Yummy! Can't wait to eat some 'debris'-filled chicken

Chef Dan Fluharty introduced us to Ballotine de Poulet Grandmère in class today. That's chicken subjected to, as Chef so succinctly put it, being "stuffed, rolled, tied, seared, braised, cut and served."

Let's go back to Step 1. "What do we make it from?" Chef asked, and then answered his own question: "Debris -- things that are left over."

Not really. We made stuffing of small diced carrots, shallot and celery, 1 beaten egg, bread crumbs, a little oil, salt and pepper. That went into a boned chicken leg and thigh, which was rolled, skin side up, tied and put in a sauté for browning. A sauce is built around the browning chicken before it goes into the oven for 35-40 minutes of braising. You can see the finished product -- rolled and stuffed chicken sliced down the middle, sauce and aromatics -- above right.

We also made Stuffed Chicken Breast Doria, using "forcemeat," a ground combination of chicken, spinach, cream, shallot, egg white, herbs and bread crumbs.  the stuffing was piped into a pocket cut into the chicken breast. The concoction was rolled, wrapped in cooking-grade plastic wrap and aluminum foil and poached in a 180-degree simmer. We also made a white sauce, sauce supreme, to accompany it. Result, including a "crowned" tomato garnish, is at left.

Multi-tasking: making 3 sauces at a time

Chef Dan Fluharty has set a pace of production work in Culinary Foundations II that demands multi-tasking. The idea is that it's what happens in restaurant kitchens, so we best learn it now.

And learn it we are. On Tuesday, we made fish fumet (a fish stock) and prepped the ingredients for veal stock at the same time, followed quickly by making roux.

Today, we stepped it up: Three white sauces to be made to appropriate texture and flavor in 90 minutes. From a béchamel base, we made mornay sauce; from fish velouté, we made vin du blanc; from chicken velouté, we made sauce supreme.

An aid to multi-tasking is that the three sauces include several common ingredients, starting with white roux (butter and flour thickening agent), and including cream, butter and lemon juice.

Chef pointed out that the classic French sauces have foundations that are created over and over, with dfferentiation coming from introduction of flavors from other ingredients. Fo example, the supreme sauce is based on chicken velouté with cream and butter added for flavor; the vin du blanc is fish velouté with a white wine reduction.

Thursday comes an accelerated challenge: four sauces in 90 minutes. We wll be visiting the deeply flavorful family of brown sauces and a tomato sauce.

(Photo shows my versions of sauce supreme at lower left, vin du blanc at top center, mornay sauce at lower right.)