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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment