Week’s menu

4 – 10 May

In this confinement, we are all put to the test: caregivers, patients, families … One of the only positive points is that we rediscover our values ​​of care for the other, solidarity, common good and love. And what better proof of love than to cook for those we love. This transmission value has been driving me for years. First with our son, Nathan, whose bursts of gluttony at the table fill us with happiness, then with all those I love. Every day they inspire me to create and imagine new tasting and associations. Then, I wanted to extend this creativity in concentric circles, from the Scook cooking school in Valence, then in the edition of creative recipes, easy and accessible in the books of the same name. So that you can, at home, in these exceptional times, find these simple recipes for cooking at home with the essentials techniques to their success. I hope you enjoy these cooking tips dedicated to such a beautiful cause: the pleasure of making people happy.

With these recipes, my wish is to enhance eating well, in our daily lives, as we can, with what we have at home of course. These recipes are not imposed, they only offer one more perspective when cooking. Here are the recipes to discover this week: Look at the recipes :

The “Bouchée à la reine”
A great figure in French cuisine, the bouchée à la reine bears witness to the technical know-how of its cooks: an airy puff pastry and a garnish that mixes sweetbreads and mushrooms. At home, no need to build a high bite, I suggest a puff pastry wider than high, to make it a success every time, and a lemon sauce for a touch of acidity. Careful, it’s not a light dish…

The lamination
1 sheet of puff pastry spread
1 egg

Sweetbread and garnish
250 g sweetbreads
1 dash of vinegar
200 g button mushrooms
100 g spring onions
20 g butter
15 cl vegetable stock

Poultry cream with lemon
20 g butter
20 g flour
25 cl reduced chicken stock (boil 40 cl of stock to obtain 25 cl)
2.5 cl liquid cream
1⁄2 lemon juice + 1 zest
salt flower

Equipment
Fluted cutters (1 of 10 cm and 1 of 12 cm),
brush,
fine sieve

1️⃣ The leaflet
Preheat the oven to 180 °C (th. 6). In the puff pastry, using a fluted cookie cutter, cut out 8 discs of 12 cm. Then cut out 4 of the 8 discs with another smaller punch to obtain 4 circles of 10 cm in diameter. Prepare the gilding by beating the egg with a fork in a bowl. with a brush, brush the 4 large whole discs with beaten egg. Place the 4 circles of puff pastry on top. to the beaten egg again. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Get out of the oven, set aside. Cut off the tops of the bites (the “caps”) so you can fill them with filling.

2️⃣ Sweetbread and garnish
Poach the sweetbreads for 3 minutes in boiling water with vinegar. Cool them with cold water. Place the sweetbreads on a plate, place another plate on top, then a weight, and keep in the refrigerator for 1 night. The next day, peel the sweetbread by removing, by hand, the membranes covering it. break it up into pieces and set it aside. Peel the spring onions and cook them in butter over low heat for 2 or 3 minutes. Pour in the vegetable stock and cook for another 10 min. at the end of cooking, the onions must be melting. Set aside. Peel and finely chop the mushrooms. Sauté them in a frying pan with a dash of olive oil for 4 or 5 min. season with salt and set aside.

3️⃣ Poultry cream with lemon
In a saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour. Cook for 2 min with stirring, pour in the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then add the cream, lemon juice and zest. adjust the seasoning. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve. Set aside, warm, without boiling.

4️⃣ Finishing and presentation
In a frying pan, brown the sweetbread pieces in butter for 5 min. add the drained onions, mushrooms and sauce. make it simmer without letting it boil. Place the puff pastry bites on the plates. with a tablespoon, fill them with the sweetbreads and then the filling. finish generously with gravy. Cover the bites with the “hats” and serve immediately,
to prevent the puff pastry from getting soggy.

 

💡Council
Take the time, one day, to prepare the puff pastry and cut out the bites. Freeze them. When the day comes, all you have to do is cook them and prepare the filling.

📷 Mickael Roulier

 

THE LAMB’S TORTELLINI
CONfIT TO ThE mENTh, CRAShED wITh CITRON ZESTERION

Why don’t you make that little stuffed pasta, the Italian tortellini, yourself? The technique is simple but of course requires a little precision in the gestures. Make too many and you’ll freeze them, play with the garnishes – rabbit, duck confit – but always with meat to make it stick, dare the contrast between the lamb long confit and the freshness brought by the mint and lemon!

