How to Make a Stunning Salmon Coulibiac at Home- Thanksgiving Showstopper

Welcome back to the kitchen. So yes, Thanksgiving is around the corner in America. Plenty of people wants to cook special things and I've picked up something special for you right here. And this is called the coulibiac de saumon or salmon coulibiac, which is a charcuterie item where salmon is poached, flaked, mixed with mushroom, shallots, eggs and other ingredients. And encased in a roll of pure butter puff pastry. There's no mold required. We're going to work straight on the sheet in there. It's super easy and it looks absolutely impressive. And if you're looking for something special, that is the ticket. And talking about tickets, Thanksgiving and other things, for the very first time, for Black Friday, we decided to give a 20% off to all the courses on the site using that coupon code FCABLACKFRIDAY. One week only. You go on the website, link in the description, and you're going to be able to purchase any of the courses at 20% off. So if you ever wanted to test the course, try the course, buy one of the more meaty course, like the beginner course that we have, that is huge, going to take you several months to complete. Now, this is the time. Okay, so two things in here, coupon code. And now, the special recipe for Thanksgiving. Let's go. And now let's jump right in. So for the mise en place, very simple. What do we need? Two eggs, bit of rice, couscous, mushrooms. The mushroom have to be sliced, the thinly sliced. Shallots, they have to be sliced as well. And the salmon, salmon fillet, skin off. We're going to be poaching the salmon in the courbouillon, water, salt, thyme, bay leaf. And you can use half a glass of white wine, this is Noir Ypres, which is the white, the French white vermouth instead. So on the stove, you're going to start by doing first, we need hard-boiled eggs. So I'm going to do a nine minutes count for these ones. Two hard-boiled eggs in there. Next thing, poaching the salmon. You know how easy it is to poach salmon? It's absolutely not funny. You take boiling water, I'm going to put some salt in here. I'm going to put some thyme, two bay leaf, and then I'm going to have, you can have the wine I'm using, Noir Ypres, in here. That's simply to make the so-called courbouillon, okay? So I'm just going to bring this to the boil. What I'm going to add is a little personal touch, by the way. Maybe some shallots in there. And that's about it. And I'm going to show you the technique used by the Roux brothers, which is one of the easiest dairies and foolproof to have the perfectly cooked salmon, or perfectly poached salmon, every time. So technique from the Roux brothers, very simple. You put your aromatics in here. You bring this to the boil. You leave to boil for one or two minutes to release the flavor. And then what you're going to do, you're going to turn the heat off. No more boiling. I'm taking here my little paprika powder that I had, the Hungarian paprika. This is the special touch. So that's normally not part of a courbouillon, but this is for that very special concoction in here. And from here, all what you do, you take your salmon skin off, putting it in there, and you don't put the heat back on. I'm going to leave this to cook gently on its own for about five to six minutes. And that's it. I've left my salmon for five minutes. And now I'm going to take it out of the water and show you the results. As soon as my salmon is out, what you're going to do, you're going to take, scoop off some of the cooking juices that we've used. Put this in a little container or, you know, baking dish like that. You mix that with cold water, so you stop the cooking. And we're going to keep the salmon here. It's going to continue slowly to cook while we're preparing the rest of the preparation. Once the eggs and the salmon are ready, and we can move on and continue by cooking the rice and the salmon. So the rice, we're going to just boil it until tender. So I'm leaving you to do this. You know how to boil rice. But the couscous is perhaps something you don't use very often. It originates from Northern Africa. It's used a lot in France, you know, in Morocco and Algeria. And throughout France, we've got the couscous as an actual dish. But in other countries, you refer to the couscous as this. This is the grain. This is a durum wheat kind of semolina. You know, so this little grain. And you get different size you can buy. This is the fine one. In France, we use the middle size grain. But it's a super versatile thing. You can use in all kinds of preparation on its own as a side. And you're going to see here, we're going to be using it. And it's really, really easy to prepare. So here, I've got about, what, 50 grams of my couscous. And I'm going to have about 75 grams of water. So all you need to do is take water, put a bit of salt. I'm going to add some herbs. This is optional. Okay, I'm going to add perhaps a hint of black pepper. I'm