I don’t know about you, but one of the things that frustrates me about making a special meal out of a cookbook is that it often calls for unique ingredients that, after preparing the recipe, end up sitting in the pantry or fridge until they aren’t good anymore. This is why you have that little container of Garam Masala in the back of your spice cabinet.
According to The Bouchon Cookbook, bistros must operate on a tight budget and make the best use of their ingredients, regardless of how humble they may seem. Leftovers in the home kitchen, like the offal or “spare” parts of animals in the professional kitchen (e.g. tripe, kidneys, brains, etc.), are such “humble” ingredients that can be put to good use when properly prepared. Since I’m trying to live on something resembling a budget here in Napa, I’m going to try and make the best use of my leftovers.
While I have no doubt that the second half of my roasted chicken would have tasted delicious after being warmed up in the oven, a recipe in The Bouchon Cookbook calling for some shredded roast chicken caught my eye: savory crêpes with roast chicken, morels, and fava beans (p. 198).
Looking over recipes, I realized that it often takes a little extra effort to convert leftovers into a wholly new dish. Unlike my roast chicken, this recipe required me to go out on a ledge and learn a couple new techniques. I hope to challenge myself to learn at least one new technique or preparation in each new recipe.
The first new technique was crêpe-making. I was a little hesitant to try my hand at crepes after a mediocre day-after-Christmas pancake making performance. Fortunately, my housemate had a crêpe pan (a shallow, low-walled pan) from Williams-Sonoma that ended up working perfectly. The batter was quite easy. Like a pancake batter (although thinner), it consisted of mixing wet ingredients (eggs, milk, and cream) with dry ingredients (flour, salt, and pepper). After letting the batter rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, I strained it and added some melted butter and minced chives. On the stove, it was like cooking eggs, swirling the batter around to coat the pan and then waiting for it to set before flipping. After a couple, I developed a good rhythm and felt comfortable with the process.
My confidence steadily building, I was feeling good about trying new technique number two. Sauce-making is an important skill necessary for the home and professional cook alike. I hope to improve my abilities as a saucier over the next few weeks. I generally don’t like cream- or cheese-based sauces, which has the rather un-American consequence of my not being a fan of macaroni and cheese either.
This recipe called for a mornay sauce. It contains milk, heavy cream, and cheese as well as, peppercorns, cloves, nutmeg, and bay (see picture below). So although I wasn’t expecting to really like my efforts, I decided to push through. Making a mornay sauce, I realized from the recipe, is a series of quick, high-pressure movements, followed by a long period of waiting while the sauce reduces.
Mornay is roux-based and, therefore, uses a flour and butter mixture as the base of the sauce. At this stage, one has to be careful to manage the heat level and keep stirring the roux to prevent it from scorching while the flour and butter are combining. After a couple of minutes, the cream must be whisked in and, then, once it's incorporated the pepper, cloves, and bay are added. At this point, the sauce simmers for about 30 minutes during which the sauce becomes thick and rich.
At this point the sauce is strained and put back on low heat while the Emmantaler cheese is mixed in. The chicken, which I had pulled off the leftover roast chicken, was then added to warm through. I left the sauce to keep warm.
Although fava beans proved to be the most difficult ingredient to find (since I failed to check whether they were in season), they were not the most luxurious. That distinction fell to the morel mushroom. This required a trip to the St. Helena outpost of Dean & Deluca (Leslie Rudd, the owner of Dean & Deluca also owns a winery and restaurant in the Valley), which is a reliable stop for high-end ingredients, like morels (a paltry $312 per pound). Fortunately, mushrooms don’t weigh a lot, so I was able to get three servings worth of these pricey fungi for $16. The morels required minimal preparation before cooking, simply swishing them around in warm water to clean off any remaining dirt.
The morel and fava bean mixture was the quickest part of the preparation, so I waited until the end to prepare it. After melting a few tablespoons of unsalted butter in a skillet, I added the morels (careful not to let them brown) and then some brandy. I had rehydrated the beans in boiling water earlier (which, sadly, never regained the bright green color of fresh beans) and kept them cool in the refrigerator. They simply needed to be added at the end to warm through after the alcohol from the brandy had burned off.
To assemble, I placed a crêpe on the plate and then spooned a generous portion of the mornay and chicken mixture on top. (The recipe produced much more mornay-chicken mixture than I could use.) Next, I placed one-third of the fava and morel mixture on top of that and then rolled the crêpe into a log shape and cut in half.
Even as one not inclined toward creamy sauces, I enjoyed the dish. It was perfect for a cool and rainy night in the Valley. The biggest flaw in the dish was, without question, the lack of fresh fava beans, and only reinforced the importance of seasonal cooking (or at least paying attention to the seasons!).
I enjoyed the previous night's roast chicken much more, but this recipe was no less satisfying to prepare. Although I doubt I'll be making a mornay sauce again in the near future, the fact that I was able to handle the challenge only gives me more confidence to try other new and difficult techniques. Hopefully all of your successes in your own kitchens encourage you to do the same.
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