Welcome to the white village.
I'm Georges Blanc, Michelin star chef and I have a whole team with me. We are in the heart of Bresse. Bresse is an area that is above all
a gastronomic region of France and here we obviously have an
emblematic product called Bresse poultry. There are many recipes
for preparing Bresse poultry, but I chose Brest poultry in a salt crust which we make in a typical way
and is delicious. So Mathèo and the whole
team, the whole brigade knows this recipe well and
I think we will give you a demonstration that you will like. Mathèo, action! It's time to make a
nice demonstration for our friends. Bye! Hi everyone, I'm Matteo Rossatto, I'm the chef of this restaurant,
we're in Vonnas inside Georges Blanc's kitchen. A three Michelin Guide star restaurant for 40 years, 43 to be
precise. And today, thanks to ItaliaSquisita, we are here to propose one of Monsieur Blanc's
emblematic dishes, namely poulet en croûte de sel, meaning chicken in a crust of salt. The Bresse chicken is
a chicken of a native breed which is the
Gauloise. It is the only chicken in the world
to have the PDO denomination. Great chefs like
Paul Bocuse and George Blanc have managed
to take it to the highest levels
and make it known all over the world. What makes this poultry and
this chicken in general special is mainly this fat under the skin that is very present. The meat is very white and
very fat obviously, therefore unlike our Italian chickens
or whatever we are used to eating normally, it melts in your mouth,
meaning the meat is very very tender differently from
a normal chicken, we're not used to
this sensation in the mouth. My brigade is made up of approximately 30 guys, of which 25 are Italian.
With me today there will be Andrea and Alessandro. Andrea is responsible for
the viande, therefore of meats, while Alessandro
is responsible for the sauces. He will
take care of preparing precisely this sauce that will accompany our chicken:
a Vin Jaune sauce. Here's Andrea as he flames it to remove the superfluous
plumage that can be left, as later
the skin will be eaten too, because then the
skin will become very very melting. After that,
we are going to make a small cut on the joint in order to remove the tendons and prevent the chicken from moving
when it is sealed inside the crust too much, as in doing so it
will split the crust during cooking. At this point, let's cut towards the
neck area in order to remove the
head. We can already see all the fat under the skin already coming out,
especially from the part of the head - this very yellow fat,
and without the use of cleavers, choppers, none of this, let's just follow along the anatomy of the
chicken to remove the head, the final part of the
legs and after that let's move on to the
evisceration, therefore starting from the liver to the
lungs, kidneys, everything. We already see, however, the fat that comes
out is all good fat, all fat that we use in the restaurant because anyway we melt it and we use it as a flavoring in sauces such as, for example, the Vin Jaune sauce
that we will be making later on. Once we have gutted it perfectly, Andrea
proceeds to add salt and pepper in such a way that in the meantime, as we prepare
the dough and we will then put it
in the crust, it has a minimal marination.
Then we're going to stuff it with some unpeeled garlic, a white onion cut into quarters, a generous bouquet of thyme of our vegetable garden. And then we make our job easier by inserting the legs
inside the chicken and indeed create something round and very compact. Once the chicken is seasoned, it is placed in a
refrigerating room for at least an hour, so that the meats become
more compact and cold, so we avoid cooking a chicken in a crust at
room temperature where it may end up being overcooked.
While the chicken rests, we move to the pastry section to prepare the dough, which is probably the most important and crucial part of this recipe. As Monsieur Blanc anticipated,
this is not a town, but let's say a village. This
is precisely why it is nicknamed Blanc Village by gourmand
travelers. Here are indeed as well as gastronomic restaurant, Relais Chateau, an area where you can have petit déj, meaning breakfast, a boulangerie that makes bread both for retail
and for us at the restaurant and after that we have
the pastry side, where are we going now. A laboratory
that is detached from the restaurant
where the boys take care of making all of the preparation of the day and after which which they move with us
in the kitchen for the service. Let's now start the preparation of the salt crust. So let's start placing all of the ingredients
in the stand mixer. We have 3.2 kg of salt, 2.5 kg flour
and our powders: thyme, rosemary and chopped sage. Let's start the mixer
at a speed that is fairly low and insert the yolks in various steps. Let the mixer run for about a couple of minutes
and let's start mixing in a little more warm water in order to obtain
the consistency of the dough that we want. We must obtain a dough that is not too hard
and not too soft to prevent it from opening
during the cooking later. We're moving it
onto the marble bench, we wrap it in film and
let it rest for a moment and then we are ready to go to the kitchen to stretch it
out as if it were a fresh pasta to then cover the chicken. We're back in the
kitchen and now we're going to take the film
off the dough, which in the meantime has rested in the refrigerator and has slightly
stiffened, so it became a little harder.
