Recipe:
Ingredients:
6 small vol au vents or 4 large ones (puff pastry casings) You can see a previous video to learn how to make them.
For the boiled chicken:
1 chicken (approx 1.2 kilos)
100 grams of chopped leeks
100 grams of chopped onions
100 grams of chopped celery
100 grams of chopped carrots
1 large bouquet garni ( made with thyme, bay leaf, celery and parsley stalks)
1 teaspoon of black peppercorn
1 teaspoon of juniper berries
1 tablespoon of salt
Juice of half a lemon
1 length of cooking string to truss the chicken
For the velouté sauce (Parisian sauce):
1 litre of chicken broth
40 grams of plain flour
40 grams of butter
250 grams of mushrooms (150 grams of button mushrooms and 100 grams of morels)
2 chicken breasts diced (reserve some chicken meat to for serving)
1 egg yolk
Up to 200 ml of cream (heavy whipping creme or crème fraiche)
1 tablespoon of Cognac
1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to season
To ‘white cook’ the button mushrooms:
Water
1 tablespoon of butter
One squeeze of lemon juice
This vol au vent recipe has everything you would ever expect from a French classic dish. Personally, I like to describe it as an elegantly old-fashioned starter fit for Kings.
Some history:
With the pastry chefs of the court of Versailles, the queen of France, Marie Leszczynska (1703-1768), daughter of Stanislas Leszczynski, King of Poland, is the historical origin of this traditional recipe of French gastronomy.
Inspired by pastries made from sweet puff pastry like the ‘wells of love’ created by Vincent La Chapelle made for her rival Madame de Pompadour, she would have looked for aphrodisiac dishes and asked Nicolas Stohrer to create a salty version to regain the favors of Louis XV, her husband.
