You poach pale veal until it is tender, then fold it into a sauce of cream and egg yolk with pearl onions, mushrooms, and a squeeze of lemon. No colour, no roast, no browning. The sauce should coat a spoon and nothing more. Rice is what Lyon puts under it.
The blanquette is bourgeois cooking of the nineteenth century — veal treated with the opposite of a sear. White pepper, not black; a blond roux; a liaison added off the heat so the yolks do not scramble.
Poach the meat gently and never let it colour. Bind the sauce at the end, reheat without boiling, and serve at once. A Mâcon-Villages has the weight and the acidity.
Method
- 01
Cover the veal with cold water, bring it slowly to a simmer, and skim off every bit of scum that rises — this is how you keep a white stew white. Add the clove-studded onion, the carrot, leek, celery, bouquet garni and salt. Poach gently until the meat is tender, about 1¼ hours, without a hint of brown or a rolling boil. No color, no roast: that is the entire grammar of a blanquette.
- 02
Lift out the veal and keep it warm, then strain the cooking liquor and reserve 3 cups of it. Cook the mushrooms and pearl onions in a little butter and a ladle of the liquor until they are tender and pale gold, never brown. They should stay as white as the stew they are joining. White pepper, not black, from here on.
- 03
Make a blond roux: melt the remaining butter, stir in the flour, and cook it only until it smells like warm biscuits, not toast. Whisk in the hot liquor and simmer 10 minutes to a light sauce that coats a spoon and nothing more. If it is heavy, add a splash more liquor. A blanquette sauce should veil the meat, not bury it.
- 04
Return the veal, mushrooms and onions to the sauce and warm them through. Off the heat, bind with the crème fraîche mixed with the yolk and lemon juice — a liaison, added off the heat so the yolks do not scramble. Reheat without boiling, then season with white pepper and serve at once, with rice. The lemon should just lift the cream; you should taste it and not quite know why.
