The Escoffier Series continues with Chapter 11: Cold Preparations

This is, in my opinion, the Crown Jewel of Classical cooking. I adore making and eating galantines and pâtès. There’s some skill involved, but anyone can pick it up. Patience is the key and the rewards are worth the effort.

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The Escoffier series continues. Chapter 10, as I mentioned in the last series episode is almost one page. The title is Composit Entrees, and included in composite entress are Croutsades, hot pies, timbales, tourtes, and vols au vent. Croustades are in the appetizer portion. Escoffierr lists three ways to make them. Basically, they are a shell, most commonly of pastry, placed in shaped molds, docked, blind baked, and cooled. Then, you fill the shells with stuff. Also possible, and more challenging, are rice croustades and Duchess Potato croustades.

To be as confusing as possible, Escoffierr mentions that there is yet one more way to make a croustade which, quickly, is to make the desired shape from a slice of sandwich bread, carve a cavity into the fried bread consistent with the shape of the bread, fry the bread, fill the cavity with some forcemeat, cooked in a slow oven. When it is cooked, the main course is served on top of the croustade. It’s a super fancy crouton.

Escoffier does offer at the top of the paragraph that these kinds of croustade have fallen into disuse.

The other important detail of hot pies is the pastry and the filling are cooked together at the same time. The sauce is made from an essence of the main ingredient. And, just to remind you why cooks hate this book, the process of making the pastry includes this line. A note that he called some kinds of dough paste, or at least that’s how it translated. “make into a paste in the usual manner.” Well, if that isn’t enough to make the uninformed swear of baking, I don’t know what else will.

Chapter 11 is short. 11 pages. What’s concealed in those procedures is no shortage of skills to take the craft of what is called garde manger to high heights. This chapter included galantines, some various pies, and terrines, more appropriately called pate au terrine, which differentiates pate en croute au terrine, which are almost only now called pate en croute, which is in pastry, and the chapter ends with some dressings and salads.

I’m not going over all of that here. It’s too much. The skills involved in making one galantine cover pretty much all a cook will learn in the kitchen. Butchery skills and forcemeat skills and cooking skills and flavor contrast and compatability are the big brush strokes.

The work of the chef garde manger is challenging and slow to ensure an excellent product. It was by far my favorite class to teach in culinary school because the precision necessary, and the effort to achieve that excellence could be intense. The single most challenging activity is passing the forcemeat through a screen to ensure a smooth finished product and remove all the sinews. It is not fast or effortless. One student walked into the bake shop shaking his hand and complaining how it was sore from passing the forcemeat. What he seemed to expect was sympathy. What he got was chuckles of amusement and fake pity. That class had just finished garde manger and every single student knew exactly what his hand felt like and not one of them had a moment of pity or empathy.

The forcemeat, a somewhat unfortunate term, is the raw, smooth puree of meat and fat. Escoffier has more than a few procedures for forcemeats, each varying for the intended use or primary ingredients.

We can make the process a bit easier by finding two standard recipes for nearly any situation calling for a forcemeat to make a pie or pate.

The kind to grind consists of the Main ingredients, let’s say chicken, 50% of that weight in pork butt, Escoffierr would say veal in some cases, and 20-30% of the total weight, chicken and pork, in pork fat. Pork fat and meat are pretty neutral and allow the flavorings and the primary ingredient to come through.

The second kind is done in the food processor. It is called a forcemeat mousseline and is smoother than the previous forcemeat.

The ingredients are primary meat, generally white meat or almost any fish, bread to bind, heavy cream, and egg whites. The basic procedure is to puree the meat in a food processor until smooth, add the bread, and crusts removed, puree till smooth again, add the egg whites, puree until homogenized, and then pulse in the heavy cream. Season with salt and pepper and flavor with spices and/or herbs and that’s it.

That’s it he says.

The hard part is pushing that mass of stuff through a screen, just like the metal screen on windows.

To make a galantine is to follow this basic procedure. Bone the chicken from the back. There are two ways to do this. Remove only the skin first then remove the meat second or remove the meat and skin as one thing and remove the carcass. In both cases, the goal is for the whole of the chicken skin removed and free of meat. The skin is laid out with the sternum area vertical, on a piece of cling wrap, on the counter.

The leg meat is pretty sinewy and very challenging to pass through a screen. The breast meat is good for forcemeat, but also good to slice and sear and place as garnish inside the forcemeat. The tedious thing to do, and actually saves time, is to remove tendons from the legs first before you make your forcemeat.

The fast explanation is to cut one chicken breast into long uniform-ish pieces, season, and sear them on all sides. Make a forcemeat from the rest of the meat. Place some forcemeat on the middle of the chicken skin, arrange the breast garnish and other garnish—Wait, what!–and cover with forcemeat and repeat until the forcemeat is used. You’ll have a mound of forcemeat and garnish on the middle of the chicken skin. Using the plastic wrap, fold one side of the skin over the top of the mound then the second side is folded over.

Now comes the sorta challenging part. Grasp both ends of the cling film and roll the galantine on the countertop to tighten the galantine and force it into a round shape and push everything toward the middle. Not too much rolling. Tie both ends with a short piece of butcher’s string and tie the galantine with 4 or 5 pieces of string to help keep the shape.

So far so good, right?

Poach the whole thing in chicken stock, well-salted water is fine, until done, which is 145° F. Instead of removing the galantine from the liquid while everything is hot, cut the heat off. If you are on electric burners, also slide the cooking vessels to the cool side of the stove. It will easily continue to cook 15 to 20 degrees, which is our target range. One detail Escoffierr doesn’t mention is the galantine will probably float. So, a wire cooling rack or two to keep it submerged helps. Now, the next part, the galantine might scorch if it’s pressed too much on the bottom of the pan, so take care and maybe also put a cooling rack in the pan, too.

Here’s where home cooking and restaurant cooking are different. In a restaurant, the entire cooking contraption will be placed in a walk-in to cool down. A galantine is today for tomorrow at least. Never today for today.

In all the years I’ve made galantines never once did I press it. I asked my chef friend if he ever did that and he did not. A terrine will get pressed to compact the contents and make a nice presentation and eating experience. Pressing something intended to be round risks it no longer being round.

A galantine can be made of any bird. The effort and reward for a chicken galantine or duck galantine and a quail galantine are not the same. If you’re going to make one, make it big enough that the finished product justifies the effort.

As to that other ganish part. There’s nearly no limit to what other garnishes can go in galantines. Color is good with flavor and pistachios are popular choices. Dice dried apricots or dried fruit of almost any kind is a good choice. Any meat that is added should at least be seared. Chicken livers or foie gras or mushrooms or truffles are nice additions and almost any herb mix or spice combination works.

Contrasts are nice. Venison garnish in a chicken galantine opens up some stronger spice flavorings, particularly lavender leaves and juniper.

Service for Escoffierr would include diced aspic of the principle ingredient, so chicken consomme, and something tart such as good pickles and or mustard. Toast points are certainly a good accompaniment.

As we continue chapter 11, we’ll cover meat pies. Now that winter is here, that seems a good thing to learn to make. They are tasty and make good lunch the next day. If you are familiar with a Pasty, it’s basically the hand-held version of a meat pie.

I am inteviewed by Naptown Think’s host Penjammin. We discuss the importance of muffin mixing and who is a better drinking companion?

Philosophizing can be hard work. What happens when you overmix a muffin? Does the universe collapse? Who is a better drinking pal, an elf or a dwarf? These are important questions and I answer them as best I can.