from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Feuilletés de Ris de Veau,
Tombée d’Épinards, Sauce
aux Morilles.
Photograph
courtesy of Mercotte
Feuilles, Feuilleté, Feuillantine, En Feuillantine or Millefeuille.
On
French menus, thin slices of pastry, often puff-pastry, and other products may,
along with vegetable leaves, be described as leaves. The pastry used is an often
puff pastry.
Feuilles
on French Menus:
Feuilles d'Épinards au Beurre – Spinach
leaves prepared with butter.
Salade de Pousses d'Épinards,
Spinach salad
Spinach, sliced red onion, strawberries, goat cheese, praline
pecan, balsamic vinaigrette.
Photograph courtesy of NatalieMaynor
www.flickr.com/photos/nataliemaynor/5846009511/
Feuille de Chêne – Leaves of oak leaf or butterhead
lettuce. In the UK this lettuce is also called Bridgemere lettuce.
Young oak leaf lettuce leaves will be the baby salad leaves in many
salads. This delicate lettuce when used as a
bed to present a dish does not offer a competing taste.
The leaves of the oak lettuce.
Photograph courtesy
of Forest and Kim Starr
Feuilles de Mâche – Another
name for the leaves from France’s excellent salad green, more usually
called mâche. In English, this salad green is
called field lettuce, lamb’s lettuce or corn salad. Unfortunately, it is only
rarely on the menu in the UK and North America. I believe that Mâche is just as indispensable to a French green or mixed
salad as the French think it is. Eighty percent
of Europe's supply of mâche comes from the area around the
city of Nantes, so this salad green may well be on
your menus as Mâche Nantaise
A mâche, field lettuce, salad.
Photograph courtesy of Isabelle
Hurbain Palatin
www.flickr.com/photos/ipalatin/4160325485/
Feuilles des Légumes-Racines or Fanes - The
leaves of root vegetables.
Feuilles de Vigne Farcies – Stuffed vine leaves are on menus in all countries where there are vineyards. French chefs often choose specific vine leaves by their fragrance. I have enjoyed vine leaves stuffed with shrimps and squid and also a vegetarian dish of vine leaves stuffed with raisins, courgettes (the USA zucchini) and rice flavored with herbs. Vine leaves stuffed in the Greek manner are often called dolma. The Greek version I know best is vine leaves stuffed with lamb, rice, and pine nuts. However, the Greek name dolma is in fact a Turkish word.
Stuffed vine
leaves.
Visneli
yaprak sarma
Vine leaves were stuffed with sour
cherries, rice, onions,
pepper,
cinnamon,
and pine
nuts
Photograph courtesy
of Garrett Ziegler
www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/5160005304/
Feuilleté -
A puff-pastry covering.
The word feuilletée, coming as it does from feuille, a leaf, refers to thin layers or leaves of puff-pastry. Pate feuilleté is puff-pastry dough and it is created by folding and refolding and refolding the dough with added butter again and again. In the oven, these very, very thin layers of butter create steam and separate the leaves of the dough. Voila, you have pâte feuilletée that is a special form of puff- pastry. Feuilletés may be part of the hors d’oeuvres, the entrée (the French first course), the main courses, or the dessert.
For
the top of the line bakers there is an AOP Beurre Pâtissier Poitou-Charente AOP
who use it for pâte feuilletée .
Feuilleté on
French Menus:
Feuilleté aux Pommes et Cidre Cornouaille – Puff pastry covering apples soaked in
the Cornouaille AOP cider from Brittany and served with puff-pastry.
Feuilleté d'Asperges,
Sauce Mousseline
Puff
pastry with asparagus served with a Sauce Mousseline
The
simplest sauce mousseline is a Sauce
Hollandaise with whipped cream
added, sometimes with more cream on the top as
a decoration. The name comes from the material muslin through which many
of the earliest recipes were sieved and today mousselines cover many recipes
and indicate sauces that are very light
or have been finely sieved.
Photograph
courtesy of Meilleur de Chef
Feuilleté de Saumon à l’Oseille - A puff-pastry covering of salmon cooked with sorrel. (Sorrel is also called Garden Sorrel, Common Sorrel or Dock). Sorrel leaves may be picked in the wild, and the smaller, young leaves make excellent salad greens, and they are rich in vitamin C. Nevertheless, the sorrel on your menu will probably have come from a farm, it costs less. Sorrel may be cooked like spinach or made into a soup, and many fish dishes will be flavored with sorrel. Among the soups made with sorrel, the most famous is Potage Germany
Feuillantine or En
Feuillantine
Feuillantine and Feuilleté are sometimes used
interchangeably. However, feuillantine or
en Feuillantine properly used indicates that the puff-pastry or possibly fruit
or vegetable leaves are surrounding the main ingredients.
Feuillantine
on French Menus:
Feuillantine d'Escargots aux Champignons en Crème d'Ail – Snails and mushrooms cooked in a puff-pastry
covering and served with a cream of garlic sauce.
Feuillantine Comtoise
A dish of puff pastry surrounding
jambon
(cured ham), Comté
cheese, and Sauce
Béchamel. Most dishes with Comtoise in their name come from the
Franche-Comte (including the Territoire de Belfort) that is since 1-1-2016
became part of the region
of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.
Photograph
courtesy of Chef Simon
Feuillantine de Homard et Noix de Saint Jacques, Sauce Crustacés - Meat from the two-clawed lobster and the meat
from the king scallop cooked in a puff-pastry casing
and served with a sauce made from other crustaceans.
Pate levée feuilletée
Pâte
levée feuilletée is the dough used to make croissants. It is a yeast-based form
of pâte feuilletée with a much higher percentage of butter than
other puff pastry doughs. The best croissants are close to 40% butter by
weight.
Croissants.
Photograph courtesy of
Victoria Vasilieva
www.flickr.com/photos/vasilv_spb/4560243134/
Millefeuille
or Mille-feuille
Millefeuille means a thousand leaves. The term describes thin
leaves of pastry dividing cream or other fillings. Thin leaves of vegetables of
fruit may replace the pastry.
Pâte Feuilletée, leafy puff pastry, is also used to make millefeuilles. Millefeuille or Mille-feuilles are interleaved layers of pâte feuilletée filled with sweet or savory fillings. Taking the idea behind the original millefeuille a stretch further has seen the creation of millefeuilles with no pastry at all. Thin slices of vegetables and or fruits have replaced the pastry.
Millefeuille
Chocolat Chloé
Japanese
pastry chefs do wonders with French pastry.
Salon du
Chocolat 2009 Tokyo, Shinjuku Isetan
Photograph courtesy of Yuichi
Sakuraba.
www.flickr.com/photos/skrb/3475873407
Millefeuilles
on French menus:
Millefeuille de Céleris et Topinambour – A millefeuille of thin
slices of celery seperating thin slices of the Jerusalem artichoke.
Millefeuille
de Légumes de Saison – A garnish of seasonal fresh vegetables cooked and
interleaved with another vegetable; this dish has no pastry.
Apricot and pistachio millefeuille
Photograph courtesy of Gordon
Joly
www.flickr.com/photos/loopzilla/29582562060/
Millefeuille de Saumon Fumé
et Crème de Raifort – A millefeuille of smoked
salmon
interleaved with a cream of horseradish
sauce.
