Chicken Galantine

Chicken what???

A chicken galantine, but let me explain exactly what it is. The galantine is the queen of terrines, some might say it is a bit out dated, but it is still beautiful to eat. Why it is not done that often anymore? Because it is actually a lot of work. To make a chicken galantine one has to take a whole chicken and then carefully debone it from the back, without cutting the skin where the breasts are. Then one makes a farce or filling, one has to tie the galantine, then poach for about an hour, let it cool down and only then, after all this work, it is sliced, plated and eaten.

I feel so that it is absolutely worth the effort making a galantine from time to time. Sometimes the chicken is formed back to it's original shape and then it is coated with a sauce "chaud-froid" which is a creamy sauce, hot at first (chaud is hot in French) and then is gets cold on the chicken and coats it (froid meaning cold in French) Now that is really classical and I must honestly say that I haven't seen anybody doing that for a very long time. I sometimes might still play around with it, as it is a fantastic show piece on a buffet.
The recipe is enough to make one galantine

1 whole chicken, medium sized

100 g fresh spinach, blanched

Chicken Mousse
200 g chicken breast
200 ml cream
Salt, Pepper

50 g Pistachio nuts, peeled

Puree chicken breast in food processor and pass through drum sieve. Make sure it stays nice and cold.

Work in ice cold cream and season and add chopped pistachio nuts

Debone the chicken like on the photo......yes not that easy but just to explain it as simply as possible:

Start cutting the chicken from the back and follow the bones with a very sharp knife. Like this you will be able to debone the chicken without cutting the skin. Careful with the legs and wing bones, one can cut though nicely where the bones are attached to the body. Be especially careful when coming to the breast, that there is no cut into the skin. The one has to carefully debone the legs.. again not that easy to explain, but if anybosy is interested, hen I will write a blog just about deboning a chicken properly. It is like with everything else, seems difficult the first time but then gets easier each time one does it. I just did 6 chickens this morning, filled them, finished off all under one hour, then again, it is not the first time I did it.

When the chicken is deboned, lay it flat on som plastic wrap, enough that you can roll it tightly together. Lay the blanched spinach on the chicken pipe in mousse roll chicken in plastic so as each person gets a piece of breast and leg i.e. roll head to tail….poach in salted water submerged till internal temperature is 65 degrees…approx 1 hour and 10 minutes at 80 degrees….once cooked let cool in its own liquid…toss the celeriac in remoulade sauce and garnish with fine herbs sit the galantine on the carrot puree season well and drizzle pistachio oil on plate…
Carrot Puree
10 carrots
1 leek
2 eschalots
Butter/Sugar

Chop carrots finely reserve two carrots and juice…sweat eschalots and leek at carrots and sweat no colour add sugar and juice cook till very soft process adding more carrot juice to desired consistency if required season….

Sauce remoulade
Ingredients:
1 egg yolks
50 ml chard vinegar
20 g Dijon mustard
20 g horse radish relish
30 g shallots
20 g capers
1 ea anchovy
200 ml grape seed oil
1 stem picked tarragon
1 stem picked dill
chervil
seasoning
5 g sugar

Method:
Place the vinegar the egg yolk, horse radish relish Dijon mustard and anchovy in a food processor blitz the mixture. Slowly trickle the oil into the machine while running.
Chop the herbs.
Transfer to a bowl; add the rest of the ingredients.