We're dividing it in half. As you can see,
after resting the dough is nice and soft and
you can roll it out more easily and this will
make it easier for us, especially during
the phase in which we cover the chicken to
create a chamber as closed as possible, since the technique of this
chicken crust is to try and seal as
much as possible the chicken so that there are no air drafts because
they will bring to uneven cooking of the chicken. Then Andrea, as we can see, rolled out the dough to a
thickness of about 2 cm, quite thick and he's rolling
it onto the rolling pin. And we're giving it the first shape, let's say
the base, for it to take the dimensions of the pan where the chicken
will then be placed. You can see how the dough
remains quite moist and malleable, and
above all it doesn't have holes, it has no cracks. This is essential for this preparation,
especially for the beginning. Now let's cut it approximately
to the size of the pan. Once our chicken has
rested well and it became compact again and very cold, we're going to place it
in the center of the dough that we have
just rolled out and Andrea is going to put underneath
the chicken two small supports that will serve an
aesthetic purpose, therefore to hold the chicken a bit more upright and then above all to
prevent it during the cooking phase to become
limp and break the sides of the salt crust.
We are going to sprinkle a little yolk
mixed with some cream to help the dough cover that we are going to add now to adhere perfectly, following
the same principle of a fresh pasta. And then we will cover it, trying to eliminate as much as possible
the air between the chicken and the dough.
This is a fundamental part for the success of this recipe. As you see, Andrea
uses his fingers to plug with other
pieces of dough some small holes that
may happen with the dough, so he's using small patches. Then he's using his hands to make the dough stick
to the chicken as much as possible. See how, having placed
the dough correctly, we can see the shape of the chicken
perfectly, therefore this means that there is very little air
inside and therefore the cooking will be homogeneous and this chamber
will form, basically a natural vacuum which will allow the chicken to cook evenly throughout. Now Andrea will define the crust with a knife and
remove all of the smudges. We don't want a squared shape, but a rather rounded shape, so we'll give it this pretty oval shape. Once we have given the shape to our salt crust, let's start with the first
decoration, so let's create these waves by helping
ourselves with the tip of the knife. Meanwhile I take care of the decorations that will then embellish our volaille en croûte de sel. We mainly use these two shapes, which are a leaf and this wheel. We will only make two wheels because we will
only put them at the two ends of the chicken,
while on the other hand, as regards the
leaves, they will completely cover almost
the entire surface of the crust. Now Andrea, always with the help of a little yolk, which
allows him to make the shapes perfectly adhere to the dough, will
decorate the whole surface of the crust.
We always start from the outside
towards the part of the legs and then move
towards the front part which in any
case is the part that will come in front
of the customer, so it needs to be visually
more scenic and more pronounced. Here we also need to give it a
three-dimensional shape. Once we have decorated all our chicken crust, the last step before going to the baking is indeed the polishing.
Andrea is using a classic sprayer with yolk and cream
inside to care for the complete polishing of our chicken,
very very generously. As you can see, the amount of yolk and cream that we
are going to spray is really very abundant, because it really needs to soak in and enter inside the of the crust, inside the dough and then especially with a
brush, he's removing the excesses
where perhaps they formed too thick of a layer of egg. Before cooking, it is very important to let
it rest in the fridge so that the yolk becomes
compact and dries on the dough. And now it's time to place it in the oven at
170°C for about 2 hours. It always depends depends on the size of the chicken. This was a chicken of about 2 kg,
so more or less one hour per kg. From the moment the chicken is cooking, we focus on another
fundamental point of this dish, which is the sauce. This is
a historical sauce of Maison Blanc - we're talking
about the Vin Jaune sauce. The base is this PDO butter from Bresse. We start with abundant butter. Then we add some
very finely chopped shallots. We add a large generous dose
of salt and pepper. Salt and pepper -it is essential to
add them at the beginning in such a way as to flavor our base immediately
and then not have a final product where
it could perhaps be bland. The pepper is obviously white. Let's gently simmer these shallots until we almost get a compote, so they must be really tender, almost
caramelised. They must stick for several
times to the bottom of the casserole and be
grated in such a way to get all the juices, all of the part
that get caramelized. The reason why in all the sauces that make
we favor the shallot only, it is for this sweetness/acidity and especially the caramelisation, because it is much
richer in sugars much more than an onion. Here, after having
stewed the shallot, we are ready to start
with the first reductions, because in any
case it is a sauce made of reductions
of various alcohols. So let's start indeed with Vin Jaune. Vin Jaune is a wine from the Jura Coast.
