[Vegan Fish Quenelles]
...Julia says this about Quenelles...
"A quenelle, for those who are not familiar with this delicate triumph of French cooking, is pate a choux with a puree of raw fish, veal, or chicken which is formed into ovals or cylinders and poached in seasoned liquid."
...and then she goes on to give the most tedious directions for creating them...and then ends up by saying that the (then) newfangled food processor does a good job of making a smooth quenelle...and that the blender does not work...
...and then she says that fish quenelles in France are usually labeled
quenelles de brochet ...but I'd never heard of them before today...ever...
...and you'll need a Cream Puff Paste
VEGAN PÂTE À CHOUX...
...I went with a somewhat simpler version here...first you bring some water, salt and vegan butter to the boil...
...this time...I'm using Just Egg for the egg yolks and aqua faba for the egg whites...
...add the flour...
...I used the whisk at first...to get rid of any lumps...
...but that quickly became unmanageable...so I switched to my new spatula...and that worked perfectly...
...once you've got a nice smooth paste...off heat...beat in the vegan egg yolks...
...and then the vegan egg whites...
...have ready a big bowl of ice water...
...and set your VEGAN PÂTE in that until completely cool...
...meanwhile...I got out my mortar and pestle...and some frozen vegan fish filets...these are Gardein...
...first I peeled the breading off of the filets...
...and then I started mashing and grinding them up in the mortar and pestle...
...but Julia was right...even with the vegan filets...I could not get a perfectly smooth paste with the mortar and pestle...she says that back in the day...when these were haute cuisine...the young muscular sous chefs would do all of the laborius pounding of the fish...
...so...I got out my trusty Emmie food processor...and blended it up perfectly smooth...
...added some vegan cream...
...and formed the little quenelles on two spoons dipped in water...
...and since that's not a very good picture of that process...here's her diagram from the book...
...and dropped those into some simmering water to which I'd added a few strips of Nori...
...and you just cook them until they are puffed and roll over easily...
...and then I just lined the little quenelles up in a little au gratin dish...
...and spooned over some melted Earth Balance...
...they look so pretty...
...we had our quenelles with a baked potato...carrots and peas...they were pretty delicious...
Substitutions:
Vegan Butter...we used Earth Balance...
Vegan eggs...we used Just Egg for the yolks and Aqua Faba for the whites
Vegan Cream...we used Silk cashew cream
Recipe here:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking pp. 184-187
More power to you as you work thru the cookbook! But I gotta say...that's a LOT of work and I think just eating the fish in chunks would be just fine too! Love, K
ReplyDeleteHey K,
Delete...these were really interesting...the flavor was good...but it was such a strange texture...like a moist fish mousse...haha...and yeah very time consuming...
Love,
T