Leftovers and Leeks

I didn't feel like going to the store for ingredients this evening, so I looked in my fridge for something I could piece together. I had leftover chicken from last week's Brunoise dish, and I also had a really pretty bunch of leeks from the farmers market that I needed to use before they went bad. My first thought was of a really delicious recipe for braised leeks with thyme and garlic, from Jamie's Kitchen, by Jamie Oliver. When I flipped to the page, however, I noticed a note at the bottom, directing the reader to add a little cream, a handful of parmesan cheese, and toss with pasta for a yummy main course.

Okay, so left over chicken, with a side of spinach fettuccine mixed with this leek recipe! Sounds like a plan to me! I cut the leeks, and sauteed them with some butter, garlic, and thyme, before adding some chicken broth and wine. The whole pot went into a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. If you have large leeks, go for more like half an hour, but the leeks that I had were on the smaller side, and I didn't want to overcook them. Meanwhile, I put a pot of water on to boil for the fettuccine. 

Once the leeks were done, and the pasta was cooked, I mixed the two, along with a touch of cream and a nice, healthy handful of grated parmesan. I seasoned to taste and voila! A really tasty pasta dish that paired really nicely with my already-prepared chicken breasts. If you can recall, there were even leeks in the chicken dish, so the flavors overlapped and tasted really nice together! And, I got to finish off the bottle of wine that I was using to cook with, too! That's a win-win for a Monday, if you ask me!

What's a Brunoise, anyway!?

A brunoise, according to Wikipedia, is "a culinary knife cut in which the food item is first julienned and then turned a quarter turn and diced again, producing cubes of a side length of about 3mm or less on each side." Now that we have the defining out of the way, brunoise is the main knife skill needed for tonight's recipe. This is the first meal I'm making from my new cookbook, The Boston Chef's Table: The Best in Contemporary Cuisine, which is a very cool compilation of recipes from restaurants in and around the city of Boston. Ironically, I chose a dish from a restaurant I've never been to before, but it sounded interesting. Coriander Bistro is located in Sharon, MA, and run by Chef-Owner, Kevin Crawley. His Boneless Chicken Brunoise, is approachable, and simple to make. I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of instructions, and even happier with the outcome!

The recipe is laid out very methodically, listing ingredients that need to be prepared, followed by the steps in cooking that portion of the meal, before moving on to another list of ingredients and instructions. The first step is the brunoise, and the step that took the longest to prep. I had to use the specific knife cut to get a 1/4 cup of each of the following: carrots, celery, onions, shallot, zucchini, red pepper and leeks. Once all of my vegetables were cut, I lightly sauteed them in a pan with some olive oil. When they had been heated through, and the onions were translucent, they were removed from the heat and set aside.

The second step was to create a quenelle, or a sort of dumpling using pureed chicken mixed with egg whites and cream. This was an easy step! I cut a chicken breast into large chunks and put it into the small bowl of my food processor, along with an egg white, chopped shallot, some freshly grated nutmeg, salt, and pepper. After a few pulses to blend the mixture, I poured some cream in as it pulsed, until I had a paste-like consistency. This got set aside, right next to my brunoise.

Now for the main part of this process...the CHICKEN! I placed 4 chicken breasts in between two sheets of plastic wrap before pounding them out so that they were an even thickness. Once ready, I placed them in a 13"x9" baking dish and began to spoon and spread the quenelle on top of each chicken breast. On top of that, I spooned the brunoise. Everything got drizzled with a bit of olive oil, and then I poured some white wine and chicken broth into the pan, before placing it in a 350 degree oven for 12-15 minutes. Mine took a few minutes longer than that, actually...but start conservatively and put it back in the oven if you have to. There's nothing worse than overcooked chicken!

While the chicken cooked, I had to make the sauce that the chicken would rest on. This was simple! I added a cup of red wine to a saucepan along with a bay leaf, a thyme spring, some salt and pepper and some veal demi-glace. You can buy the Veal Demi-glace at specialty shops, and if you can't find it there, it's sold on Amazon.com, as well! All I had to do was allow it to simmer until it had reduced by half, and was thick, with a lovely sheen. 

It was time to plate, and it hadn't even been an hour! I swiped a nice amount of the red wine sauce on to each plate in a pretty design and then placed a chicken breast, topped with the quenelle and brunoise, on top of the sauce. Yummy!

Now, I was supposed to serve tonight's meal with a dessert, making it a menu. However, I couldn't find heavy cream at the store this evening, and I knew that I couldn't make a maple custard with light cream. I'm going to save it for another evening, when I can make it using the correct ingredients! Be on the lookout for a separate post on that one!