Blanquette de veau

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 2 hours.

Ingredients

• 1 kg veal shoulder, cubed
• 1 onion, studded with a clove
• 2 carrots
• 1 a bouquet garni
• 40 g butter
• 40 g flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 150 ml double cream
• 1/2 juice of half a lemon

Method

1. Cover the veal with cold water, bring to a bare simmer, skim, then add the onion, carrots and bouquet garni. Simmer gently 1 hour 30 minutes, until tender.
2. Strain, reserving the broth. Melt the butter, work in the flour, cook gently 1 to 2 minutes without colouring, a roux blond léger.
3. Whisk the hot broth into the roux progressively, off the heat, to build a smooth velouté.
4. Beat the egg yolks with the cream. Whisk a little of the hot sauce into this mixture to temper it, then pour it back into the sauce, whisking.
5. Return briefly to the heat, just to a bare boil, never a hard boil, or the sauce will split. Finish with lemon juice.
6. Return the veal to the sauce and serve with rice.

What a modern chef changes

A more stable liaison, and veal held at a single precise temperature throughout

Rungs 2 and 3

Method

1. Cook the veal sous vide at 63°C for 4 hours. This holds the meat at exactly the point where it is tender without being stringy, a target the traditional simmer approximates by feel and can easily overshoot.
2. Build the liaison as a proper sabayon rather than a tempered custard. Whisk the egg yolks and cream over gentle heat until aerated and thickened before combining with the sauce, the same discipline a béarnaise uses, for a lighter, less heavy finish that is markedly less prone to splitting than the traditional tempering method.
3. Reduce the poaching liquid separately and hard, concentrating it before it becomes the velouté's base liquid, for a sauce with genuinely more backbone than the traditionally lighter version.