Stuffed Veal Rolls With Glazed Vegetables (Paupiettes de veau bourgeoise)
The next two lessons were all about forcemeats, or essentially a mixture of ground meat and fat seasoned with herbs and spices, and used in various ways. In this lesson, we prepared stuffed veal rolls. These are meatballs wrapped in a very thinly pounded skin of veal. The stuffing is composed of lean veal, pork fat, and pork shoulder ground together, sauteed brunoised shallots, mushrooms, and garlic, bread crumbs, armagnac (liquor), and some cream. Oh, and of course, plenty of salt and pepper. :) You take this stuffing, put it in the pounded veal slice, wrap it (it sticks surprisingly well), mending any holes in the veal layer by putting a piece of veal UNDER the outside layer. Then, a piece of fatback (pork fat in a strip) is wrapped around the roll. (I think this is to keep the outside layer moist, but I'm not completely sure). Then you tie the roll like a present with kitchen string, dust with flour, and lightly brown it on a pan. You sweat a mirepoix of fresh skinned and deseeded tomatoes, garlic, onion, celery, carrots, add a little tomato paste, a bouquet garni, then place your veal rolls on top of this mirepoix, add veal stock to just cover, and put in the oven to cook for 20 minutes at 220 C.
When the rolls come out, the rolls are removed and the mixture continues to cook, deglazing as much as possible. The fat is skimmed off the top, then the braising liquid is strained. This is then reduced and skimmed, and used as a sauce for the veal rolls. This sauce is very nice -- a slightly tart (tomato) counterpoint to the well seasoned veal roll. :)
The flavor of the veal rolls was very familiar to my asian palate -- I think it was the shallots, mushrooms, and garlic. I actually ate my rolls three ways -- straight up with the sauce, one heated and eaten with ramen (instant) noodles, and the third with the veal roll cut up into chunks, heated with the sauce, and tossed with some freshly cooked noodles, sesame oil, and chili oil. Mmmm... very good. (though probably not what the chef intended :) ).
Practical and Personal Notes on the veal rolls:
This was one of the best practicals in terms of all the different dishes coming together. The serving plate was hot from the oven, the veal rolls were still quite warm, the glazed vegetables hot and perfectly caramelized (well, the onions, anyways -- the carrots were just a little brown), the sauce piping hot. And the taste of everything was quite good. The only problem was that I completed about 15 minutes after the end of the time period -- so I need to work a little faster. But I liked how everything just finished at the same time. :)
The other thing chef demonstrated was the preparation of a duck terrine. "Terrine" is the name of the dish as well as the container in which it is made -- a rectangular tub. What you have in this tub are ingredients placed in horizontal layers, sort of like a lasagna, cooked in the oven, and allowed to mature in the refrigerator for 24 hrs to a week, allowing the flavors to blend together. When it is removed, it looks like a loaf, and slices are cut off. In this terrine, we had alternating layers of well-seasoned forcemeat (a blend of duck meat, shallots, parsley, spices, chicken livers, thyme, pork jowl, pork shoulder, pork fat), duck breast, and prunes (sweetness to balance the saltiness), all wrapped in a layer of duck skin. We didn't observe the cooking (though rumor has it that it takes 2 hours in the oven), but saw and tasted the results at the next lesson. :)
posted by chezdavid @ 9:37 AM
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