What to eat and drink on Bastille Day, or ‘quatorze juillet’ as the French usually refer to their national holiday? You could spend a whole year debating that topic, and I suspect that some people do, but for me it is a no-brainer: it has to be a poulet de Bresse with haricots vert, ratte potatoes and, dare I say it, my own wizard gravy, made with a half-litre of frozen stock extracted from the bones of the previous poulet. It is a simple meal, without much elaboration or ‘make up’, so the basic ingredients have to be top-notch, starting with the poulet de Bresse.

I bought a large, 2.6 kilo, bird recently and, having picked myself up from the floor after I heard the price, raced home to cook it at 170ºC for don’t ask me how many minutes, about half of which was breast down. My wife cooked the haricots in not too much unsalted boiling water with nothing else added, nothing. The flavour was extraordinary and they were perfectly edible just like that. The same story with the tiny, yellow-fleshed, ratte potatoes, a whole plateful of which could be eaten on their own. As Julia Child would have put it, the chicken tasted wonderfully ‘chickeny’. Ditto for all the other components.

And to drink? The great thing about chicken is that you can go either the white route or the red route… or both. For something grand a great Meursault from the master, Jean-Francois Coche-Dury, cannot be beaten, it just cannot be found, or indeed afforded, either. Without slumming it at all you would do very well with a bottle from Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, perhaps the Saint-Aubin, 1er cru En Remilly. If your taste runs to red I would counsel saving the grandest wines for stronger flavours. My default red Burgundy at the moment is just about anything from the brothers Ramonet, Jean-Claude and Noël. Their Bourgogne Passetoutgrain is a vibrant delight, only just eclipsed by their Bourgogne Pinot Noir and if you want to push the boat out a bit further try the Chassagne-Montrachet 1er cru Clos de la Boudriotte.

Tags: Burgundy, Poulet de Bresse, Meursault, Ramonet