Day 9: Pommes Anna and Chicken with Taragon Sauce

Today was jam packed, and we got a teeny tiny view of what it's like inside a pressure-packed kitchen. Each team was responsible for making Pommes Anna (essentially a delicious layered potato bake slash glorified hashbrowns), glazed carrots, blanched green beans, veloute sauce, and then finally, each of us (not by team, but each person) had to sear their own chicken breast and make sauce taragon. Definitely the most we’ve done so far, and really reinforced why its important to:

1. Read the recipes fully, start to finish, before you get started so you know what’s coming down the pipe
2. Stay organized - mise en place!
3. Communicate with your team

Pommes Anna

This dish is a series of layered potatoes with lots of clarified butter (so you can cook with it at a higher temperature), seasoned generously with salt. The idea is to have slices that are just thick enough that you can discern the layers, a crispy bottom (that isn’t burned!) and really soft insides. But, you don't want them to be mush! You want to be able to get a fabulous layered bite of buttery potatoes.

Tip: use smaller yukon gold potatoes, so that the diameter of the slices are tinier and you can see more of them when layered on the bottom! Or just use the tiniest slices for the bottom most layer.

Method:

1. 1. Preheat oven to 350.
   2. Peel yukon potatoes and slice to about ⅛ to ¼ inch thick. Season generously with salt and pepper, and mix in your clarified butter so that all slices are lightly coated
   3. Melt clarified butter to cover the bottom of a nonstick saute pan, and then begin to layer slices of potato all around the pan, in a spiral pattern.
   4. Pour additional clarified butter at the end - will help the potatoes crisp up, and you can always drain excess butter
   5. Cover the potatoes with a round of parchment paper and another pan, of the same size, so that there potatoes are weighted down - this helps the bottom crisp, and the insides cook faster. Cook on top of the stove on medium high heat, rotating your pan every few minutes so that the bottom cooks evenly, and you avoid random brown spots.
   6. When the edges of the potatoes are starting to turn brown and crispy and the middle of the potatoes has started to turn soft, take off the stove and place in the oven (with the parchment and pan still on top). Cook until potatoes are tender and well browned on the bottom.
   7. Invert and admire your masterpiece!

 

Blanched Veggies and Glazed Carrots:

When glazing vegetables, you basically want to do the opposite of what I would do - you don’t want *any* color whatsoever. Low and slow all the way. Also, you can cover with a round of parchment paper to help trap the heat somewhat, while still letting the sauce around the veggies reduce.

When blanching veggies, you want the to pop them into water that is at a rolling boil - if you cook the vegetable at a lower temperature, it activates an enzyme that causes the vegetable to turn brown. But above that temperature and you get that beautiful green color to stay.

The veggies only need to be popped in the boiling water for about 30 seconds. They’ll need equal time to cool off in their ice bath, and then they should be patted dry. Also, both your boiling water AND your ice bath should be salted! Salting the ice bath probably seems crazy, but it means that they won’t lose the salt they absorbed in the boiling water (science! Turns out its important).

Sauce Veloute

Sauce Veloute is one of the mother sauces: it is a blonde roux with white stock. If we added vegetables and cream, we would have a Veloute soup!  

Ingredients:

• 2 ½ cups white stock
• 1 oz butter (roughly 2 tbsp)
• 1 oz flour
• Salt and pepper

Method:

• Bring (white) stock to a simmer
• Melt butter in a sauce pan and whisk in the flour. Whisk over low heat until your roux is a pale blonde, 2-3 minutes
• Whisk heated stock into roux and cook for 30 minutes over low heat, stirring frequently to avoid the sauce from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Strain and season with salt and pepper

Chicken with Tarragon Sauce

This is a classic french recipe - here we took the veloute sauce that we had just made and turned it into a Tarragon sauce that we served on top of our grilled chicken breast. Chef said that if you do this dish wrong, it’s just a boring chicken dish. But, when done right, it makes the chicken sing.

Ingredients

• 1 cup veloute sauce

• 1 sprig fresh tarragon

• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

• Salt and pepper

• Clarified butter

• ¼ cup white wine

• 2 tbsp cream (or 1 oz)

• ½ tbsp minced fresh tarragon

Recipe

• 1. Season chicken with salt and pepper about 15-20 minutes before cooking
  2. While your veloute sauce is still hot, but off the heat, place tarragon sprigs in your sauce and cover, allowing them to infuse
  3. When ready, saute chicken in clarified butter until golden and cooked through. You want some color on your chicken, but not to the point that the skin is crispy. Then let chicken rest on a sheet tray
  4. Deglaze your pan with wine and reduce until its not sloshing around the pan
  5. Add your sauce and simmer until thickens slightly, then add cream and minced tarragon and season to taste
  6. Cut chicken to ½ inch thick slices, on a bias, and plate, spooning sauce on top of the chicken

After lots of cooking, we had an herb demo. Trying herbs by themselves is a shock - nothing to make you realize how much flavor they have (and not always the best) when by themselves. But when paired with the right flavors, they make your dish sing!

 

General method for a pan sauce:

• Degrease  (add butter to pan with other things)
• Deglaze (using sherry/ vinegar/wine)
• Reduce
• Enrich (cream!)

Daily tip:

• When making a vinaigrette, the ratio should be 3:1, oil to vinegar

• When cooking chicken, always saute presentation side down first!

• When making a pan sauce, don’t use a nonstick pan. You want the crispy delicious bits to stick to the pan - you’ll deglaze them, and they’ll come right up, making your sauce swoonworthy