It is amber in color, because it has
the characteristic of being matured after fermentation for 6 years inside oak barrels. Once we add the Vin Jaune, we let it come to a light boil and the moment the alcoholic part will
have evaporated, the wine is mixed well with the stewed shallot and we can add some Porto or Madeira,
which however does not cover the aroma
of the wine but rather integrate the complexity that
belongs to this sauce. Let's bring the sauce to a light boil and let's take
advantage of this time to remove
all the impurities that come to the
surface. It can be impurity of the wine, it can be a part of fat from the butter
which comes to the surface and let's take advantage
of this time in the meantime as it
starts to boil and with a blowtorch, we flambé so that the alcohol part evaporates
as fast as possible. In this first phase,
it is important that Alessandro always eliminates all the impurities, first and
foremost because they could stick to the edges and
therefore burn in the moment the sauce catches fire
and is flambéed and then using a wooden spoon to scratch and detach parts which could get stuck to the casserole to prevent them from burning, because in
any case the temperature is now very very high
and there would be a risk to then having the
entire product thrown away. This is a very,
very delicate phase. It's not just about lighting the torch and lit up a fire, but it's the
phase in which the sauce needs to be kept under closer scrutiny
during preparation. Once all the alcoholic part has evaporated,
let's season with a melange of peppers
in which we have pink pepper, black pepper, white pepper,
therefore a mix of peppers, with plenty
of unpeeled garlic because we always need
garlic and shallot anyway. Thyme, fresh thyme always from our garden, juniper berries, cloves, dry bay leaves. We give it a stir so that when we go into the oven all the parts we placed inside do not burn. Once the sauce is ready, Alessandro is placing the casserole in the oven at 160°C for an hour and in the meantime we wait for the chicken to finish cooking
on the other side. After the sauce comes out of the oven, we let it
cool and filtered it and this is the consistency, so it stays quite liquid. And we need to flavor it though, because right now it has still a fairly bland taste. So all the parts that we are going to add inside are
precisely the veal marrow, to give it this
bright shiny note, almost like a mirror,
and then we're going to flavor it by
giving it a part that recalls the Bresse chicken, so we have some fat from the chicken, the subcutaneous fat that we melted then cooled and we're using it as if it were our clarified butter, and then all of the fat that comes to the
surface from the fois gras terrines. So here at the restaurant when we make these terrines that are left to rest in
the fridge and cool down - all the
fat that surfaces the boys collect it completely and we use it as a
natural flavoring inside the sauces. We let the ingredients we put inside
the sauce dissolve perfectly, then Alessandro will filter it to eliminate any impurities or sediments that may also be there because what we want is a
very smooth sauce. So once the sauce reaches the consistency, we
are going to add it inside these copper serving gravy
boats. On the bottom we add a little walnut
oil which greatly reflects the flavors
and the aromas of the Vin Jaune that we used as the starting alcohol, as the main ingredient of this sauce and then it is served in the dining room by the maitre. And after two hours, the salt crust
is ready to be taken out of the oven. I would say it turned out very well this time! - Thank you.
- Now let it rest for about 10 minutes
and then it is ready to be served. In the meantime let's take advantage of this
time to compose the dish which will then be the side to our chicken.
So we start from a tamarind cream cooked in orange
juice, a tartlet that at the base has a chestnut pastry, a vegetable ratatouille and a butternut
pumpkin glazed with all the scraps from the pumpkin and whipped
in butter to give this shine to the rose. Then we have an apricot stuffed with stewed and
candied onion that recalls the shape of a classic Italian 'maritozzo',
but in this case a savory one. A confit garlic, therefore
a garlic cooked in clarified butter, a potato
puff pastry that, again, recalls the classic Neapolitan 'sfogliatella', in this case in a savory version, stuffed with a brunoise of vegetables
and black truffle and to finish a ???Cron, this tuber cooked entirely in Vin Jaune sauce,
glazed with this sauce that we
made before together which gives sweetness
and shine to the vegetables. We have reached the final of this very long
preparation. Andrea now with simple clarified
butter is going to polish the crust, an aesthetic factor
precisely in such a way that as soon as it is
opened in front of the customer, it has this shine straight away
which in any case is useful to enhance all the work that went into achieving this
finished product. And now we cover it and we're ready
to move to the dining room. Once the crust has
been removed, the chicken is portioned by our hotel maitres and served on serving plates with the various garnishes we have explained. They finish the dish with this
abundant pour of Vin Jaune sauce so that you can mop up your plate after finishing the dish.
And that's all! We have brought you inside our kitchen in the white village, showing you one of, or perhaps the most emblematic preparation
of this restaurant, by this great chef who nevertheless made and continues to make culinary
history in France. Special thanks to ItaliaSquisita, to the whole
brigade of Georges Blanc, to monsieur Blanc.
I'll wait for you in Vonnas and see you soon, à bientôt,
ciao!
