Saturday: chicken with almond-cress sauce and semolina croquettes

An interesting sounding recipe from the current Le Menu.

The chicken breasts are braided (to make zopf shapes), fastened with a toothpick, seasoned, browned, and then cooked in a low oven (90C) until done.

The sauce is made by adding minced garlic to a light roux and cooking for a minute, adding chicken stock and simmering for 5 minutes, adding cress and pureeing, and then stirring in some lightly-whipped cream and adjusting seasonings.

For the dumplings cook 75g semolina with 375ml milk-water until it forms a thick paste, cook gently for 5 minutes, let cool, stir in two egg yolks, 75g flour, salt, 30g grated parmesan cheese, and let cool. Make croquettes (could be done by piping them, but I didn't), coat with bread crumbs (probably optional if piping), and then cook in clarified butter until nicely browned in both sides. Hold in the low oven with the chicken until ready to serve.

Serve the chicken and croquettes on top of a layer of sauce. Top the chicken with toasted almond flakes and some more cress as a garnish.

I did a endive and orange salad (dressing: orange juice, olive oil, toasted cumin, salt, and black pepper) to accompany this.

It was a nice meal.