Bread charlotte | Chicken pie à la Michel Roux Jr.

some years ago i was watching a bbc cookery program and the delightful chef michelle jr made something that he called a bread charlotte and i've wanted to try it ever since charlotte usually refers to some kind of fruit dessert encased in cake slices you press that into a mold and then you bake it again chef michelle did a savory charlotte with a duck stew encased in little fingers of bread i love the concept as a fun individual savory pie to serve guests it's surprisingly easy to do and you could fill it with any stew recipe you like i'm doing a chicken stew that i hope is going to be a bit more approachable than chef michelle's recipe which really relies on the fats left over from the duck i'm using clarified butter instead of duck fat you can buy clarified butter of course but it's easy to make from regular butter yourself for my recipe i'd say go ahead and do a full pound of butter 454 grams that's twice what you see here i think you're going to want the full pound you literally just let it melt over lowish heat and then you'll see the 15 to 20 percent water content of the butter start boiling out do it gently where stuff will burn we've cooked this about 10 minutes and now it's moving on to the foaming stage which you will definitely notice when it happens it looks and sounds and smells very different from the boiling we had before the foam indicates that almost all the water is gone and if you want something a little more like indian style ghee you let the milk solids in there brown just a little bit before you take it off the heat a paper towel in a sieve is a perfectly good filter for clarified butter you could certainly use some nice olive oil or something for this recipe but i would not use melted whole butter the outside of the pie would not crisp up as nice or worse the milk solids in there might burn no more solids left in here though just pure slightly toasty milk fat before i do anything else i'm gonna get an ounce of dried mushroom steeping in water about 30 grams of dried porcini i'll put in like three cups of water in there 700 mils enough water to keep everything easily submerged as you heat it up the mushrooms are going to expand i'm just giving that like five minutes in the microwave and then the mushrooms can just sit around in there and soften up while we do other stuff i've got four chicken thighs the finest chicken piece for stew if you can get them boneless and skin off that's great i'm just sloppily cutting out the thigh bones because i don't need perfect whole thighs i need pieces and i'm going smaller than i'd normally go on stew pieces i think this dish is a little bit more delicate than a big hearty stew enough salt and pepper to get every piece really well seasoned and then enough flour to coat everything a handful chicken is just kind of slippery and the flour coating helps it to merge with the sauce in a stew it'll also thicken the stew though one good thing to do is separate out all the pieces before you cook them if i don't do this they tend to merge into one giant meatball in the pan and then you can't brown them very well my widest pan on medium heat i might as well steal some of that clarified butter to brown all of these and as long as all the meat is in one layer i really don't think you have to worry about crowding the pan yeah you have to boil out some water before things can really start browning but that's fine with chicken thigh because it's virtually impossible to overcook chicken thigh it's not like steak where you have to brown the surface really fast before you overcook the interior as soon as these are sufficiently browned they should release pretty easily from the pan just a little nudge from the spoon but it really doesn't matter if they get torn up as you are flipping it's a stew whether the brown stuff is on the piece or in the pan it doesn't really matter it's all going to end up dissolved in the stew while side b cooks i'll peel and mince two or three shallots you could use an onion but shallots cook way faster so i can just do them right in here with the chicken i don't need to take the meat out to make room i have to worry about the fond burning before the shallots are done they cook in seconds stir in a squeeze of tomato paste the easiest way to boost almost any stew i am in imminent danger of burning the fawn so time to deglaze with the mushroom stock and i'll throw in the whole mushrooms too some people pass that through a coffee filter first to get out any sand that was clinging to the mushrooms maybe that's a bigger problem on other kinds of dried mushrooms because it's never really bothered me with these scrape the pan clean reduce the heat to a simmer and then we'll give that a head start while we cut up some carrots i don't feel like peeling them today and i think i'm just going to do simple slices again this is a little more delicate stew so i want smaller pieces and i don't care if they're a little over soft by the end stir those in and it might seem like there's not enough liquid but a ton is about to come pouring out of the carrots so just let everything simmer and now we've got a moment of downtime so how about some tunes courtesy of the sponsor of this video cove audio this has been my go-to bluetooth speaker for years now it links up to my phone in a snap can you believe this guy on soundcloud still hasn't been corded by the major labels i mean he's almost as visionary as the cove split speaker boom the smartphone era has unfortunately been the death of stereo audio now i can actually get true stereo sound from my phone you can put the halves like 30 feet apart they have a built-in microphone so you can talk to your phone i can run them all day on a single charge they get really loud and they're water resistant which makes them excellent for the kitchen i can just wash that sauce right off cove is running a january special 67 off this speaker with my link and code