I love my South African heritage, so I sometimes feel that I don’t share my favourite French recipes nearly often enough. And despite popular belief, they’re not (all) as fussy as they’re made out to be. With this recipe, I combined two absolute classics. Basically, a vol-au-vent is a light, hollow case of puff pastry (handy, right?) that you can fill with a variety of fillings. Bordelaise, named after the famous Bordeaux region, is one of those classic French sauces that is usually made with bone marrow. But to simplify matters, I used bacon in this version, which gives it a delicious twist of umami.
BACON AND MUSHROOM VOL-AU-VENT WITH A BORDELAISE SAUCE
TIME: 2½ hours | SERVES: 4
for the bacon bordelaise sauce
30 ml olive oil
1 peeled onion, halved and very thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves
3 fresh thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
375 ml red wine
15 ml olive oil
200 g Eskort Lean Diced Bacon
500 ml beef stock
salt and freshly ground pepper
for the vol-au-vent
1 sheet 400 g puff pastry
1 egg, beaten
for the mushroom and bacon filling
60 ml olive oil
4 peeled onions, halved and sliced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
300 g exotic mushrooms
15 ml butter
15 ml olive oil
200 g Eskort Lean Diced Bacon
for the garnish
6 baby mushrooms, thinly sliced
micro salad leaves
for the bacon bordelaise sauce
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, thyme, and bay leaves. Stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add the wine and reduce the volume of liquid by two-thirds. In a separate saucepan heat the 15 ml olive oil and fry the bacon. Add the stock and cook until warm. Add the bacon and stock mixture to the reduced wine mixture. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Let the sauce cook rapidly until the volume of the liquid has reduced by half and the sauce has thickened. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.
for the vol-au-vent
Heat the oven to 200 °C. Place the pastry on your work surface and use two different-sized cookie cutters. Press out eight circles using a 9½ cm cookie cutter. Use a 7 ½ cm cookie and press out the centers of four of the larger circles. Place the 4 whole circles on a baking tray that is lined with baking paper. Brush the top of the four whole circles with egg wash. Carefully place the cut-out circles on top and egg wash on top. Place in the oven and bake for about 35 minutes till golden brown.
for the mushroom and bacon filling
Heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Add the onions and garlic and fry until soft and golden. Season with salt and pepper. Slice the larger mushrooms into bite sized pieces. Heat the 15 ml butter and fry the mushrooms till soft. Season with salt and pepper. Heat the 15 ml olive oil in a saucepan and add the bacon. Fry unil crispy.
Spoon the fried onions into the vol-au-vent cases and top with the fried mushrooms and bacon. Garnish with the thinly sliced mushrooms and micro salad leaves. Spoon the sauce into a serving bowl and carefully place the vol-au-vent in the sauce.