Chicken Sous Vide with Miso, Mushrooms, Aubergine Sail (a la Restaurant Jules Verne)

We're trying to recreate Irene's favorite dish from Restaurant Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower, but without doing a lot of research or going to too much trouble: just improvise, we can tweak later. It was a little fussy but not difficult; the Aubergine Sail was the most finicky part. I think we'll make it again with some improvements described below. 

Chicken, mushrooms, miso, aubergine sail; with roast potatoes

The restaurant dish was called "La Volaille Fermière: Pochée au Miso, Champignons, Aubergine et Jus gras": free-range chicken poached in miso, mushrooms, aubergine, and "jus gras". Jus gras is a traditional fat-enriched, stock-based sauce, reduced to intensify and emulsify; it had a few tiny mushrooms in the pooled sauce, hidden under the "aubergine caviar" sail.  The dark sauce was miso-based, rich, and quite salty. The chicken was cut with dramatic angles, and set down on the intersection of the two sauces. In the photo, the chicken seems to be coated with the jus gras, glossy.

Restaurant Jules Verne is more refined; dark miso sauce, tan jus gras; the sail hides the mushrooms

I made up the chicken and sauces from what we had on hand, plus seasonal mushrooms from La Boqueria. Irene did a lot of research for the sail in our Modernist Cuisine books. The marinading is overnight; the sous vide cooking, making the sauces, and final prep is about 2 hours. Quantities below aren't critical. 

Serves two.

230  g    Chicken Breast, boneless, skinless, almost frozen

100  g    Miso paste, white

100 ml    Chicken Stock, frozen

 75  g    Cooked Aubergine Puree (see below)

  1       Egg White, beaten

          Salt

100  g    Rossinyol Mushrooms (girolle, chanterelle), cleaned

100  g    Butter

200 ml    Chicken Stock

The day before

Cut the Chicken into 4 pieces while still a little frozen in order to get distinct edges;  add to a sous vide bag.

Add Miso Paste and frozen Chicken Stock to the bag.

Vacuum and seal. 

Freezing the Chicken preserves the shape (but see below), while freezing the Stock prevents it from being sucked into the machine.

Let marinade in the fridge overnight, massaging once or twice to ensure the Miso and Stock are well distributed. This ruined the well-defined shape of the Chicken, but it's just visual.

The day of the meal...

Sous Vide the Chicken at 60C/140F for 1.5 hours.

At this temperature, the Chicken is gently firm and not at all stringy, a texture that's unusual with traditional techniques; higher temperatures will create a more stringy, conventionally-textured chicken.

While it's cooking, prepare the Aubergine sail and Mushroom sauce.

The Aubergine (eggplant) we got was a striped reddish variety, probably Rosa Bianca, not the usual deep purple Globe/American or Italian Eggplant. When cut, the inside was pure white, not yellowish and spongy like the deep purple ones we usually get.

Cut the Aubergine in half and pressure cook with steam 5 minutes.

Puree with stick blender: with skin on because this variety can't really be peeled.

This variety blended very smooth, despite the skin and seeds it didn't need to be sieved.

The result was very wet.

Combine 75 g of the puree with the beaten Egg White.

Add a bit of Salt.

Use an offset spatula to spread as thinly as possible on a Silpat nonstick baking sheet.

Microwave 5 times at full power for 1 minute to try and dry out.

This didn't work terribly well, so Irene placed it in the sun, and later finished baking in a hot oven (200C) until it started to crisp up and become toasty color.

This was a very delicate crisp.

While that's cooking,  clean the Mushrooms. 

We used Rossinyols because they're in season here, and had an attractive color; Irene chose small ones from the market.

Sauté slowly in Butter to soften.

Add the Chicken Stock, warm through so the Butter is released from the Mushrooms into the Stock, then remove the Mushrooms for later so they don't overcook.

Reduce the sauce, whisking occasionally to emulsify the Butter in the Stock; it should thicken a bit and turn a little sticky, but not as dense as a glaze.

Hold on very low heat for service.

Just before serving...

Add the Mushrooms to the reduced Stock sauce to warm through.

Remove the Chicken from the sous vide bag, and squeeze out the Miso/Stock juices and paste into a bowl.

Wipe off any paste from the Chicken into the bowl, and return the Chicken to the bag and place in the sous vide bath to keep warm for service.

Press the Miso sauce through a small sieve into a pan to get a smooth sauce; heat and reduce a little to thicken. 

Plating...

Spoon out the Miso sauce onto two plates.

Add the Chicken pieces.

We had a lot more mushrooms than the restaurant, so we couldn't put the chicken on top; just spoon it out next to the Chicken.

Top with a piece broken off the Aubergine sail.

