Sole Veronique, Champagne Fluid Gel, Triple-Cooked Chips
Specialty Equipment: water bath, vacuum machine, thermometer, dehydrator, mandolin
Specialty Ingredients: black truffle, soy lecithin, maltodextrin DE19, gellan F, transglutaminase
Days: 2
Dish as in The Fat Duck:
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Sole Veronique. It is such a beautiful name for a dish. It screams out beauty, lightness and delicateness. I always wondered why the dish was named ‘Veronique’. Did Heston have some fond memories of a particular girl? What could it be? It was a bit of a disappointment to learn from the introduction it is actually a dish from the great Escoffier. My fantasies were broken, but I was still extremely curious to cook this Dover sole course. It’s because I see it as the quintessential Fat Duck dish. Although the photo ‘as in The Fat Duck’ may appear to be a simple piece of fish and two smears with some leaves on top, there are numerous characteristics of the book to be found in the recipe. Some examples:
- A pursuit to perfect a classic preparation or dish. In this case the chips.
- A riff on a dish from the past.
- Multiple dimensions to one ingredient, here the grape: gel, compressed, dried, verjus, champagne, and Muscat wine.
- The fluid gel.
- Low temperature cooking.
- Curiosity. The Fat Duck was one of the first restaurants, if not the first, to use transglutaminase.
- Common ingredients: black truffle and, especially, the onion.
As you can read in the previous post, I made this dish with three friends. Due to the characteristics mentioned above it is the perfect dish to cook with people unfamiliar to the book, because it is in my eyes a cross-cut of the entire thing. There may be, like the previous post, some unphotographed preparations, so sorry for that.
Just like the Lasagne of Langoustine there were some small things to prepare the day in advance. In this instance the dried onion rectangles and the dried grapes. The rectangle is made from silverskin onions and it is quite a fiddly job. It is made by slicing the small onions on a mandolin, blanch them for a short amount of time, dip them in a mixture of water and maltodextrin (drives off moisture), lay them on a dehydrator tray with a slight overlap between the rings and dry them for 24 hours at 60°C. I forgot to take a picture of the grapes, but they can be seen in a photo later on in the post.
From this point on I did not really do that much, because after the lasagna the kitchen was a well oiled machine. This dish was made in no time. The only problem is having the right equipment and ingredients, otherwise it really is a recipe to try out.
Drying parsley leaves in the microwave.
The chips! Oh yeah the chips. I might have looking forward to these things ever since I read about them. The downside. The freaking preparation. You first have to cook them delicately, sous-vide them three times to dry the outside, fry them a first time, sous vide them once again three times, at which point you can store them. However after all the trouble, and it is, you end up with some good looking chips ready for the final deep fry.
The recipe calls for Maris Piper or Arran Victory potatoes cause of the right percentage of dry matter. Here in the Netherlands, quite the potato producer instead of importer, these British varieties are (next to) impossible to find. After long discussions with suppliers we bought a potato with dry content in the required range.
Cutting fresh grapes in small slices before compressing them three times. As you can see the utmost precision was applied to the grapes. Cool. Love the concentration.
We had some beautiful, fresh Dover sole. Dover sole, called ´tong´ over here, is the most beloved flatfish of all in the Netherlands. Turbot is more of a restaurant fish, the Dover sole reigns supreme in the hearts of people at home. Just like the British and the French, preparation number #1 is frying them in butter, on the bone, and finishing the fish with some lemon juice.
Anyway, to clean a Dover sole you loosen up the skin at the tail end by scraping it with a knife, which enables you to rip off the skin in one piece.
Filleting.
Binding the filets together with transglutaminase. You first ‘glue’ together the fillets of the same side of the fish and then bind the four filets together, while putting some black truffle between the two blocks of filet.
Shameless advertising. The guy holding the piece of fish is one of the owners of the burger joint Burgermeester. They serve burgers from organic meat and vegetables and they are simply one of the best hamburgers you´ll ever taste. They would not be out of place to the establishments featured in the episode on hamburgers of In Search of Perfection.
