Blanquette de veau

Transcription

[Intro music] Blanquette is a classical dish of French cuisine that is served in Parisian Bistros. To make a blanquette, you will need veal shoulder cut into about 1 inch cubes, peeled carrots, onion, green part of the leek or the white, mushrooms, salt, white pepper, pearl onions, chopped parsley, butter, flour, sugar, rock salt, bay leaves, cream, garlic, cloves and bacon. In Blanquette, there is blanch, so which means white. So every blanquette will always be in a white cream sauce. This is why we are going to start by blanching our meat to remove little bit of the blood and some impurities. Place the meat into a large pot. Add cold water over. Just to cover the meat. Tiny bit more. On high heat, bring the blanquette to a boil. Prepare the aromatic garnish. Put the rock salt in a separate pot along with the bay leaves. Cut the carrots in 4 length wise. So put them in pot. Cut them in half and then in four. We don’t want to have the carrot cut into too small pieces because later on, we will have to take them out. Fold the leeks in half and tie it up. Little bit of bundle. Same thing, we are going to take it out later on. For the onion, we are not going to cut it. We are going to prick the cloves into the onion, just like so. Add the onion to the aromatic garnish. Our meat is boiling, let’s check it out. Skim off the blood. Strain the meat into a colander. So we boil the meat for about a minute, not even. Then refresh the meat with cold water. Alright. Add the garlic; before I forgot. Add the meat and cover with cold water. You want to have all the ingredients totally covered by about an inch. Take it back to the stove. Bring the liquid to a boil on high heat. Let’s make the garnishes. The first thing we are going to do- we are going to soak the pearl onions to make their skin little bit tender and it will be easier to peel. So place them in a bowl and cover with hot water from the tap. Let them soak for about 15 minutes or until you are ready to peel them. Now clean the mushrooms. If you are using wild mushrooms, that might be very sandy and full of dirt. Then poach them very briefly in cold water and shaking them. Then leave them in the colander to drain. Mushrooms absorb moisture very quickly. So avoid bloating them. To clean button mushrooms, you will need a brush, cold water and just brush them up. Typically commercial mushrooms are not dirty. White or button mushroom brown very quickly. So I bought them, they were beautiful, about 5 hours ago and they are already brown. This is why you have to keep them away from the light and in a paper bag if you want to keep them fresh. Let’s pretend that you forgot your mushrooms in a paper bag for about 10 days in your fridge. They will brown still. They will become behind brown. You could give them a second life. If you are going to cook them by peeling them, I’ll show you how; just remove the skin like that. Our blanquette is boiling. Cook the blanquette uncovered for about an hour. I am going to show you how to slice a mushroom. For the blanquette, we are going to cut them into quarters. So trim the end off first. Cut the mushroom in half if they are large. Then cut diagonally like so. Smells very nice. Cut the bacon into little lardon. Let me show you what is a lardon. So my bacon was the end of the bacon, in Canada we call it Canadian bacon. Its double smoked bacon. It’s beautiful. Cut it into 3-quarter inch stick. And cut it cross wide. So those are lardon because there is the back bacon, the fat and the meat again. So my bacon is not very fatty. Its almost no fat, no meat and fat. Now it’s time to cook our bacon along with our mushrooms for the aromatic garnish. Heat a skillet. My bacon doesn’t have any fat almost. So I have to nourish it, I have to give it some butter, little bit. If your bacon at home is very fatty, then you don’t need butter to start it. Ok. So about a tablespoon of butter. Let it melt a little bit. Add the bacon, along with our mushrooms. Sauté the bacon and lardon [actually mushroom] together. And cook them for about 8-10 minutes on medium high. If you don’t know how to sauté, then stir. But maybe, it is time to learn how to sauté. Jumping the food in the air. So the idea when you sauté is to place your pan going down. Like that. So you hold it and you decline it. Ok. Incline; decline. Then by doing so, the food will slide almost to the edge of the pan and then you just have to bring it back up. And this is why it is sauté. Jumping in the air. Practice will make it perfect. Like this sauté. Give a stir. Try to have your mushroom well golden and the bacon a little bit crispy, not too crispy, but a little bit. So here, another maybe a couple of minutes. Great. So I am going to strain the garnish into the sieve here because I want to