The result

The Chicken was an excellent texture, firm and moist, not at all stringy. But it lost its well-defined edges so wasn't as dramatic as hoped. The Miso sauce was intense, salty, and felt rich; the amount was about right. The Stock/Butter Sauce barely coated the amount of Mushrooms we had, so it doesn't really qualify as a sauce, but it tasted good -- ours was more about the mushrooms. We didn't sauce the Chicken with the Butter/Stock sauce like the restaurant, so the Chicken looked a little naked.

The Aubergine Sail wouldn't dry and crisp in some areas, soft and a bit gummy in others. It required much too much effort to dry and crisp.

Everything on the plate was the same color palate, it needed some color

Next time

Don't cut the breast into 4 pieces, only 2; it may not be necessary to cut almost frozen to get clean edges.

The vacuum of the sous vide bag deformed the edges of the chicken. If we want to preserve the sharp edges, seal the Chicken with Stock and Miso in a bag without vacuuming; sous vide as normal, but ensure the chicken is submerged for good heat transfer. Or just poach in a lot more Chicken Stock conventionally, at the same temperature, until cooked. Or cook the entire breast sous vide, then carefully slice at a dramatic angle. Or don't worry about the shape and just use the sous vide!

The speckled aubergine we used didn't have a lot of flavor; use a conventional fat purple one.

Use red miso instead of white, for color contrast. Will this color the chicken? No problem if we nap it with the jus gras sauce.

To better approximate the restaurant, use just a few mushrooms and use more sauce so we can coat the chicken. We enjoyed the mushrooms, so maybe just make more Stock/Butter sauce, coat the chicken and serve the Mushrooms next to it.

For the Sail, don't beat the Egg White. Use a drier Aubergine, like the usual dark purple variety. Make individual schmears so we don't have to break a monolithic sheet.

Serve with something a contrasting color instead of the same-color roasted potatoes.

Variations

The Stock/Butter sauce approximated the restaurant's "jus gras". The Modernist Cuisine books synthesizes a "cream" sauce from stock (71%) and chicken fat (29%), emulsified and reduced. This sounds like a fun thing to try and should be ridiculously flavorful.

We could make the same but with a firm fish (sous vide at a lower temperature and time), with miso and fish stock, enoki mushrooms, and a toasted sushi nori sheets.

Local and Seasonal: Rabbit and Rovellons

We've now been living here in Barcelona for a month and are enjoying the many different foods available at grocery stores and markets. At our nearby Bon Preu we picked up some rabbit sausage, and at the delightful Mercat Ninot we found rovellons, a wild mushroom much prized around here.

The sausages are mild and have very little fat, so we we cooked them covered with a little oil and pepper. For the fungus, we carefully cleaned them of their straw and soil, then followed this mushroom-nerd's recommendation to cover with water and boil it off to cook them, then finish with a saute with oil, garlic, and parsley.

We served them simply, with pa amb tomaquet, toasted bread rubbed with garlic and tomato, then a lashing of good olive oil and some finishing salt.

I've only had the rovellons once before, and these didn't seem as flavorful as I recalled, but I may have diluted the flavor with a bit too much water. In the market, they were 60€/Kg, so I don't want to mistreat them. I'll try them again at a restaurant, and want to explore other wild mushrooms we can readily find here.

Daily Dinner #5

We embarked on Shannon's challenge four weeks ago: post a month of daily dinners, not just the fancy stuff we do. We're still in Barcelona living in a flat that in its entirety is smaller than our kitchen at home; needless to say, cooking can be difficult. But we're up for it, and really like shopping at the markets frequently. We may not bother posting dinners we have out so there could be some gaps.

2015-08-09

After a weekend in London, we didn't have anything in the house so we headed out for something local, simple. We ended up on Paral·lel which has a ton of cafes, but many were too noisy to sit outside on a great night -- it's a main street. Just off, we found Cachitos which had an appealing menu.

First, I noticed the price of one of my favorite Spanish wines, a Muga Reserva at €24, which would be thrice that at a DC restaurant.

There was a starter that sounded odd, intriguing, so we got the Broken Potatoes Anna with foie gras. It didn't look like much, but imagine a pommes anna as grated potatoes fried together, topped with a soft-cooked eggs, then a sauce of foie gras.  Rich? You betcha.

Irene ordered goat (Espaldita de cabrito al horno hecho a fuego lento):

and I had a Spanish pork tenderloin that was delightfully flavorful.

2015-08-10 Fideuà

Everyone knows about Paella, the rice dish from Valencia, but we first had fideuà with local friends in Barcelona. It's similar, in that a starchy base is cooked in a tasty broth, with various vegetables and proteins added. But where paella uses short-grain rice, fideuà uses pasta, shaped like regular old straight spaghetti. The ones I've had used a fairly fine noodle, and they're always short, like an inch long. In paella, the the individual rice grains should be separate when cooked, not a creamy mush like risotto; fideuà is the same here.

At the grocery store, we found bags of three different thicknesses of the noodles, and we chose a fairly coarse one so we wouldn't accidentally over cook it.

