Chef Michel Guérard*** turns 88 today and we should celebrate it. I once ate his famous ‘poulet en soupière aux ecrevisses’, unusually tasty, but after reading the recipe critically it turns out that it is impossible for simply mortals to do.
If you go through the recipe, think of 20 lines, it turns out that 6 of those lines each refer to a recipe somewhere else in the book, which is also very complicated; a hell of a job! We do it differently today, a little less Minceur (lean, his trademark) but just as tasty.
Chicken with lobster
Chicken
3 liters of water
100 g leek finely chopped
100 g onion finely chopped
200 g carrot finely chopped
2 garlic cloves crushed
15 black peppercorns
3 sprigs of thyme
1 tsp salt
1 farm chicken cut into parts (drumsticks, thighs, breasts, carcass)
1. Bring water, leek, onion, carrot and garlic with peppercorns and thyme to the boil.
2. Place all chicken parts in the vegetable stock. Poach the breasts in the water for 12 minutes and the thighs and drumsticks for 30 minutes and allow to cool slightly.
Lobster
200 g bouguet garni carrot-onion-leek-celery-fennel
2 tomatoes
3 sprigs of thyme
3 bay leaves
1 stalk sereh crushed
2 lobster carcasses
100 ml cognac
100 ml white wine
1 lemon only the zest
1 tablespoon tomato paste
500 ml fish stock
2 tbsp Noilly Prat
300 g green vegetables
binder
salt and pepper
1. Cook the lobster in plenty of boiling, salted water for 5 minutes and cool in ice water.
2. Remove all usable meat from tail, pincers and elbows,
(I cut the tail open so that you have larger slices of lobster meat later).
3. Rinse the intestines from the heads and cut the heads into pieces.
4. Turn on the bouquet in oil and add tomato, thyme, bay leaf, sereh.
5. Fry the carcasses, shells, etc. for 2 minutes, deglaze with cognac and flambé.
6. Deglaze with white wine and add lemon zest, tomato paste and fish stock.
7. Reduce to 1/3 and pass through a sieve.
8. Add 220 ml of cream to the lobster coulis and reduce the total to ± 380 grams.
9. Add to taste the Noilly Prat, which you let boil down for a while and tie off with all-purpose binder.
10. Cook the vegetables al dente in plenty of boiling water, drain and mix with the lobster cassoulet. Serve immediately.
Sorry Michel, not bad at all, but super tasty, I’m not normally a fan of surf and turf but this is a nice exception. Joyeux anniversaire grand chef!
