Sweetbreads Francaise!
I personally have cooked over 5 tons of sweetbreads during my lifetime at yacht clubs and classic French fine dining restaurants. That is a lot of sweetbreads! Most of my chef career was spent doing saucier and saute duty in fine dining restaurants. Sweetbreads are almost always a saute chefs item to cook. The French saute cuisson truly is the best way to achieve sweetbread flavor perfection. The surface of sauteed sweetbreads has a nice chicken flavor when they are sauteed golden brown. Underneath the golden brown coating, the delicate oyster flavor of sweetbreads comes to life. For those who are not familiar with sweetbreads, they are an organ meat or offal. Sweetbreads are the thymus gland of a calf. The thymus gland disappears as a calf matures to the adult stage of life. There are 4 types of sweetbreads. Neck sweetbreads are used the most often in fine dining. Heart sweetbreads, stomach sweetbreads and tongue or cheek sweetbreads are also fine to use. Each of these sweetbreads have a different shape. I purchased a package of veal sweetbreads at a very high quality butcher shop in Las Vegas. The package had all 4 of the the different sweetbreads from one calf. For this francaise recipe, I chose the neck sweetbreads. Many chefs only poach sweetbreads in milk. That is okay, but it is a waste of milk. The greatest French chefs that I ever worked with all poached sweetbreads in a court bouillon and no milk was in the poaching liquid. I too only use a court bouillon. Laurel leaves are the best herb flavor for the sweet bread court bouillon. Laurel leaves accent the sweetbread flavor without masking the delicate sweetbread flavor. Bay leaves and many other herbs add too strong of a flavor. Francaise is one of the misunderstood cooking terms that there is. Francaise is not a sauce. Francaise is a saute cooking technique that yields a sauce. The sauce is made in the same pan that the protein item was sauteed in. I have seen food writers describe francaise as a veloute sauce, a cream sauce and some kind of a white wine reduction. If those food writers had any classic fine dining saute cooking experience at all, then they would not describe francaise those ways. Francaise basically is an Italian a la minute saute cooking tehnique. Modern high class French cuisine has many of its origins in the grand old days of Venetian royal banquet cuisine. A few hundred years ago, Venice Italy was the fine food capitol of the world. Saute cooking techniques were perfected in Venice Italy and those standards are the basis of all fine saute cooking in the western world. My first year of Italian apprenticeship was spent working with a saute chef from Venice Italy, so I learned from the very best! In Italy, a francaise entree is called francese. Francese is pronounced like "Fran-chess-a." Every Italian chef that I worked with knew what Francese was and customer requests for veal scallopini francese happened 2 or 3 times a week at Italian fine dining restaurants. Both the French word francaise and the Italian word francese translate to "in the style of France." The French love butter. Francaise is a quickly made lemon and wine wine reduction that is finished with butter. If the sauce sounds familiar, then it will be easy to see that francaise has its roots in Venetian cuisine. Fine classic Venetian entrees often require a white wine and lemon reduction sauce that is finished with butter. Garlic, shallot and parsley or herbs are part of the francaise and these ingredients are used in classic Venetian recipes. Every great chef that I ever worked with, including the ones who were culinary arts instructors at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, all prepared a classic francaise just like the ones in the pictures above. Most of those same chefs complimented my francaise as being very good. The words "very good" are about the best compliment that a cook will ever get from a top flight european chef. Classic european chefs tend to deliver humble compliments. For an amateur cook or an apprentice cook, preparing francaise to perfection rarely happens the first time. If the sauce is over heated, it breaks. If not enough heat is applied the the sauce looks opaque and cloudy. Francaise takes practice to make perfect. After a while, a cook gets the feel of making francaise and then it becomes second nature. Francaise or francese are considered to be great recipes for testing the skill of a saute chef. Ris de Veau à la Française is an elegant classic fine dining entree. Old established yacht clubs almost always have this entree on the menu. Ris de Veau à la Française is also a popular entree on Valentines Day.