Big, portioned pieces of fish vacuum packed with some butter.
The pureed parsley for the foam should be made with a PacoJet, but it can also be done with a food processor, which is what we did. You first blanch the leaves to get a vivid green color and loose the raw edge, add them with water in a food processor and blend for a couple of minutes, then sieve the content and add soy lecithin.
All the components: dried parsley leaves, grape marinade, dried grapes, compressed grapes, fluid gel, onion rectangles and chips ready for a final deep fry. All looks well. But wait, small disaster is just around the corner. I popped open a champagne bottle for the fluid gel, I put on a ‘stand-in’ cork and put it next to the stuff on the photo below. There must have been some pressure bluiding up in the bottle, because the cork popped and… (see drawing)
Sometimes everything lines up to mess with you, but some broken rectangles are hardly the end of the world.
A final discussion on the plating of the dish. There were suggestions to plate the fish according to personal preferences, instead of following the restaurant. Wow, shock. Until that point I slavishly followed recipes to the letter. Now you want us to give our own spin to it? Scary. Funny how quick you get used to ‘cooking by the book’ and forget all your own preferences or interpretations. It is in part what makes cooking all the recipes of a cookbook such a challenge, the never-ending precise executions of recipes. Forget freedom.
The finalization of the dish. Foaming action. Laying everything out on paper. Cooking the fish. Deep frying the chips. Warming the fluid gel and finishing with champagne. You know what happened just before plating? The best looking onion rectangle fell on the bin and even more areas were chipped off. You could be pissed off, but it was actually quite funny. Murphy’s Law worked its magic on the onions.
For some reason there were air pockets in the bags and the corners began to float to the surface. A pan held them under water.
In the beginning I said how the name Sole Veronique invokes beauty, lightness and delicateness. This is what we got. After the heavy lasagna a stunning fish course. The onions, fluid gel, grapes, fish and foam are all delicious. The black truffle was a very, very distant background flavor (maybe my black truffle lost some magic in the freezer?) The only thing I was not that keen on were the dried parsley leaves, but it does not help it is one of my least favorite herbs.
As for the chips, they are absolutely amazing. The cooking process is designed to enhance the texture and boy does it improve them. They are super crunchy. You could hear everyone eating the chips, it made that much noise. Think in the lines of this commercial, but than for real. The recipe speaks not of any kind of condiment to the chips. As anyone can learn from one of the opening scenes in Pulp Fiction, we soak them boys in lots mayonnaise. Someone had the brilliant idea to use some of the langoustine oil and we made some with the oil. This completed a very good dish and day.
I could go on about the plate of food, but pictures speak a thousand words.
i love the dehydrate onion thing. i woudlve never guessed thats what it was.
I had exactly the same reaction. What is that thing?
Such a beautiful dish. I also had to read through the whole recipe in my book to figure out what that spherical mesh (the onions) was!
Hey , how are you ?
The latest recipe is amazing yet again….still cant believe the lenghts you go to.
Did you catch the first programme in hestons new series ? it will be on channel 4 iplayer if you need to see it.
Im going to do the sole veronique this weekend, just one question
How , especially when something is sealed and in a water bath and also vacuum packed , can i take the core temperature of a piece of fish or meat without spoiling the vacuum ?
cheers
Alan
ill send u the photo of my success or failure
Thanks man.
I saw Heston on Jonathan Ross a week ago and indeed heard about a new season of Heston’s Feasts. Unfortunately I don’t receive Channel 4 (‘just’ the BBC’s) and the iPlayer is blocked, so I have to look for it online somewhere. Haven’t seen it somewhere yet.
For the vacuum you can use foam tape. It allows you to pierce the plastic without spoiling the vacuum. Here is a video where you can see someone use it: http://vimeo.com/6649202.
Good luck. Do let me know how everything work out…
Do you have to add Soy Lecithin into the Parsley foam? BTW I haven’t tried the pork belly dish yet. But I have found some bags which I can use to cook the meat in.
