Healthy Travel Cooking with Lins

Vol au vent

First of all, I would like to say that this is not a healthy travel recipe.

I was in Belgium for 2 weeks to visit my family, Nick got jealous because I would be having all this typical food, so before I left I prepared this Belgian classic again. I'm making the vol au vent here the 'real' way. Which means that I make my chicken stock and my videes myself. For the chicken stock you can use a cube and you can also buy the videes in the store pre-made. But if you have time, this is really not as difficult as it seems ;-)

What do you need?

• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 farm chicken
• 1 sheet of puff pastry
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 whole egg
• 200g minced meat
• 200g mushrooms 
• butter
• 40g flour
• 1 lemon
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery
• 1 leek
• 1 liter of chicken stock (homemade or with a cube)
• thyme, bay leaf, rosemary, parsley, salt, black pepper, nutmeg

The broth

Either you bring water to a boiling point with a cube or you make the stock yourself. You do this as follows:

• Bring boil amount of water. Rinse all the vegetables (celery, carrot, leek, onion and 2 cloves of garlic), cut them and put them in the large pot with water.
• Add the fresh herbs (2 sprigs of thyme, 2 leaves of bay leaf, 1 sprig of rosemary, ½ bunch of parsley, salt and black pepper).
• Let the stock simmer briefly and then place the chicken in it.

TIP: It is important that the chicken is immersed in warm stock.

Let the chicken stock boil for an hour.

• Remove the cooked chicken from the pot and let it cool.
• Strain the stock. You will need some of it later for cooking the meatballs and preparing the sauce.

TIP: You can freeze the rest of the stock for various soups.

Puff pastry cookies

Needed: 1 sheet of puff pastry

Make the puff pastry biscuits yourself to scoop the filling in.

TIP: You can of course also buy the puff pastry cookies from the bakery.

Beat a yolk with a little water.

Preheat the oven to 180 ° C.

Cut six rings from the puff pastry sheet for each pastry. Use a large dressing ring for this. Cut a circle out of four of every six patches using a smaller dressing ring. Build each tub: a round piece at the bottom, four "rings" of puff pastry on top, and another round piece at the top. Glue all parts together with a layer of beaten yolk. Also spread the egg yolk over the top of the pastry so that it comes out of the oven shiny. Use a brush to work conveniently.

Bake the tubs in the oven until fluffy and golden brown. Allow a baking time of approximately 20 minutes at 180 ° C.

The filling (velouté)

• Mix the minced meat, an egg and the breadcrumbs. Season with some salt and pepper. Roll the meat mixture into identical small balls about half an inch in diameter.
• Bring a part of the (sifted) chicken stock to the boil. Let the balls cook for a few minutes on a medium heat.
• Cut the mushrooms into quarters.
• Melt some butter in a pan and fry the pieces of mushroom. Only add a crushed clove of garlic while baking so that the garlic cannot burn. Add a little salt and pepper. Color the mushrooms and set them aside.
  
• Remove all meat from the chicken's carcass. Decide how you want to serve the chicken: in rather large pieces, bite-sized chunks or extra fine.
  
• Start the preparation of the sauce with a roux. Melt the butter (30g) in a cooking pot and add the flour (40g). Let the flour mixture “dry” while stirring, but make sure that the roux does not burn.
  
• As soon as you smell a light biscuit scent, pour some of the sieved chicken stock into the pot. Continue to stir patiently with a whisk to avoid lumps.
  
• Pour in some stock from time to time and wait for the sauce to bubble. Continue until you get a thick, but at the same time sufficiently liquid sauce.
  
• Add the fried mushrooms, chicken pieces and meatballs to the sauce. add some fresh lemon juice to the mixture and season the vol au vent to taste with some pepper, salt and nutmeg.

Finishing and serving

• Cut the lid out of each puff pastry, and scoop a generous portion of the velouté with chicken, balls and mushroom mushrooms in and around the biscuit.
  
• Serve with home made mashed potato