in the description it comes in some cool colors now too use my link in the description my code ar 67 at checkout to save 67 on your cove split speaker thank you cove alrighty we've had some evaporation so now there's room in the pan for like half a bottle of red wine you could just use water or stock instead enough to keep everything almost submerged as it simmers and i'm going to put in two or three envelopes of powdered gelatin this will be a secondary thickener and it'll give the sauce a really sexy smooth texture that chef michelle got from using reduced veal stock the powder clumps in hot liquid but as long as you can stir it in aggressively and let it cook a while longer the lumps will dissolve now bread i went to the bakery counter in the morning and i asked if they had any day-old bread they were happy to unload it on me for almost no money the bread doesn't have to be stale but it's easier to cut the crust off if the bread is firm you don't have to cut the crust off but it'll make the finished shell a lot prettier the crusts would make them kind of lumpy i'm not going to waste the crust i'm going to let it dry another day and then blitz it into breadcrumbs now i'll slice this basically as thin as i can and then cut the slices into wide strips chef michelle called them soldiers of bread the strips are just easier to position as you're lining the mold this bread is kind of delicate so i'm not getting perfect soldiers from all the slices that's not soldering doesn't matter we can use the little pieces to patch holes okay my ghee has solidified at room temperature which is why i strained it into a microwave-safe container much better chef michelle made one big pie in a large ceramic pudding basin i'm doing individual pies in my fiestaware soup bowls google your bowls to find out if they're oven safe but most ceramic dishes are they were fired in a kiln you just dip the bread strip into the fat and then place it with the greasy side facing the bowl it should stick the key is don't soak the bread in fat it's just a quick little dip there's tons of ways that you could do this to create decorative effects just follow your imagination no matter what i do my pies are not going to be super pretty because this bread has an airy open crumb which is going to allow some of the sauce to seep through if you want a really pretty uniform color on the outside you got to use bread with a dense crumb like chef michelle used he actually baked his own milk bread for this pie i will end up needing that second loaf because remember we need extra bread to cover the tops which will end up being the bottoms stew looks good nice and thick i can feel the chicken pieces and the carrots have softened the chicken's been simmering maybe 45 minutes i'll taste the sauce and adjust seasoning needs more salt and pepper and i'm going to stir in some balsamic vinegar mostly because this stew is going to get cooked again in the oven and that's going to knock back the brightness so i want it a little too acidic at this stage if i hadn't used the wine i would use even more balsamic now heat is off at the last second i'm gonna put in like a cup of peas straight from the freezer and i'll snip in some fresh soft thyme that i've got but any herb is fine you stir in frozen peas at the last second and you reduce the degree to which they'll be overcooked in the finished pie that stew would be perfect in a bowl right now and frankly it would be a much more sensible dinner but because we are packing this in carb casings i think i need to add a little water back into the sauce the bread is going to absorb liquid some of the water is going to evaporate in the oven and the sauce could end up over reduced and gloopy if we don't keep it a little too wet at this stage now we can start filling up the bread bowls be sure to get sauce as well as chunks or the pies are gonna end up being dry on the inside you can see why it's good to have smaller chunks for this stew smaller chunks fit better into the bowls if you have any leftover stew just eat it but i ended up having the perfect amount time now to top these with bread greasy side facing up this side doesn't have to be pretty because it's actually going to be the bottom of the pie no one is ever going to see it i should say i'm using salted butter for this if you're using unsalted butter i would put like a teaspoon of salt in with your pound of butter at the beginning of the clarifying process so that it can dissolve in the water before the water is gone i want a seasoned crust on my pie and i imagine you do too covered in foil to keep them from drying out and in they go to a 400 fahrenheit 200c oven it may be possible to do this in metal bowls but i think you'd have to experiment with a lower temperature metal is way more heat conductive and i worry that your crust would burn at this heat after like half an hour i'll take the foil off so the tops can brown otherwise they'll end up being mushy on the bottom of the pie i baked these just under an hour total i could see the stew bubbling under the crust so i know they're plenty hot in this form you could hold these for a few hours i would just put them back in the oven for like 20 minutes to crisp the shell again i think they're firm enough to turn out when they've cooled to the point where you can do this with your bare hands plate on top flip and lift that is a very hearty winter meal for one there the outside of the bread shell is shockingly delicious it's a little crispy it's soft underneath just dynamite and again you could do this with all kinds of fillings do a mushroom burgundy on and use olive oil and be vegan you can see chef michelle's far more elegant pie in that old bbc show it's linked in the description and as the brits would say tuck in

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 497,296

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Id: 6Ivarp1iJaY

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022