Thanks
Yeah, it’s essential for the foam. You can’t skip it. Good luck.
Just wanted to put my 2 cents in:
-Great write up of a recipe
-Veronique is a classic French dish named after an opera by Escoffier. Heston had nothing to do with naming of the dish.
-As far as air in the vacuum bags, I often find that to be the case. Even with some of the best vacuum sealers there’ll often be minute amounts of air within the product that will obviously expand upon heating
Good luck with your other attempts, this one came out beautiful
He Stan, thanks for the words. Looking back at this post, there could have been a few things done better. Maybe I’ll make it again some time, because I absolutely loved it.
I often have ‘floaters’ when I do not have to vacuum pack something at full pressure, like the Dover sole here. At full pressure it works out most of the time, so I wonder if restaurants like The Fat Duck or Per Se (from Under Pressure) have better bags and equipment or they just keep the bags submerged with a rack or something.
Hi, I have tried to recreate this dish, but could not do it completely as I did not have silverskin onions. Where did you get them – I cannot find them here in the UK at all, even contacted a wholesaler in Netherlands (TOP ONions); but they refused to send me any, really disappointing as I wanted to serve the dish to some friends and have everything except for them onions. Do you think shallots would be a good substitute? Also do you think you can freeze or refrigerate the chips after the first deep fry or do you think they would go soggy?
I got them at the Hanos (wholesaler), they always have it in stock. Find the smallest onions you can and if using shallots don’t use the middle part, just the smaller edges.
This guy does exactly that: freezing fries after the the first dip in oil. He even argues it improves the fries. I think you should be absolutely fine. I always planned on making triple cooked chips till the point of the final fry, freeze them and stock my whole freezer with them! On hand whenever I want crunchy fries.
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html
Having cooked the triple-cooked chips a few times now, I’ve also done a side-by-side comparison of frozen vs. not frozen. The frozen ones get slightly crispier, but the inside always seems to get a bit starchy after freezing.
Also, as I don’t have a vacuum machine, I’ve resorted to using the microwave on full blast for a minute, rearranging the chips and then microwaving again. Heston mentions in TFD cookbook that he tried microwaving the chips, but the result was “too inconsistent”. I’ve had no trouble with this when rearranging the chips.
While on the topic of triple cooked chips, there are two things I never really understood about Heston’s recipe. The first thing I don’t fully “get” is the part where the starch is rinsed away. Supposedly this is done to make the chips less sticky – however starch is also where the crisp is. In a commercial setting I can see that non-sticky chips are easier to handle, but if you’ve got a bit of time, there’s no reason to limit yourself.
The second thing that slightly mistifies me is the great lengths the recipe goes through to dry the chips after cooking them. It seems to me that it’s more practical for the chips not to get too moist in the first place by steaming instead of boiling them. As a bonus, all the potato flavour will stay in the potato, instead of leaking out in the cooking water.
Having said all that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I don’t rinse the chips (in fact, I’ve successfully tried lightly dusting them with some *extra* potato starch for more crisp); that I steam, rather than boil them, that I microwave them after steaming and that I don’t freeze them.
Of course some of these changes to the recipe are based on personal preference and don’t mirror the tastes of the general population. And sure enough, these chips will be VERY difficult to handle when they’re all sticky after steaming. They *will* break. Otherwise, the result is worth the effort to me.
A while back I’ve driven to The Crown at Bray to have the official Triple Cooked ones- the benchmark against which all other chips should be measured. In case you wondered – Yes, they’re seriously good.
But, at the risk of sounding arrogant, biased and complacent… I slightly prefer my own, quadruple-cooked version. Feel free to try!
Marc, I think it has something to do will creating a glass-like exterior. I read somewhere (also on the Seriouseats blog, but don’t remember the exact argument), crunchy fries are not the end of the story. You can end up with crunchy, but still slightly chewy chips. Or as Heston describes somewhere: perfect, crunchy, non-chewy, glass-like potatoes.
