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Quenelles de Brochet
Lyon's soufflé-light pike dumplings baked in a crayfish cream until they swell out of the dish — a bouchon icon worth every step
- Prep
- 45 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Serves
- 6
Ingredients
- Pike fillet, skinless, boneless, cold — 400 g
- Panade: whole milk 200 ml, butter 50 g, plain flour 120 g
- Eggs — 2 (110 g)
- Egg whites — 2 (60 g)
- Double cream, cold — 150 ml
- Nutmeg — 0.5 g
- Fine salt — 10 g
- White pepper — 1.5 g
- Sauce: crayfish or prawn shells — 300 g
- Unsalted butter — 60 g
- Cognac — 30 ml
- Tomato paste — 20 g
- Fish stock — 400 ml
- Double cream — 250 ml
- Cooked crayfish tails — 120 g
Method
- Panade: boil milk and butter, beat in flour, dry 2 min over heat; cool fully.
- Blitz pike with salt 1 min; add panade, then eggs and whites; stream in cold cream. Pass through a tamis; season with nutmeg and pepper. Chill 2 h.
- Sauce: roast shells in butter 6 min, crushing; flambé with Cognac; add tomato paste, stock; simmer 20 min. Blend, strain twice, add cream, reduce to coating consistency; season.
- Shape quenelles between two large spoons; poach in barely simmering salted water 10 min until they roll over and swell. Drain.
- Lay quenelles in a buttered gratin dish, add crayfish tails, coat with sauce.
- Bake at 190 °C for 18–20 min until puffed dramatically and glazed at the edges.