One way or the other, even pastry week managed to sneak in a technical problem that didn’t contain baking, persevering with the theme of this season of Nice British Baking Present. However whereas this theme usually brings delicate and stylized pastries that are inclined to put some contestants at an obstacle, this week’s signature problem gave everybody an honest likelihood to indicate off their puff pastry chops by making candy vol-au-vents. The straightforward pastry, which is as a lot an edible serving dish as it’s a particular recipe, presents an open-ended, kick-up-the-creativity alternative for the ultimate 5 remaining tent-dwellers.
As of late, the vol-au-vent and its mini-sized sibling, the bouchée à la reine, most frequently present up as small, savory appetizers stuffed with any form of cream-sauced meat or vegetable. The title of the dish means “flying within the wind” which doesn’t check with the bakers’ possibilities blowing about within the tent, however quite to the lightness of the pastry, which is normally formed like a pot with a lid: spherical, hollowed out, able to be crammed. Sadly, it’s usually much less “flying within the wind” and extra “leadenly glued to an hors d’oeuvres tray,” however that’s irrelevant.
The tall, spherical, shell of a pastry holds within the filling of selection, and the hollowed heart usually goes again on prime on the finish. Recapper Allison Robicelli known as these “the king of the Seventies cocktail social gathering,” and might be stuffed with absolutely anything.
Credit score for creating the vol-au-vent (as per the Oxford Companion to Meals) typically goes to Marie-Antoine Carême, a French chef from the early nineteenth century, although it appears so far again a bit of additional. He developed such puff pastry recipe and methodology that just about each recipe that utilized it was credited to him as a result of it appeared totally new. In his model, he describes first chopping out a spherical piece of puff pastry, after which utilizing his knife to pierce it one-sixth of an inch deep and three-quarters of an inch from the sting, all the way in which round. That is then stacked on a second minimize out spherical, creating a really tall, little pastry pot, with the internal circle from the primary piece turning into the lid.
Principally, something that falls alongside the spectrum between a strong and a liquid can go right into a vol-au-vent, so the filling is much less vital than the flaky construction. The secret is creating the sunshine, crisp puff pastry for which Carême was so well-known. However the judges particularly requested for a candy model on this problem. Carême covers this, providing strategies for boiled peaches with syrup, Chantilly cream with strawberries, pistachios, whipped jelly, Bavarian cheese, and crème plombières. He additionally suggests glazing them and serving ice cream inside, however after final week’s ice cream problem, hopefully no contestants go down that path.
Will you be making an attempt vol-au-vents after seeing this week’s episode? Tell us beneath!