One step in cooking the triple cooked chips is to rinse off the starch at the beginning, which I never completely understood. When starch is boiled, it will turn into a glue; after this glue has dried, some water will remain trapped in it, and when it is fried, subsequently this will create tiny pockets of steam which will burst, leaving a nicely cavitated crust. This is also how prawn crackers, which are essentially pure starch, get their unique, bubbly, crispy texture.
I finally got around to comparing the effect of rinsing the chips. I used one big Maris Piper, which I cut in half, and subsequently formed chips from it. I rinsed off the starch from the chips from one half, and left the starch on the other half. Otherwise I prepared the two batches identically (as I do, by steaming (15 minutes), double-microwaving (1 minute x 2) and double deep-frying).
Both batches resulted in very nice chips, but the chips that had NOT been rinsed definitely had the edge when it came to getting that glass-like crunch.
Don’t take my word for it – try and see for yourself.
Thanks a lot for the link! Adding some vinegar to water was a good advice. I have one question to the parsley foam: the recipe stipulates you have to combine 30 g of parsley puree with 800 g of water – is the ratio correct?
One more question: for the langoustine mayonnaise, did you take a normal recipe with egg yolk, mustard and langoustine oil, or did you add anything else?
No problem.
I followed the recipe, and as far as I can remember the foam had a parsley kick, even with the amount of water. For the mayonnaise we used the technique used in the book, so what you mentioned and some vinegar. I would taste and check if you need to add some neutral oil to town down the langoustine flavour. It would also be amazing with lobster! Make the oil with lobster shells and eat some grilled tail meat with the mayo in question.
Anna, do you have some unsuspecting visitors coming by? People in for some Fat Duck goodness (never a bad thing)? 🙂
Thanks, will have a look at the recipe, the lobster variant sounds decilcious! Yes, have guests coming for a dinner, will treat them to a pea soup with ham infused whipped cream, crispy parma ham and pea shoots, then sole veronique, veal fillet in herb coat with veal sauce with fois gras, morels and potato blinis and finally the mango lychee bavarois:) Have been cooking for a week now, seriously in need of helping hands. unfortunately my daughters are still too young to help in anything, but peeling carrots. Wish me luck, its the first time I am testing fat ducks recipes on anybody outside family:)
How was it?
Hi again! Sorry for the long silence – just back to normal after the holidays. The dinner went well – took me a week to prepare the ingredients, but was well worth it. Really miss helpers – just a couple of years more and I hope, my daughters will be able to help. I also think it is a real challenge with this type of dinner, to manage to serve everything whilst it is still warm. Plating does take some time and seeing that some parts of food are done sous vide at rather low temperatures, they cool down very quickly. Pre-warmed plates are not enough. By the way the mayonnaise somehow did not work at all – not sure what went wrong, but it never got thick although I did it in the normal way just substituting the sunflower oil for langoustine oil. Any advice? Are you up to any new challenges?
I know what you mean! Stressful stuff plating up Fat Duck dishes haha. No new challenges at the moment, working some stuff out for the future. Not sure what happened with your mayo, it should work out fine. Maybe you had a bit more water in your oil from the langoustines, messing up your end product. You’re very smart by the way, pre-planning having kids for one day having to cook Fat Duck dishes. 😉 Wish I thought of that 16 years ago (although I might have been a bit young then)!
Hi I was wondering which type of potato you used!
We couldn’t get Maris Piper or Arran Victory. Dion from Burgermeester asked around at (vegetable) wholesalers he uses for Burgermeester. Don’t remember what we used. The chips weren’t perfect, always thought our variety was not really suited for triple-cooked chips.
Very nice dish.How did you do the Champagne fluid gel because you didn’t mention the preparation for it?
Indeed, apologies. I’ll give the preparation tomorrow (do not have access to the book at the moment).
Champagne fluid gel:
Make gel with 720g white grape juice, 12g gellan F & 80g muscat wine.
At last moment heat up the gel and mix (per portion) 30g of the gel with 12g champagne.
Good luck