish Carole's Purple Chicken. For obvious reasons.

But I decided to go ahead and make a pot of Coq violet au vin. And naturally, I went to the source, by which I mean Julia Child.

I could have looked up what Escoffier had to say about the dish, or Paul Bocuse, or Jacques Pépin. But what do those folks know about French food? For me, it was Julia Child all the way.

I think that I can confidently state that it was one of the best things I have ever cooked. If I had to (though I can't imagine why I would), I would call it one of the 10 or 12 best entrees of my cooking career.

I also think I can confidently state that it was one of the more involved entrees I have ever cooked. It's not in the top 10 or 12 range — if you really want to spend all day cooking, try making a mole poblano the right way — but it was a solid couple of hours' of work.

And while I'm confidently stating things, it was also one of the most butter-dependent savory dishes of my life.

My carrot cake, of which I am immodestly proud, requires 3½ sticks of butter, and the coq au vin isn't in the same ballpark as that. Then again, the carrot cake serves 16 people or more, and the chicken dish serves three or four.

I used four tablespoons of butter, though honestly it felt like more, and three tablespoons of olive oil. That's seven tablespoons of fat, or nearly an entire stick of butter.

The dish, as I mentioned, was fabulous. But that's what happens when you cook with seven tablespoons of fat. And to be fair, you do spoon off most of the fat when you reduce the sauce. But still: Not all of it.

But it's not just the butter and the olive oil (and the fat from the chicken itself; let's not forget the chicken's own fat) that make this coq au vin so divine. It's also the time.

To make it the right way, and I very much wanted to make it the right way, you first have to make two other recipes. One, sautéed mushrooms, merely involves sautéing mushrooms in butter and olive oil.

The other, brown-braised onions, is a bit more involved. You brown onions in butter and olive oil, of course, and then you simmer them in beef stock and a bouquet garni (thyme, parsley and bay leaf wrapped up in cheesecloth) for 40 minutes or so.

I had been cooking for the better part of an hour, and only then was I ready to start cooking.

The recipe begins by browning bacon, but I don't eat bacon, so I browned the chicken in a mixture of (you'll never guess) butter and olive oil, and later added smoked paprika to make up for the smokiness of the bacon.

After searing the chicken, I added cognac to the pot and flambéed it. I don't know if that actually adds anything to the dish, but it sure is fun. I couldn't see the flames, though, until I got the bright idea of turning off the lights over the stove.

Oh, yeah. It was flambéing. It was flambéing up a storm. I consider it a personal victory that I did not singe the hair on my arm. Or my head.

Then I poured in in three cups of red wine, which is essentially a full bottle (I used a Beaujolais) and enough beef broth to cover the chicken. I added tomato paste, garlic, a bay leaf and thyme, and simmered it all for 30 minutes, which might not seem like it was enough time, but yeah, it was.

I removed the chicken and boiled the sauce until it reduced to 2¼ cups (this required repeatedly ladling it into a measuring cup until it finally was the right volume). I finally added the onions and mushrooms that I had made an hour or more before, and thickened the sauce with a beurre manié, an uncooked combination of flour and more butter.

It was heavenly. It was robust. It was deeply satisfying.

And yes, it was kind of purple.

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