redacted recipes

Julienne Darblay (Creamed Leek and Potato Soup with Julienned Vegetables)

Welcome to another Whisk Wednesday and to our latest challenge! This week's assignment was Julienne Darblay (but shouldn't that be D'Arblay?) from Le Cordon Bleu at Home. According to The Wordsworth Dictionary of Culinary and Menu Terms, the word darblay comes from the French and is "a potato soup with finely chopped vegetables," which seems to make julienne a bit redundant, too. But never mind.

This is not a terribly complicated recipe, in that the ingredients are very basic and familiar, but it's not a recipe you can make at the last minute, either. Like so many classic French dishes, it assumes your kitchen has homemade stock on hand and it requires a fair amount of prep work (the word julienne in the title probably gave that away, no?). So when I read over the recipe on Sunday and noted that the very first item on the ingredients list was chicken stock and a reference to another recipe for preparing it, I was quite perturbed with myself for not having bought a chicken at our local Farmer's Market the day before. Another trip to the Greenmarket and a day of simmering later, and I was ready to roll.

Once the leeks, potatoes and bouquet garni were cooking in the chicken broth, the kitchen started to smell seriously fabulous.

I actually enjoy chopping vegetables, so I didn't mind creating these piles of julienned leeks, carrots and turnips, which were then blanched in salted water very briefly.

The cooked potatoes and leeks were pureed and then strained to remove every tiny bit of leek and potato pieces for a smooth velvety base. The base was reheated gently, combined with creme fraiche, and then poured over the julienned vegetables.

In taste it is very similar to vichyssoise, which is hardly surprising, given that the only real difference here is the addition of the julienned vegetables and that the soup is served warm.

Oh, Where Have You Been, Billy Bi, Billy Bi?

Welcome to Whisk Wednesdays! I've joined Shari of Whisk: a food blog   and a bunch of other intrepid bloggers in the weekly adventure of working our way through a classical cooking curriculum from Le Cordon Bleu at Home.

This week's lesson was to prepare Billy Bi, a soup made with mussels, onions, wine, cream and seasonings. Though there are several stories of the soup's origin, the most popular is that Maxim's chef Louis Barthe named it after a regular patron who particularly loved the soup, American tin tycoon William B. (Billy B.) Leeds.

As I made this soup I found myself wondering if it's a bisque or a velouté-based soup. The nice thing about cooking along with a group is that you can send out an email with these sorts of questions. Shari came up with a great response: 

"Is it a bechamel or a velouté base? Béchamel is similar to velouté, but the liquid that's added is milk not stock. This soup has both stock and cream with a roux. I would say that it starts with a velouté since that's the order the ingredients are worked in..."

Billy Bi is surprisingly easy to make, given its rich and complex flavor. The ingredients list is short and sweet, consisting of butter, shallots, celery, white wine, water, mussels, black pepper, heavy cream and chives. The recipe did not call for any salt, but I added a pinch when I tasted it before serving. Preparing the soup was a breeze and consisted of these three basic steps:

1) Make the initial broth by cooking the shallots in a little butter before adding water, wine and some celery... and then steam mussels (in their shells) in the broth.   Collect the cooked mussels and set aside. Strain the broth to remove any sand, as well as the shallots and celery.

2) Shell the mussels and divide them into two portions. Put the strained broth back in the pot along with half of the mussels and cook until reduced by about a third. Strain the broth a second time, mashing up the mussels to extract all of their briny goodness, and then discard the poor dear things (kitchen culture can be so brutal).

3) Make a roux, and whisk in the strained broth. Let it simmer for a bit to develop it's full mussel-y flavor, and then add heavy cream and the remaining mussels. Sprinkle with chives.

Simple, right? The recipe called for a new pot with each step, a concept I immediately rejected. I found it simpler to just strain the broth into a bowl set aside for that purpose and then to re-use the same pot I'd started with. Even so, I had a shocking amount of washing up to do later. 

Were all those dishes worth it? Decidedly so! I would never have tried making this soup if it hadn't been assigned to me and I'd have missed out on a really wonderful experience. Billy Bi tastes like pure essence of mussels, or perhaps like mussels in their Platonic ideal form. Indeed, Jack paid me the highest compliment, remarking, "This is of restaurant quality, and I don't mean just any restaurant, I mean a good restaurant." 

Next Week: Julienne Darblay (Creamed Leek and Potato Soup with Julienned Vegetables) page 133-134