going to bring this to the boil. And then pour that over and leave it to sit. I typically like to use a larger bowl like this. But my water is boiling. I'm going to immediately pour that over. Mix that in. And then you're going to leave this to sit for about five minutes. After five minutes, you take a little fork like this. And we're going to do what's called égrener. You kind of detach all the grains. And like magic, you can see you get that really nice texture. Just like this. And that's going to be the base we're going to be using for our coulis. And now for the final garnish, the shallots and the mushroom. After checking in the Laos Gastronomique for that recipe, I've just realized that it says to chop the mushroom and not slice them. And then cook them with shallots and butter, which tells me with the culinary standards that when you do that, you're creating a duxelle of mushroom. And that is, I think, the original intention for that recipe. So we're going to be now, sorry, slight correction, chopping thinly all the shallots. Chopping all the mushrooms in here. And I'm going to get some parsley as well to make the real duxelle because I think that's going to add a nice touch of flavor. So what is the duxelle? We start with the butter. We're going to be melting it, then cooking the shallots, then add the mushrooms, cook them as well, and then add some parsley. That's it. Don't use it too high heat because we need to gently cook these shallots first. Very important to cook the shallot properly and maybe for a good five minutes on low heat before we cook the rest. Shallots are cooked. I'm going to put all the mushrooms, mix well, and then add the rest. And then we can raise the heat on here. And don't worry, mushrooms, they're going to turn into nothing, even though it looks like a lot here. I'm going to raise my heat. We're going to cook this. And your worst enemy in this scenario is moisture. Any charcuterie item where you're trying to encase any ingredients into pastry, you run the risk of having too much moisture. If any of the ingredients, like a mushroom that is sliced too thick, is not properly cooked, it's going to start to render juices. The juice is going to flow down, goes into your pastry, start to make holes, and perhaps your whole thing could just fall apart. And I think this is why, in that scenario, they're using a duxelle, which is a dry mixture of mushrooms, so no risk of having any juices coming out. So we're done. We've got all the ingredients, and now we're ready to assemble. Now, the assembly is the point where you have to be very, very careful. First off, make sure that everything is cold. The couscous is all right, well drained, no excess water, no water in here. We're going to have to flake the salmon, quarter the eggs, okay? So you've got everything ready before you assemble. The pastry is the difficult bit here. We have now left the stove, and we were a cook a minute ago. Now, we have to transform ourselves, and think, and act like a baker. And it is totally different. So the first thing we're going to do is to preheat our oven at 200 degrees Celsius. I've got two baking sheets ready here, and I've got my roll of pastry. Your biggest enemy when you work with pastry, even in the professional world, is temperature. As soon as it's out of the fridge, out of the freezer, it's going to start to get soft. If it's soft, you can't work with it, you can't cut it, you can't arrange, you can't decorate, you can't do nothing. It's going to be a disaster, you're going to have holes, things are going to fail. So we need to have this always cold as much as we can. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to first unroll this, and we're going to cut the two pieces of pastry we need. One for the bottom, one for the top. The piece at the bottom has to be smaller than the one from the top. So I've unrolled my puff pastry, and I've cut a smaller piece for the bottom here, and a larger piece for the top. Now just time for me to just unpack that pastry. Look at this, look how soft that is already. That is just a few minutes of unpacking, unrolling, and taking the time to cut. My pastry here, look at this, it's almost unworkable. If I lift it, everything is going to fall apart. So once you cut, we're going to do, what it's always necessary to do, is to cool down this. I'm putting this straight back into the freezer, making sure it's going to be nice and cold. That's going to give us ample time to plan, and when you take it out, we're going to be stacking the whole thing. Now when your pastry is cooling down, it is time to create what I call the workshop. And this is something we're doing in our Charcuterie course a lot. So if you like that sort of things, grab the 20% discount, go on the site, get the Charcuterie course. There's tons of good stuff on there. So the workshop is the place we're going to be working. We're going to be assembling the pâté. Okay, we've got all the ingredients. I've flaked