Ravioli dough
500 g flour
10 g salt
16 egg yolks
1 dash of olive oil
1 tsp. white vinegar

Lamb confit
1 white onion
1 nice knob of butter
1 dash of olive oil
1/2 boneless shoulder of lamb
(about 600 g)
50 cl vegetable stock
1 sprig of thyme
1 sprig of laurel
1 clove of garlic
1 sprig of fresh mint
salt, freshly ground pepper

Crushed zucchini
2 nice zucchini
1 dash of olive oil
10 cl vegetable stock
the peel of an untreated lemon
fine salt

Cooking tortellini
5 cl vegetable stock
50 g butter
some fresh mint leaves

1️⃣ Ravioli dough
The day before, in a salad bowl, mix the flour by hand with the whole eggs, egg yolks and 10 cl of water for about 20 min. Form a ball and cover it with cling film. Leave to rest in the refrigerator overnight. On the same day, spread the dough quite thinly and cut it into rounds of 8 cm in diameter with a cookie cutter. You can also use a simple bowl. Set aside in the cooler.

2️⃣ The lamb confit
Peel and finely chop the onion. In a pressure cooker, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, cook for 2 to 3 minutes without letting it brown, stirring well. Generously season the shoulder with salt and pepper and then brown it over a higher heat with the onion. Then pour in the vegetable stock and add the thyme, bay leaf and peeled garlic. Close the pressure cooker, bring to the boil and insert the valve. Cook under pressure for 40 minutes from the hissing of the valve. Remove from the heat and allow the pressure in the pressure cooker to slowly decrease. collect the meat and filter the cooking juices through a strainer. Shred the meat with a fork and put it in a salad bowl. Add some of the cooking juices and the finely chopped mint, mix. Add salt and pepper if necessary, then set aside in a cool place.

3️⃣ Zucchini squash
Wash and then cut the zucchini into quarters, lengthwise. Slice them thinly. In a saucepan, cook the courgettes with the olive oil for about 3 min. Salt. Pour in the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. When the broth has evaporated and the courgettes are cooked, remove the pan from the heat. Crush the courgettes with a fork then add the grated lemon zest and salt. come out of the fire, taste, salt and pepper.

4️⃣ The making of tortellini
Place a round of dough on the dry worktop and then a teaspoon of lamb confit in the centre. Wet the rim of the dough with a brush and then fold the dough over itself to enclose the filling and form a half-moon shaped raviole. Finally, bring the two ends of the half-moons together to form the tortellini.

5️⃣ Cooking tortellini
Cook the tortellini in a pot of boiling salted water for 2 to 3 minutes. At the end of cooking, drain them with a skimmer so as not to break them. In a salad bowl, mix them very gently with the stock and butter.

The presentation
Carefully place the crushed courgette 1 or 2 cm high in the round cookie cutter on a plate. Remove the cookie cutter. Repeat this operation for the other plates. Place the hot cooked tortellini on top.

📷 Mickael Roulier

 

THE RHUbARb AND tarragon PIE

Rhubarb and white chocolate espuma form a mixture that is as original as it is tasty! I use tarragon very often in my cooking: in pastries, in salads, in my dishes. This wonderful herb is, alas, quite unknown. Its unique fragrance gives a lot of personality to the recipes but does not mask the flavour of the other ingredients… to be discovered.

Rhubarb compote
350 g rhubarb
Vanilla custard 35 g caster sugar
The juice of 1⁄2 lemon
1⁄4 of tarragon bunch

The shortbread
40 g semi-salted butter
18 g brown sugar
55 g flour
1 g baking powder
10 g potato starch

The white chocolate espuma
110 g white chocolate
125 cl whole milk
5 g sugar
100 g liquid cream

Equipment
1 siphon (optional)

1️⃣ The rhubarb compote
The day before, cut the peeled rhubarb into small pieces, then put it in a bowl.
a colander (over a bowl) with the sugar and lemon juice. Leave to drain overnight in the refrigerator. On the same day, cook the rhubarb over medium heat for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the finely chopped tarragon at the end of cooking. Put it on ice.

2️⃣ The shortbread
Mix all the ingredients by hand until you obtain a very smooth dough.
crumbly, fairly coarse with an almost crumbly texture. spread it on a baking sheet covered with baking parchment. cook in the oven at 150 °C (th. 5) for about 15 to 20 min. Remove from the oven at the end of cooking and allow to cool.