Glace Viande Recipe: Place 4 pounds of veal bones, lamb bones, beef bones, pork bones and meat scraps into a roasting pan. Add 5 ounces of tomato paste. Add 8 to 10 ounces of rustic un-peeled mirepoix of carrot, celery and onion. Stir the mixture together. Roast the mixture in a 350 degree oven, till the bones and vegetables caramelize to a deep brown color. (Stir the ingredients occasionally.) Place the roasted bones and mirepoix into a stock pot. Deglaze the roast pan with water and add the jus to the stock pot. Cover the bones with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Turn the temperature to medium low heat and simmer for 4 hours. Add water occasionally to cover the bones. Strain the stock through a fine sieve. Discard the bones and vegetables. Skim off the grease. Reduce the meat stock by a little more than half. This is a very rich unseasoned stock that can be frozen in portions for later use. The glace should be able to thinly coat and glaze the back of a spoon. When the glace viande is used in recipes, it will be reduced to a slightly thicker glaze to order.
Court Bouillon Poached Sweetbreads: Poaching all of the sweetbreads from a calf is best. All 4 the different calf sweetbreads will add up to 4 to 6 portions. Sweetbreads must be poached first, then cleaned and trimmed before slicing! It is best to use the cold start method of infused poaching for sweetbreads. The cold start method allows flavor exchange to occur. Poaching at a low temperature will retain the desirable pinkish white sweetbread color. Overcooked poached sweetbreads have a ghastly grayish white color. Place the whole sweetbreads from a calf in a sauce pot. Add 1/2 cup of coarsely chopped onion. Add 1/4 cup of coarsely chopped celery. Add 1/4 cup of coarsely chopped carrot. Add 6 Italian parsley stalks. Add 1 crushed clove of garlic. Add 12 to 14 whole black pepper corns. Add sea salt. Add 3 laurel leaves. Add enough water to cover the ingredients with 1" of extra liquid. Add 1/4 cup of dry white wine. Add 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice. Place the pot over medium low heat. Gently simmer the sweetbreads, till they become fully cooked and firm. The sweetbreads should be a light pinkish white color when they are fully cooked and the should not be a grayish white color. Remove the pot from the heat. Allow the ingredients to cool to room temperature. Place the pot in a refrigerator and chill till the court bouillon looks like a loose gelatin aspic.
Poached Sweetbread Preparation: Remove the chilled sweetbreads from the court bouillon. Discard the court bouillon. Note: I have asked French chefs who taught culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu of Paris if there is anything that the sweetbread court bouillon could be used for. The answer was no! Be sure to handle the sweetbreads gently, when cleaning them! Rinse the sweetbreads under cold running water. Use your fingers to carefully peel the outer membrane off of the sweetbreads. Pull or cut any thick rubbery membrane pieces off of the sweetbreads. Cut the sweet breads into 3/8" thick bias slices. Refrigerate the sweetbreads till they are needed. Note: Organ meat is easily contaminated by pathogens. The less time-temperature abuse above 41º, the better. Keep the sweetbreads chilled! Ris de Veau à la Française: Dredge 5 to 6 ounces of sweetbread slices in flour that is seasoned with sea salt and white pepper. Dip the sweet breads in egg wash. Knock any excess egg wash off on the rim of the bowl. Dredge the sweetbreads in the flour a second time. Heat a saute pan over medium/medium low heat. Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Add 4 pats of unsalted butter. When the butter turns a beurre noisette color, add the coated sweetbreads. Saute the sweetbreads on both sides, till they become a golden brown color. Remove the sweetbreads from the pan and set them aside. Drain the excess grease out of the pan. Return the pan to medium low heat. Add 1 pat of unsalted butter. Add 1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic. Add 1/2 teaspoon of minced shallot. Saute till the shallots turn clear in color. Return the sweetbreads to the pan. Add 3 ounces of dry white wine. Add 3 ounces of white veal stock or light chicken stock. Add 1 teaspoon of glace viande. Add sea salt and white pepper. Simmer and reduce the the liquid by half. Add 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice. Add 1 teaspoon of finely minced Italian parsley. Add 3 pats of unsalted butter, while gently shaking or swirling the pan, to emulsify the butter with the reduced liquid. Add sone as the butter combines to create a butter sauce, remove the pan from the heat. Immediately place the sweetbreads on a plate. Spoon the francaise sauce over the sweetbreads and onto the plate. No garnish is necessary! The sweetbreads in the pictures above were served with rustic style sauteed eggplant, yellow squash and roasted red pepper that were lightly braised with chicken stock. Sea salt, pink peppercorns and garlic flavored this vegetable.
Viola! A perfect Ris de Veau à la Française! The delicate elegant flavor of this recipe is a favorite of well to do gourmet customers. Yum! ... Shawna
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