the salmon. I've got all the tools I need. I've got egg wash on here. So an egg yolk with some water to brush the top of the pâté and make some decoration. I've got my pastry brush. I've got a spatula to arrange things. Everything is there. We also need a plan of action. So we're going to have a piece of pastry. And what we need to do, the goal is to create layers of rice, mushrooms, salmon, salmon, and the eggs on top of each other, but not all the way to the edges of the pastry. Okay, we're going to keep a border of at least two centimeters of at least one and one and a half inch all around so we can fold the pastry back on the inside. It's extremely important to have that plan of action and not be in front of your pastry is going to get hot and think, oh, what am I doing again? And trying to look at the recipe because everything's going to be a disaster. You need to know what's going to happen before you start. So I won't have too much time to explain too much things when we started. So this is the workshop. When dough is ready, we're going to hit the road and get layering. And here we are. My pastry is out. So I'm going to start and I will do the rest off camera. But just to give you the idea of what I've said, okay, we're going to start first by the layer of rice. And we're going to leave a border and that's going to give us the base we can work with. So that's my layer of rice. I'm going to clean everything, make sure you don't have anything on the sides. And I'm going to go ahead and add the salmon. So salmon, I'll do a little bit to show you here. Same thing, I'll be flaking around. Little pieces. I may have a little too much on here. Just a little layer. And I'm going to keep on going with the rest of the ingredients. The last piece of the puzzle is the eggnog because the layers are quite high already. And I don't want to get too high because the higher you go, the most difficult it is to close properly. I'm going to be slicing the eggs on here with an egg slicer and just adding slices flat on top. The eggs have been placed. And by the way, let me not scare you with all this stuff. It's a bit longish, but it's not hard. It's just precaution to make sure it works on your side. Use your paintbrush to make sure there's no grains. And if there is any hair from the brush falling, make sure you look like a hawk and remove them because brush, pastry brush do that. They always do this. And now, what we're going to do before we put the top is to start to fold. You see why we had these little edges? I'm going to kind of fold this back as much as we can on the inside. See, I'm folding it like that. And I'm going to go around when my pastry is soft enough towards the inside. So we have a bit of a casing going on here. And that's all the intention. Now, once you finish, this is what you should have. You've got the edges. It's making a parcel. It's going all towards the inside. Okay, so same on the other side. I've got the same thing on here. It's all going towards the inside. This is the lower casing. What we're going to do now is take the other piece of pastry and place it on top so that it totally seals and prevents anything from escaping. But in the meantime, of course, what I'm going to do is put this back into my freezer so it stays cold. For the final step, I'm taking some water and I'm going to moisten very lightly the edges of my pastry here to make sure it seals properly with the other piece. So let me grab my other piece of pastry. And what we're going to do, we're going to put this on top and make sure first everything fuses. So you go around very neatly and you're going to be making your little parcel, your little package. It's nice and neat, nice and fused so that nothing is going to escape. And then we're going to cut and decorate. As you can see, nothing complicated. When you've got these flat parts like this, all what we're going to do is some trimming. So we're going to be nice and neat. Don't go too close. I'm just going to go around and I'm going to slice all these extra bits, but not much, just a little trimming and it's going to further seal everything. Once you're done, you take the back of your knife and typically you're going to be making this. I'm always making this. This is a simple, you can go more complicated, but I always like to do that little simple method going around and sealing everything. Once you're done, it's time for the egg wash. So all around, very gently, you're brushing your creation. So you see, nice and shiny. The typical thing you have to do when you're making a pâté, you seal one layer of egg wash, you refrigerate or in the freezer, then you decorate, then another egg wash, and then we cook. Now for the decoration, if you want, you can use half cut of puff pastry and put them on top and make, you know, shapes like this, like that's a regal thing. But typically what I do, I take the back of a knife and all I do is like this kind of, at least like the tree branch kind