We’re on to day 3 of the practice weekend that saw potato ice cream finished yesterday and chicken velouté and sweetbreads along with a very spring like dessert today. With most of the hard effort done yesterday, today should just be finishing up the last steps for the two dishes and then enjoying the fruits of my labor.
I’m going to finish the dessert first since all I need to do is pop out the gels I made yesterday using the leftover flavoring from the frozen parfait. The colors are beautiful and the basil gel and strawberry gel both unmold easily. The lemon gel didn’t set for some reason (maybe too much acid for the agar to work?), so I’ll just stir it up and use it as a sauce. The parfaits are not coming out easily, sticking and falling apart. O the 6 I’m able to salvage 2.
I plate the dish…forgetting the strawberry sorbet. And it looks beautiful…
And tastes awful. The parfait tastes like nothingness. The basil squares are mushy and not sweet enough. The strawberry squares are way to hard and border on rubber like. And the make shift lemon sauce is bland. Two days of work. For nothing. Needless to say this recipe will not be featured on this site. But I will not give up. One day I will develop a strawberry, lemon, and basil dessert and I will prevail!
For now I’ll move on to the velouté and brioche.
The brioche gets popped into the oven in miniature silicone bread loaves for about 20 minutes. During this time I’ll cook a chicken breast sous vide and finish off the velouté which just needs to be thickened with a flour and butter mixture and then strained. Once everything is ready I’ll fry up the sweetbreads which just require a dusting of flour and a quick 4 minute dip in the oil.
Once everything is ready it’s assembly and eating time. For the velouté, the truffle cream, sous vide chicken breast, and sweetbreads go in a shallow bowl in a nice pattern.
Then the strained velouté is poured over the top, preferably without the giant smear I created.
By now the bread is done and I serve that on a side plate with some of the truffle butter.
And the entire meal was paired with a 2009 Domaine de la Carbonnieres, which is a white Chateauneuf du Pape. White Chateauneufs are typically made from Marsanne and Rousanne and produce a very lush and weighty white wine that goes very well with the rich and creamy velouté and the dense and slightly sweet brioche.
This dinner was amazing and totally made up for the disappointing dessert. The veloutè was silky and rich; the sweetbreads were crunchy and creamy, and the chicken breast added a bit of weight to the dish. The brioche was crisp and toasty on the outside and perfectly done on the inside and paired beautifully with the rich and fragrant truffle butter. This recipe is definitely worth the effort and not only looks good, but tastes comforting yet refined.
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