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Blanquette of Veal with Noodles
The same as for Blanquette of Veal, arranging one-fourth of a pound of cooked noodles round the serving dish as a border.
This is a cross-reference entry: it assumes you have the book's Blanquette of Veal in front of you and only tells you what to add. A few notes on the parent dish and on the noodle border.
- Read the base recipe firstEverything here depends on the preceding Blanquette of Veal. On its own this entry gives you a garnish and nothing else.
- What a blanquette isA white stew: the veal is blanched rather than browned, simmered in a light stock with aromatics, and the cooking liquid becomes the sauce. Nothing in the dish should take on colour, which is why the pan is never left to catch.
- The hinge is the liaisonA classic blanquette is usually finished with egg yolks beaten with cream, though this entry does not say how the parent recipe is finished. If yolks are used, add them off the heat, stirring, and do not let the sauce boil afterward, or the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks into grains.
- Cut of vealShoulder and breast are the traditional cuts; they carry enough collagen to give the sauce body over a long gentle simmer. Leg or cutlet meat tends to turn dry and stringy in a stew of this kind.
- The quarter pound of noodlesThe text specifies "cooked noodles," so the plain reading is 4 oz after boiling, which makes a thin border round a platter. Some cooks may prefer to read it as 4 oz dry, which yields rather more.
- Keep the noodles plainButtering them lightly suits the white sauce; the recipe itself says nothing about how the noodles are dressed.
Blanquette comes from the French blanc, white, and the name is a promise about method: no browning at any stage, from the blanching of the veal to the butter-and-flour sauce that never takes colour. It was long regarded in France as a dish of household cookery rather than restaurant showmanship, which makes its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf book characteristic of his style of collecting: the hotel's repertoire ran from grand banquet cookery down to plain stews that a steward could send up quickly.