Hühnerfrikassee - German Chicken Casserole - Sous Vide

Fresh in love, it is one of my adventures to expose my Kenyan girlfriend to German cuisine. Well- I rarely do this - I am just to comfortable with my very own style of cooking- but some dishes are just worth to do.

One of this dishes is Hühnerfrikassee. But I can't really do a traditional recipe traditionally. This wouldn't be me...

So let's start- what is chicken fricassee? It is a chicken stew in a white cream enriched sauce with some vegetable. And it is delicious! In short it is poached chicken, carrots, asparagus, mushrooms, peas in a white roux based on chicken stock.

Usually, it is a simple affair- poach a chicken in vegetable enriched water until done and let it chill down. Roast some wheat flour in butter. Add stock (your chicken water) to the still blonde roasted flour. Stir and whisk until smooth. Add some diced vegetable and cook them through (put the vegetable at different times into it). Add chicken add some cream, some capers and lemon juice to taste (and don't forget to season at all times). And serve with rice.

Usually the chicken is a bit on the dry and stringy side, the vegetables are too soft (except of the peas - smart cooks put frozen peas just a couple of minutes before serving into the pot)... The sauce is usually to flour heavy, or too thin.

My attempt is slightly different!

I sous vide'd the chicken breast at 62.5°C for 1.5h. Put also the chicken legs into the bath- but the chicken breast came into the ice bath, I did increased the water to 75°C and cooked for another 2h.

The vegetables were cooked separate at 85°C for 30-45 min.

 I made a pressure cooker chicken stock (with the carcass of the used chicken, plus a package of chicken wings) and clarified it with ground chicken and egg white. Then I made a roux with less flour.

I added asparagus and peas into the roux, then added the chopped chicken meat and the other vegetable (I used carrots, turnips, leek, green asparagus, baby marrow, mushrooms and peas). I took half of the roux out of the pot and added drained silken tofu to it and blended it. This gave a lovely texture and thickness, without being overly floury.

The I just put everything together and voilà!

It was simply the best chicken fricassee I ever had. The chicken was super moist and tender and flavorful... The vegetable perfectly cooked, the sauce voluminous without being heavy!

But where is light, there is also shadow:

• I didn't seasoned the vegetable and the chicken, before putting them into the bags (except of the turnips and carrots which I put together with some salt and a pinch of sugar). I salted everything afterwards, but it would have been much better, if everything was seasoned in the bag.

• the leek had a kinda stringy texture... I'll try to cook it longer the next time!

• I forgot to buy capers (dammit)!

• I was too lazy to blend up some sauce separately to have a bit more airiness...

As you can see- nothing major.

The only thing inconvenient is, that I have only one sous vide rig- and that chicken breasts, chicken legs and vegetable have to cook at different temperatures...

At least try to use silken tofu in your cream sauces... Doesn't sound very good, but the texture is amazing, the sauce is lighter and healthier!

Chinese chicken cabbage rolls with tofu

One of my all-time favorites dishes of German cuisine are Kohlrouladen - cabbage roulades.

These are minced meat farce [my mother always used beef] stuffed leaves of white cabbage braised and served nicely browned. They are really tasty.

Anyway - I wanted to do something new - and looked for an Asian dish - and I found several references for Chinese cabbage rolls.

Usually the Chinese variation, is just poached in broth. And instead of making a farce with egg and breadcrumbs they use tofu.

So I minced my chicken with my knives [more work - but the irregular and larger meet pieces are much better than the meat mash], added soya sauce, sautéed brunois of garlic, scallions, carrot, mushrooms and also added it to the mix and besides of seasoning [salt, pepper and some homemade Chinese 5 spice], I also added tofu. Mixed everything properly up and voilà.

I blanched the whole head of cabbage, to get easier the leaves off - and I shaved off the middle rib of the cabbage leaves, to make it easier to roll. Then I filled the leaves with the farce.

Instead of using butcher twine [which is quite a pain], I rolled them into cling film, and made a bonbon out of it [and knotted together the twirled ends of the cling film].
Then I put them into my sous vide hacked rice cooker and poached them for 1.5 hours at 63ºC.
After that I put them into a ice water bath to chill them down fast.

Momofuku Ko's Ginger Scallion sauce
via Tastespotting blog

Off course - if you like to have something tasting really great, you need to utilize the Maillard reaction (which normal people would call browning] - hence you would need to undress the cabbage rolls out of  their cling film sleeve, dry them [don't throw the liquid - put it into your sauce, it is tasty], and fry them in a smoking pan with peanut oil [or any other heat stable oil like corn oil].

Cut one open to try; delicious!

As a dish, I thought to serve it on fragrant rice, with slightly thickened miso sauce and David Changs scallion ginger sauce.

Do you need sous vide here? No definitely not, but it makes live easier - you don't have to watch over it, that it doesn't start to boil.
Well - the recipe is a go. let me see, if I will be able to make the whole dish, without eating one after the other delicious roll...