Flight in the wind/Windblown
"for a dash of sophisticated suburban cool, vol au vents."
Patrick Barkham, The Guardian
We bought an excess roast chicken for the Easter egg hunt and at the Monday sleepover meal we had excess glazed ham, so today I am doing a more ordinary version of the Christmas leftover meal of vol-au-vent with a chicken and ham filling. Not sure yet what else will go in there, but it won't be the traditional mushrooms because they are not a current bargain, and I have other things in the fridge that I could use - corn, carrots, peas. And, of course, there will be parsley. And I won't be making my vol-au-vents from scratch, not even partial scratch. I have bought them ready made from the supermarket. Not that it's that hard to semi-make from scratch. You just cut out two circles of bought butter puff pastry, cut out the centre of one, place them on top of each other and cook. But I don't have faith in my pastry skills, so bought it is.
Mostly people ascribe the invention of the vol-au-vent to Carême the great French chef (1784-1833) but apparently and according to Wikipedia:
"an entremet called petits gâteaux vole au vent is mentioned in François Marin's 1739 cookbook Les Dons de Comus, years before Carême's birth."
In France they are also sometimes called bouchées (mouthfuls) or bouchées de la reine, the queen in question being the wife of Louis XV. I gather that the first versions were also large - basically a lighter version of a beef pie, but the version we mostly know today harks back to the cocktail canapés of the 70s and 80s. And apparently this version is undergoing a kind of retro revival in the UK and America.
"the return to fashion of a small masterpiece of pastry art unjustly consigned to retro food articles, treated with the amused condescension reserved for a cheese and pineapple skewer or a black forest gateau." Philip Sweeney, The Independent
Retro being that difficult area between really unfashionable and ultra fashionable. If you don't get it quite right it's suburban naff and if you get it right it's wittily à propos.
"vol-au-vents. It takes a healthy measure of culinary confidence to serve something so terminally naff without an ironic helping of prawn cocktail." Felicity Cloake
I gather that in the UK truly high class restaurants such as Quo Vadis (shown below) are highlighting it on their menus and high-end food purveyors such as Harrods are also adding them to their shelves. (I couldn't resist the photograph of Quo Vadis, as this is where we had our wedding night dinner).
For me though, the idea that it is now super trendy is confirmed by finding that Yotam Ottolenghi has at least three versions - all very modern - puy lentils, avocado or smoked aubergine. Now how much more trendy can you get? (The only one of these three with the full recipe is the smoked aubergine one. The lentils version has the ingredients but I couldn't find anything for the avocado. Looks pretty simple though.)
My version will probably be the suburban naff kind - a mixture of pre-cooked meat with some vegetables and herbs in a thickened creamy sauce. It's one of my husband's favourite things so I hope it will please. And they will be medium size. Too big and it's all filling and no pastry, too small and it's the reverse. I don't know why but there is definitely something very satisfying about the mix of the flaky pastry and the creamy filling. The Belgians apparently serve them with mashed potatoes or chips, which seems very wrong to me. For me the trick is to not deaden the lightness of the pastry with a claggy or runny filling.
“The key thing with vol-au-vents is the ratio of size to liquid,” Yannick Alléno
You see it has to be light - literally blowing in the wind.
