Ursulines de Nancy

Ursulines de Nancy (Nancy-style filled pastry boats) teach coordination. A composed hors d’œuvre is not one fearsome technique, but several modest preparations arriving together while the pastry is crisp, the quenelle is tender, and the glaze still gleams. The one true thing to know is this: chicken mousseline must remain cold until it enters the poaching liquid. Warm it during mixing and the emulsion loosens, leaving a grainy quenelle instead of a silken one.

The source assumed a pastry station sending finished Barquettes (No. 314), a saucier with demi-glace and chicken glaze ready, white consommé never far from the fire, and several hands assembling à la minute. At home, eight prepared shells, one pan of good unsalted consommé divided between poaching and reduction, and a little plain prepared demi-glace do the same honest work. The station handoffs are scaffolding and can go. The cold mousseline, gentle poach, foie gras and Port, truffle, asparagus, and butter-mounted glaze are the dish and must stay. No salamander is needed because nothing is gratinéed; a low oven only refreshes the pastry. Eight pieces serve four. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Done properly, each Ursuline gives you crisp amber pastry, warm foie gras beneath a plump chicken quenelle, a dark slice of truffle, and two little heaps of green asparagus held together by butter. It is generous, precise food, but cooking well is not cooking fancy. Before you touch a pan, chill the chicken, cream, egg white, processor bowl, and blade; cold is the step that decides the dish.