Winter is approaching, so it's time to make a hearty Belgian winter dish. Or summer dish, it's not really defined by season. Anyway, let's make
VOL-AU-VENT (with fresh chicken broth)
Those of you that know their way around a kitchen might already know what a vol-au-vent is; it's a puff pastry used to serve aperitifs. In Belgium however, it's used to refer to the pastry
and a dish normally served with the pastry. I'm going to make it with fresh chicken broth, but if you don't feel like going through the extra effort you can just use store bought chicken broth or stock and a whole roast chicken. If you do want to go the whole hog, buy a chicken that's meant for roasting (as opposed to one for making soup). Traditionally this is served with chips or mashed potatoes, but any potato product will do (bar crisps, you lunatic!).
This recipe is for four people, give or take.
Ingredients:
Broth:
-4 large carrots
-6 sticks of celery
-4 onions
-4 leeks
-3 l water
-15 peppercorns (roughly, can be more)
-2 cloves
-4 cloves of garlic
-bundle of thyme (dried or fresh)
-bundle of parsley
-2 twigs of fresh rosemary
-salt to taste (be careful!)
-1 whole chicken
Vol-au-vent
-The actual vol-au-vents (large ones if you can find them)
-250 g mixed minced meat (beef/pork)
-250 g mushrooms
-a clove of garlic
-60 g butter (I used 90 g)
-80 g flour (I used 110 g)
-1 egg
-1 and a half l chicken broth
-1 and a half dl cream
-1 lemon
-breadcrumbs
-pepper
-salt
And in case you can't find any vol-au-vent pastries in the shop,
-2 sheets of puff pastry
-egg yolk
You got all that stuff? Great! Let's begin, I'll show you how.
First, put on something more appropriate than a bathrobe.
That's better.
Fill the largest pot you have with 3 l of water and bring it to a boil. Make sure it is a very large pot or you could get in trouble later! Chop all your vegetables up coarsely and add them to the pot, close it off with the lid and let it simmer.
At this point, the world's saddest soup.
After leaving it to simmer for about 15 mins, add the chicken whole or in pieces. If you don't add the chicken you are now making vegetable broth, which is great but not what we need for this recipe.
Every tall person that tried to squeeze itself in a normal bathtub can relate to this chicken.
Leave all this to simmer gently for about an hour depending on the size of your chicken and on whether you chopped it up or not. Mine took about 2 hours. While you wait, go read your favourite book or build a shed, either is fine.Once you're sure your chicken is fully cooked through and all the vegetables have given off all their taste, remove the chicken from it's savoury bath and run your broth through a sieve into another pot. I did not use a sieve because my housemates are filthy arseholes and I had to resort to a colander. That also works but a sieve yields finer results. You can toss the vegetables away since they gave off all their flavour and you are a flavour vampire.
Turns out my pictures make a jaunty gif. Enjoy!
That's Leander the colander. Hi Leander!
Next, remove all the meat from your chicken and throw away the skin and bones, you don't need those. It should be pretty easy as the chicken has been cooked so long the meat just falls off the bone. Also, everything will be covered in grease now. It's everywhere.
Everywhere.
Artisanally reclaimed meat.
Then I sampled my broth and had a sandwich. It was a nice. Bob just had some lettuce.
Put aside 1 and a half litres of your broth or keep cooking it to strengthen the flavour, just make sure you have at least 1,5 l left. Congratulations! You've got chicken broth! That's a good thing.
Let's make some vol-au-vent, yo!
First, quarter all your mushrooms and crush your clove of garlic with the flat of your knife. Add some butter to a pan then add the garlic and the mushrooms. Cook them till done and set aside.
This one's for you, Pnut.
Next up, combine an egg with your mince and some breadcrumbs and roll your mixture into small bottle-cap sized balls. Cook these guys for a few minutes in your broth or bake them in a pan, either way make sure they're no longer raw inside.
"Ed Balls"
Now for the sauce. You start off by making your basic roux, melt your butter and whisk the flour through it till it start smelling of biscuits then add your broth bit by bit whilst you keep stirring with a whisk, and after the broth add the cream. After a while it should start thickening up, you want a runnier consistency than béchamel sauce but not too runny. If it's too runny and isn't getting thicker, get a different pot and make a smaller amount of roux and add your mixture. This happened to me and I used 30 of butter and 30 gr of flour extra.
You can almost smell the stink of my shame. Okay not really, it smelled delicious.
Now add the chicken, mushrooms and meatballs to your sauce and mix it all together. Leave it to warm everything up, add a little bit of lemon juice to give it some freshness and your sauce is done!
I have made you, sauce.
If you bought some pastries, simply follow the instructions on the packet or if you're making them yourself:
Pre-heat your oven to 180°C, roll out your puff pastry and cut out six large rings using a cookie cutter. In four of the six rings, cut out the middle with a smaller cutter. Now build up your pastry: Put a complete ring at the bottom, place the four rings on top and finish it with the last complete ring. Use a beaten egg yolk and a brush to glue them together and to give it a coating so it gets all nice and shiny. Put your pastries in the oven and bake for about 15-20 mins till they are fluffy and crispy.
To serve, cut out the middle part of the top of the pastry, pour in a healthy amount of the sauce and put the part you cut out on top. It's like a hat for your food!
Okay, that looks kinda gross. Let's get a better picture.
Let's just pretend this one's mine, okay?
Smakelijk!
they get on my tits, but given the whole internet thing, I just tend to get on with it, even if volumetric measurements for compressible substances are fucking retarded.
Magical! Thanks Mr. J