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Chef Jaques Van Staden
Scallop Foie Gras in a Puff Pastry
For our next dish what we’re going to do is something little bit more intricate. I think for you that’s the gourmet cook out there and you really want to impress your friends or actually go distance to feel confident enough to make this next dish. This is something you should try at home if you can find all the right ingredients which you should be able to do that. What we’re going to do actually is we’re going to take - I have some brie scallops here and this is real nice brie scallops, dry peg brie scallops. And I have foie gras and we’re going to cut each slice foie gras for each scallop and then this is what we call mushroom brussel or you can just chop mushroom this is actually shitake mushrooms and button mushrooms that’s just sautéed and then we chop it afterwards. So it’s basically just chopped cooked mushrooms that’s what that is.
This you can buy it at any gourmet store. This is actually what they call it truffle puree like a black truffle puree and really good flavors, it got a nice black truffle flavor to it, we’re going to use that. I get some chives. This is a red wine sauce that we made. So, this is also something that if you can purchase today if you want to buy nice, this is actually Cabernet reduction. But, if you want to do a Vinaigrette with this, if you want to do a black truffle Vinaigrette you are more than welcome to substitute instead of using the white wine or the Cabernet reduction and then last but not least what you need with this is you have to have both puff pastry.
Now, this is obviously something you can buy at the store. So why don’t we go ahead and start with what we going to do here we’re going to actually take the scallops, mushrooms, the truffle, foie gras and we’re going to wrap it and put it in our scallop dish. What I want to do, let’s go ahead actually first and let’s slice the foie gras just a little knife. We’re just going to have little small pieces of the foie gras, we don’t want to have two big pieces that we’re going to put with the scallops. So just little ten slices so we have 60, I'm just warming up the knife here a little bit and this actually helps cutting the foie gras much easier, it’s much easier to do. Okay, just like little thin slices.
That’s four, five and six here. This one will be a little bit too large so I'm going to cut a little off in there. So, that’s the foie gras we’re going to use. The slices is on top of our scallop.
All right good. So what we’re going to do is first off, we’re going to do a little bit of the mushrooms and just put a little bit of the mushrooms down there. And again, if you don’t want to use mushrooms you don’t have too but it adds real good to the dish. Little pieces of mushroom here. Can you do this ahead of time? Absolutely, you can prepare this a day in advance and you can actually if you want too you can really put it in the freezer or you can just leave it in the fridge for a couple of days and it will be fine.
So, what you need to do is just from there pop it in the oven and it will be good. And then go ahead let’s put a little bit of the black truffle, just a little bit of them. If you can’t find the black truffle it’s not the end of the world, obviously you can use something else if you don’t want use black truffle, you just want to use truffle oil, you can do that too.
All right, the next step we’re going to do is go ahead and put a slice of the foie gras on top. Now you can see this already so looking like a pretty intricate dish, very rich and it’s just going to be really, really nice for nice appetizer.
Before we go any further, I would just go ahead and actually season the foie gras, already it was salt. We’re going to season the scallops as well. We season every little part of this dish, you have to season inside because if you don’t season it then what’s going to happen is with just season scallop, you’ll have a dish when you cut into it and it just – you know the one thing like I wish I used a little bit more salt, I wish I used a little bit more pepper. So that’s very necessary to do.
Put a little bit of chives just like that and then we’re going to do our scallops. So, what I’m going to do again is season the scallops individually, let’s just season the one side with salt pepper and then when we flip them over we’ll do in the other side. The whole purpose of this is you start from the side. The bottom side is actually the top so we’re going to fold everything else over. Put your scallop down and again if you want to cut larger, you see the squares I don’t cut them too large because you don’t want too much puff pastry with the whole dish, you want a good, equal amounts. They’re on top and then let’s go ahead and season the other side as well.