We also had some dried cod roe from the Mercat that we'd been trying to use; it's intensely fishy, fairly salty, but had a somewhat wax-like texture. It seemed perfect to provide a big hit of flavor. We froze this to firm it up then grated it on a box grater. Ick, the color here's awful: picture a lime-green cutting board with dark rose colored shaved bits.

We cooked the fideuà in the last of the flagon of white wine we had, and a bit of liquid exuded from some tomatoes we cooked down. Then we added the grated roe once the noodles were al dente; below, it's turned a pale white color.  Fideuà is cooked in a low, wide paella pan, and broiled to finish to crunch up the top.  We only have a Teflon skillet and these can outgas toxic PTFE fumes when heated to very high temperatures, so no crust for us. :-(

 We served this sautéed Spanish peppers that act like Padróns but are long and slender.

2015-08-11 Butifarra and Mushrooms

Irene picked up some Butifarra (what a great name for a sausage!) that included mushrooms, and also some wild mushrooms. Sorry, no finished photos of the dish, but it was simple and very satisfying. 

2015-08-12 Monkfish and Leeks

Irene picked up some monkfish (here the name is "rape", pronounced RAH-pay) at the market on her way back from Spanish class.  This fish is exceptionally popular here, all the fish mongers and grocery stores carry it; it's usually displayed on ice without the head, because it's a bit ugly and fearsome.  It's got a good meaty texture and fine taste. Not the best photos here, the lights in our flat are pretty dim.

Irene sautéed onion then added the fish, then tossed in some leeks and their greens.

It was garnished with parsley the fishmonger gave Irene.

2015-08-13 Spinach, Raisins, Nuts

There's a simple classic Spanish dish made with spinach, raisins and pine nuts.  For some reason, only one of the vendors in market had it and it was pre-bagged; there were plenty of other fresh greens but we wanted something more tender than chard-like greens. We also bought some seriously huge raisins in hues from golden, through orange to russet. 

Instead of pine nuts, we picked up some Marcona almonds, a specialty of Spain to which we sometimes treat ourself at home. "Natural?" asked our fruit and nut vendor? "Si."  Oops, a mistake: "natural" meant undried and unsalted -- a yielding texture rather than a pleasing snap, and these really needed salt to make them interesting. I heated some water with salt to dissolve, then soaked the nuts in this for a few hours, then drove off the water in a skillet. Ah, much better: a crunch and a slight zing from salt.

We cooked the spinach simply, assembled the rest, and -- very untraditionally -- served it on some elbow pasta to give us a meal's-worth. The package seems confused: is it rooster (gallo) or shark (tiburón)??

A glug of good local olive oil and we're done. Not bad at all.

2015-08-14 Merluza, Green Beans, Potatoes

We hit the market on a Friday before a holiday here, and the place was packed with folks buying fish. We returned to the fishmonger from whom Irene had bough the monkfish earlier and asked her about a fish it seemed everyone was buying; she said it was merluza (hake), and gestured that it was line-caught. We asked her to filet and skin it which she did expertly with a scalpel-like knife the size of her head; it's a beautiful thing to watch.  We also got some deeply flavored black olives and chopped up some parsley.

We got a half kilo of attractive thin beans. Turns out a half kilo's a hell of a lot.  Our flat's tiny cooktop doesn't have enough room to cook the fish, the beans, and the potatoes we wanted, so we put them in a big glass dish and figured we could steam them in the microwave, covered with cling film with a couple vents.  Oops, the microwave's only big enough for a small pot pie.  We scrounged around the cabinets and found a smaller dish we could improvise.  Oddly, after steaming for about 15 minutes, the beans were still too crunchy; perhaps next time I'll finish them in a skillet.

 And the potatoes... simply sautéed in olive oil with salt and pepper.

I heated our good olive oil in the skillet, added capers and black olives for a briny flavor, then the merluza. I was able to get a slight crust on the fish despite the Teflon. Straight-forward prep, the fish was excellent.

2015-08-15 Chicken

We'd been seeing these beautiful, golden-skinned chickens in the market so we picked one up to roast on Saturday. It was supposed to rain all day so I figured we'd be trapped inside -- me working and Irene doing her Spanish homework. Surprise -- it turned out to be a beautiful day and we ended up walking a 10-mile circuit around the city, along the beaches, and by the waterfront. 

While I tried to focus on some nerd-work, Irene prepped and cooked the chicken.  We stole some rosemary from the plantings of a waterfront restaurant, and had a bunch of garlic that Irene stuffed the chicken with.

We found a skillet that we could remove the handle from and baked it in the oven. It turned out really well, a good flavor, a fine texture (not dried out and stringy), and a burnished skin. Sadly, the skin didn't stay crispy long and we missed the crunch it had when it first came out of the oven; professionals must have a technique to keep the crisp skin, probably involving unhealthy amounts of butter.