remove the fat. So. And now, prepare the onions. To peel the pearl onions, cut both ends and pick up the skin. You may find pearl onions in several colours, whites are the most common. But sometimes you could find them in red or in yellow. They are super. They make great garnish. To glaze the pearl onions, you will need a pinch of salt, like so, sugar, little bit of butter, about a tablespoon of butter and some water, just enough to cover. Here we go. Just enough. Barely. Get a piece of parchment paper, so something square or rectangle, doesn’t matter. Fold it in half. Then again in half. Ok. When everything is folded, fold it again on the gloss side. Fold it again. Now we are going to make a plain, we are going to measure the centre of the pot. Ok. Hold it. With a scissor, cut a round shape piece of paper. Cut the end off. Open the paper and place it on the onion. So now, the steam, when the water will boil, the steam will build up between the onion and the paper. And extra steam will go through the chimney. The water is going to evaporate and the glaze is going to get started. The sugar, the butter, little bit of the water will make the pearl onion shiny. This is what we call glacé a blanc. There are several glaze. There is glacé a blanc white where the product or the food will not colour. Then there is glacé a blond, which is blond, when you keep cooking the glaze little bit until the sugar starts to caramelise, it become bland. And finally, there is glacé a brun, which is when the food caramelise to a brown colour. So when you glacé, always make sure you know which one you should do. glacé a blanc, blond or brun. The food will be different. The flavour will be different. Today, our sauce is white blanquette, so we have glacé a blanc. Cook on medium heat, the pearl onions and we are going to let evaporate the water until it becomes shiny and that will be just cooked. Meanwhile, our blanquette is still simmering slowly. I think it’s going to be the time to check if it is cooked. Grab a piece. And take it to the cutting board. Cut it in half. And taste. It is cooked. I just had a little bit of bite. So maybe another 5 minutes. But that’s it. As the meat is almost cooked, start our roux in order to make our sauce. Let’s go to the stove. Turn the heat on, on medium. Add the butter. Let it melt. Add the flour. The combination of the butter and the flour is called a roux. Cook the roux for about 1-2 minutes and meanwhile we are going to go fishing. Remove the leek into a bowl. The onion. So we are going to remove the garnish, that’s why we cut it in big pieces. Bay leaves. The garlic. Place a sieve over the roux, and add the stock. So half of it to start with. Whisk. Add the rest. So the sieve. And the rest, everything. So bring the velouté; we are making the velouté now. So bring the velouté to a boil in order to cook the roux. Add the cream and bring the velouté to a boil. The onions are still firm a little bit. So I am going to let them cook. Taste. Season the velouté. Pinch of salt. Little bit of white pepper powder because I don’t want to get any… Whisk well and bring the velouté to a boil. So my velouté is boiling. Its time for us to check the consistency. With a spoon, check the consistency. So right now, my velouté is too thin. I have to reduce it a little bit. I have a lot of sauce. So reduce it in order to have it thicker. If you don’t have too much sauce then add a little bit more roux. So make more. So because I know I am going to reduce it, I haven’t seasoned my sauce too much. I am boiling the sauce in order to reduce it to have it a little bit thicker. That gives me a chance to skim it. It’s not much liquid left in our onions. So I am going to check if they are cooked. Ya.. perfect. So let’s remove the paper. And we are going to add them to the cup of the mushrooms. Great. Our velouté has reduced enough. It is coating the spoon nicely. Perfect consistency. Then taste. Perfect! If you need a little bit of seasoning- salt and pepper, add a little bit more. In my case, it’s great. So now, I am going to add the meat back. And the aromatic garnish. So. Add the mushroom, bacon and onions. Mix well. And reheat it for about 3-4 minutes, just to make sure all the ingredients are very hot. You see why here we placed the sieve. We strained the fat from the bacon. So that won’t go in the food. Typically we don’t use the aromatic garnish in the blanquette. But there is nothing wrong to dice it up and serve it into the sauce at the last second. At least for the carrots. It will be delicious. Serve the blanquette. Add chopped parsley. So always clean your dishes when you plate if you have any drops of sauce. Then sprinkle little bit of chopped parsley. Serve the blanquette with rice cooked creole style or pilaf. Veal blanquette... Bon appétit!