Again very important to season both sides all right. This is a really good dish, I mean especially when it’s captured in the puff pastry and the puff pastry is soak of the fat from the foie gras, the flavors, everything in it and it’s really, really such a good dish. So what I’m going to do on the one side I'm going to fold this over and I’m going to add just a little egg wash here, and egg wash on one side, and then do the other sides, stretch it a little bit. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to flip it over, pinch the sides as such and then again we’re just going to brush that also a little bit and just fold it over.
So you make this little packet purses and the whole purpose of this is to be it down like that. So we’re going to actually bake it like that in tray. So again I’ll show you another one here, take one side, fold it over and your egg wash, wash it all good, pull that side with it, pinch the ends close and then crush it and fold it over. So this you can do one for one but like I said if you want to go ahead don’t worry too much about how it’s going to look at the bottom because once it cooks it comes out perfect. You will see it puffs up little nice and the bottom doesn’t open. And like I said before if you want to take this and do it all ahead of time you know definitely it saves you a lot of time and effort to actually do it the day off.
Switch a little nice. The egg wash in here brush each one. And there’s no problem if you freeze this. The only thing you need to remember is if you freeze them make sure that you thaw me out not completely but at least half way and then put them in a 400 degree oven. All right.
Let’s go ahead and pinch all the sides, it also works when you do this is to make it almost like an assembly line because you do each step after the other and it just makes it much easier when you assemble them.
Brush, brush, brush on this side. The egg wash is necessary because it helps keep the puff pastry in place and you will see when we’re going to brush the scallops on top is to get that nice golden color. So nice little packets here. And then what I’m going to do, I’m going to actually put in this pan that we have here because we’re to go ahead and put them in the oven.
All right so let’s go ahead, pan cold not hot and we go ahead and put this in the pan and then before you put them it is very, very important -- what you can do to is usually what works good is if you have them, you make them, brush them, leave in the refrigerator so they can get cold for at least like half an hour then put them in the oven. But we’re actually going to go straight here into the oven and I’ll brush them a little egg wash, this will help the scallops or actually the puff pastry get a real nice golden color. If you do not brush it with the egg wash you won’t get a nice golden color on it.
Sometimes what people do to is they sprinkle a little bit of a powdered sugar on them and that also helps with a nice caramelized or nice caramel color on top. But that’s more for pastries okay. So let’s go ahead we’re going to put this in the oven and it’s going to take a good 15 minutes and then when this thing is ready we will be back at you and we’ll put it out and we’ll show you exactly what the scallops looks like after being baked. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
All right we’re back so let’s look in the oven, the oven have been at 400 degrees, it’s about 15 minutes later. And let’s see our scallops should be ready, and they look ready. We’ll go ahead here. So again it’s been here for a while. I just flipped them over a little bit so there’s our scallops. Again, the oven usually 400 degrees is good to have it because you want to cook it as fast as possible and get the puff pastry nice and golden brown and once it’s golden brown the scallops is basically ready.
What I’m going to right now, we have our red wine reduction here. I’m going to get that heated up, we’re going to go to our plate and just kind of – now you have a choice, let me explain to you, before you take the scallops you can either do the sauce on the bottom or you can do the sauce over the scallop. I usually like to do the sauce a little bit on the bottom in that way it is good because the scallop sits on top of it, you can see how nice a golden brown the scallop is here.
So let’s go ahead and get our sauce right in, and again like I said if you don’t have a nice red wine sauce or a Cabernet reduction or anything you can just go ahead and use a Vinaigrette, right in the center and do both here. Move the two scallops, nice rich and flavor fold goes good with foie gras, it goes good with the puff pastry, the scallops and everything.
Done on top, real good appetizer, this is a especially good for the winter, during the winter time is a real nice dish. A little bit chives and then I have a little bit of micro chervil just for little garnish and a little bit of wine rock salt. So that’s it so this is basically our scallop that’s with foie gras, mushroom and truffle brussel, rotten puff pastry. A very easy dish to do, it can be prepared in advance and not a problem and let’s get ready to enjoy this. All right bon apetit. Until next time see you then.