of things, you would go and you start with like a tree branch and then we're going to make leaves. The leaf on here, the leaf on there, but do not press too hard with the back of your knife. You don't want to pierce the pastry, be always very gentle. Okay, some leaves on here. So you got the idea, some decoration like this, we get some leaves on the sides and then you put your final piece or your final layer of egg wash. Don't forget to do the egg wash on the piece. If you use extra piece of puff pastry, what you can do, make sure you cover them with egg wash so they look nice, but for the rest, one last layer and then we're done. Now, if you want to do this ahead of time, before you add the egg wash, you can actually leave this in the fridge until you're ready to decorate and serve it. So you can make it in advance, it's not a problem. Ideally, if you want, you're going to put this in the freezer another 10-15 minutes before putting it in the oven. You're going to cook this for 30 minutes, something like this. There's a lot of pastry in there at 200 degrees Celsius, fan forced on. It's been 30 minutes and the Coulibiac is out of the oven and this is how it looks like. So these are the kind of decoration that I put on top. You see how they look like, even that one here. That's how it can look like if you start to stick things on. So we're going to leave it to cool a little bit really and then we're just going to cut it open. And now the moment we've all been waiting for, it is the cutting. So we've got the decoration but I've got no idea how it's going to be looking inside. So I'm taking a long serrated knife on here and I'm going to avoid damaging that little decoration. I'm going to try to make a cut just right here. Ooh, that is very soft, very fragile. And there we have the Coulibiac. I am glad to see that the rigorous layering that we've done has paid off and we can clearly see the rice, the salmon, the ducks of mushroom, the couscous and then the egg and then the pastry. You can see it's just about cooked and that's all you need. The best thing about this is that you can serve it warm. So as soon as it's ready, pretty much you can slice open and serve. What's interesting is eating that specialty because it is meant to be eaten with a sauce. The Larousse Gastronomique recognize a melted butter called the beurre fondue. I think a beurre blanc would work. What I'm going to do and try to stay with the tradition is to make a garlic and herb butter. So before we dig in, I've made a beurre fondue flavored with herbs, but the beurre fondue is actually a butter that is just about melted, right? So it goes from solid to melted and it's not cooked in the pan. Okay, so if I've got some of it here, I'm going to drizzle it on the side. You're going to see, still have that kind of yellowish kind of color and I can decorate my plate. I'll be perfectly honest, I've got no idea how to attack this. I'll just get a piece and a bit of the salmon, a bit of everything. It's kind of hard to grab. I'm tempted to use my hand almost. Mushroom, salmon, I love the pastry with that garlic butter. It's really indulgent. You must not be on a diet for that, but if you're not on a diet and you want to indulge, it's perfect. And now I'm going to go and try to cut the big thing. So that's a hard one because that's going to destroy the whole thing. Okay, I'm breaking it apart. Sorry, it doesn't look like anything, but I'm going to try to grab this with the whole layer and up. It's well balanced. You can really feel the salmon. You can really feel the mushrooms and what I thought would be really a bit dry-ish, like the rice and the couscous on top. No, it really kind of blends in with the butter, kind of adds a little texture in there and really complements the whole thing. It's actually, it really works, really works. Beautiful. Last bite. And there we have it. Mission accomplished. We've actually crafted the coulibiac from scratch. We've tasted it and we even added the beurre fondue, this one with the garlic and parsley, but what a surprise. This is absolutely beautiful and something that is really going to impress if you want to serve this for Thanksgiving now. It's a bit, a bit long-ish, that video with all the steps, because I wanted to give you a taste of the kind of details we give in the course, but we go further than that. So remember, the coupon we have, 20%, do not miss out. I would recommend definitely the Charcuterie course if you like that kind of stuff like we've done in the video. Otherwise, my top three would be go for the beginner course if you want to learn the basics. If you're advanced, go for the sauce course and Charcuterie, definitely my number three. So much value in this recourse. But that's it. I hope you're going to have a great time for your Thanksgiving dinner and lots of good food, lots of good time, lots of wine. For me, I will see you next time for another video on the French Cooking Academy. Take care. Bye-bye.