- brandade on toasted garlic baguette
- roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, and carrots
- chocolate mousse
I have always wanted to try brandade but for some reason never had (except for the fried version which has been featured in this blog before). For the roast chicken dish, I am basically following the recipes in Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection series. Finally, the chocolate mousse recipe was from Herv´e; This.
First the brandade: I followed the recipe from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook. This was served on toasted garlic baguette. I had to recipe more than what the recipe called for to achieve the right consistency. Other than that, it was great.
The main course was the main show: slow roasted chicken. I have actually brined it first (different from the recipe) before roasting. The chickens were roasted in an 160F oven (the lowest my oven would go). After 4.5 hours they were at 140F and "done" according to the recipe.
But I was chicken (pun intended) and decided to crank it up a little until they reached 165F. The birds look pale on the outside. They were then quickly seared in a pan to crisp the skin. Unfortunately I was not able to do this successfully (see a bit of torn skin in the picture) and the skin was brown but not crisp. The chicken was extremely moist and flavorful. Despite the fact that there is virtually no drippings for a sauce because of the low oven temperature, there is absolutely no need for a sauce. It was a little bit strange, though, to eat pink chicken and have pink juice running out when the chicken is carved. Overall it was very good, though perhaps it would be even better to finish them in a turkey fryer (as he tried on the show).
I also made some carrots in butter, and also roasted potatoes according to his recipes. Unfortunately, I grossly underestimated how good the potatoes were and had barely enough. The method of boiling the potatoes (with a bag of skin) until they almost break up and then roasting them gives a very crunchy outside and creamy inside. The texture contrast was great.
The dessert course was chocolate mousse. I used the non-classical recipe of Herv´e; This,
which involved melting chocolate with water and then whipping the mixture at high speed over an ice bath. The result was a very pure tasting chocolate mousse. I used semi-sweet chocolate, and I did not add any sugar. So for me it was a bit too much chocolate. As a result, I paired it with a raspberry coulis (just a few drops in my case) and it worked very well. Still, I discovered that the proportion for this chocolate mousse has to be scaled back because there is much less air and a small bit is already a lot!
Overall, I think it was a great meal. I am definitely happy with how it went.
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