3️⃣ The white chocolate espuma
melt the off-white chocolate into pieces in a double boiler. Mix the milk
and the sugar and pour this mixture over the melted chocolate. whisk to obtain a homogeneous mixture. Add the liquid cream. Mix and leave to cool for 3 hours in the refrigerator. Pour into a canister and insert 2 gas cartridges into the head of the siphon. place in the fridge.

4️⃣ The presentation
Place the rhubarb compote on the plates and put some shortbread on top.
over it. Decorate and decorate with the white chocolate espuma. Serve immediately.

IF YOU HAVE NO SIPHON | Cut the chocolate into pieces and melt it in a bain-marie. Mix the whole milk and sugar. Heat the mixture and pour it boiling over the melted chocolate. Mix to obtain a homogeneous cream. On the other hand, beat the liquid cream not too firmly with an electric mixer and then gently add it to the melted chocolate. Use immediately as directed in step 4 of the recipe.

TO KNOW| Shortbread is a recipe of British origin. It is a kind of shortbread, very crumbly and melts to perfection. The dough can be plain like here but you can flavour it with a little finely chopped ginger.

📷 Mickael Roulier

Vegetable Surprise Bread

To make this surprise bread, which is very simple to make, you need a little precision in the gestures! Here is a beautiful combination of beneficial fibres and flavoured butters typical of my cooking, whose flavours you can vary. Order your bread from a good baker, compose the flavours in contrast, play with the textures and serve with a fresh white loire wine, a sauvignon for example. Easy to carry, this vegetable surprise bread will also be perfect for a picnic…

The bread
1 round surprise bread, not too big
Smoked tea butter and crispy radishes
50 g semi-salted butter
1⁄2 tsp. smoked tea
10 radishes
Fine salt

Green Szechuan and Parmesan Butter
50 g semi-salted butter
1⁄2 tsp. green Szechuan pepper
10 shavings of young parmesan cheese
Saffron and tomato butter
50 g semi-salted butter
1 pinch of saffron powder
1 tomato
Fine salt

Green anise and cucumber butter
50 g semi-salted butter
1⁄2 tsp. green aniseed
1 cucumber
Fine salt

Equipment
Pestle and mortar
Mandolin

1️⃣ Surprise bread
Cut the surprise bread

2️⃣ Smoked tea butter and crispy radishes
Mix the butter in a bowl with a spoon to obtain the texture of an ointment. In a small mortar, pound the smoked tea with a pestle until a fine powder is obtained, then mix it with the soft butter. Wash and then cut the radishes into thin slices using a mandolin. Spread the slices of bread thinly with tea butter, then place the slices of radish on top of each other, overlapping them slightly. Salt. Cover them with a second slice of bread and cut them into triangles. Set aside.

3️⃣ Green Szechuan and Parmesan Butter
Mix the butter in a bowl with a spoon to obtain the texture of an ointment. In a small mortar, pound the Szechuan pepper with a pestle until a fine powder is obtained, then mix it with the soft butter. Spread the slices of bread thinly with pepper butter, then place the parmesan shavings on top. Cover this toast with a second slice of bread then cut it into triangles. Set aside.

4️⃣ Saffron and tomato butter
Mix the butter in a bowl with a spoon to obtain the texture of an ointment. Add the saffron and mix well. Wash the tomato, remove the stalk, then cut it into thin slices. Spread the slices of bread thinly with saffron butter, then place slices of salted tomato on top. Cover this toast with a second slice of bread then cut it into triangles. Set aside.

5️⃣ Green anise and cucumber butter
Mix the butter in a bowl with a spoon to obtain the texture of an ointment. In a small mortar, pound the green anise with a pestle until a fine powder is obtained, then mix it with the soft butter. Wash and peel the cucumber. Cut it into thin slices lengthwise, taking care to remove the seeds beforehand. Spread the bread slices thinly with anise butter, then place the cucumber slices on top. salt, cover it with a second slice of bread and cut it into triangles. Set aside.

6️⃣ Finishing and presentation
reconstitute the surprise bread by inserting the bread triangles inside. superimpose them by alternating the different flavours. Enjoy now.

TIP You can have fun varying the breads. Opt for a bread made with cereals, poppy seeds, squash, sesame seeds, etc. Your baker will be able to advise you and create wonders!

📷 Mickael Roulier