Sunday, May 28, 2006

Risolles

While CS was blogging away, I did some cooking for tonight. Before doing the groceries yesterday we discussed what to have for dinner. I realised it has been a long time since I made Risolles, not to be confused with the irish "rissole", even though the preparation method and the end result seem to be quite similar.

Risolles is an Indonesian snack or dish. Imagine a pancake filled with a thick ragout consisting of chicken and mushrooms, mixed in a butter, flower, milk and water basis. Actually it is not that weird that indonesian recipes have european equivalents or origins. Indonesia has a long history of occupations by several nations, ranging from the Portuguese, through the Japanese to the Dutch. Both my parents were born and partly raised in Indonesia. My father was born in Bandung, provincial capital of West-Java, my mother was born in Cirebon on the North Coast of Java. That's where my love for Indonesian food comes from. I grew up on it!

Anyway, I spent almost 3 hours in the kitchen to prepare our dish for tonight and once you're on it, it's worth while to prepare more than you can eat. Considering the long hours of preparation you'd better use it and freeze some of it for the days where you don't feel like cooking or simply lack the time to cook. If you're interested in trying it yourself, then have a look at the recipe below (thanks mom!). I tried to describe the steps as clearly as possible. Basically, I wanted to write down some of my favorite recipes for quite some time already, but somehow I never got to it. As I promised Sal to come up with a few, I decided this was the perfect moment to start the compilation of my personal cook book. So, be ready for some more recipes in the coming time! If you decide to try this recipe, go ahead and try. it's easier than it looks.

RISOLLES

Ingredients for approximately 12 pc. of risolles:

4 Chicken legs with thigh
150g mushrooms (take small mushroom, diameter 3 – 3,5 cm)
3-4 eggs
1 onion
Butter
Flower
Milk
Water
Cream
Bread crumbs
Salt, pepper and nutmeg
Sherry or whiskey
Preparation time: 2 ½ - 3 hours

Preparing the filling

Salt and pepper the water and boil the chicken in it. Boil the chicken for approx. 10 minutes to half done. Take the chicken out of the water and let it cool off. Keep the broth to add in the preparation of the filling. After the chicken has cooled off, cut it in small cubes.
Clean the mushrooms and cut them in thin slices (3-4 mm thick). Cut the onion in quarters.

Now start preparing the basis for the filling. Melt butter in a pan, add the onion quarters. The butter should take the taste of the onion. While the butter melts start adding flower bit by bit to create a thick paste. The paste should be thick and firm as it will be used as filling for crepes. Keep stirring the butter to mix the flower with the butter. Add milk and water (50/50) and keep on stirring the paste to a thick equal mass. Add the chicken cubes and mix them with the ragout while stirring. In case the mass gets too thick or lumpy, add more milk and water. After all the chicken has been added, add salt and pepper to taste. Now add the sliced mushrooms and stir them into the ragout. Make sure the ragout doesn’t get stiff. If necessary, add more water and milk. After the mass has been stirred to a homogene mass, add a touch of nutmeg. Taste the mass and add salt, pepper and/or nutmeg to your likings. After this step add 1 egg and stir the egg through the mass until has been taken in completely. Once the mass is equally thick pour a bit of sherry or whiskey and stir it into the mass. After adding the sherry of whiskey, take the filling from the stove and let it cool off.
NOTE: Sherry will give a slightly sweet taste to the mass, whiskey will give the filling more “bite”.

Prepare the crepes

Mix flower, milk or water, a touch of salt and 1 egg to a thin dough. Use the dough to make thin crepes. Don’t let the crepes get too dark like pancakes. The crepes should stay middle brown as they will be filled with the mass and pan fried in oil afterwards. Let the crepes cool off before continuing.

Preparing the risolles

Take one crepe at the time and put a part of the mass in the middle of the crepe. Model it to a rectangular shape and then fold the sides of the crepe to the middle, creating a rectangular shape. The size of the risolles depends on the size of the crepes. Don’t overfill, otherwise the crepes will burst when fried in the oil! Repeat this until all crepes are filled.

A few pictures to show what it looks like:


Filling the crepe
Modelling the filling into a rectangular shape


Folding the crepe
The way the risolles look after the filling and folding

Pan frying the risolles

Spread the bread crumbs on a plate, beat an egg and put it in a wide bowl or deep plate. Start heating a frying pan with a good layer of sunflower oil until the oil is hot. Take the first risolles, roll it through the egg and then through the bread crumbs. Put the risolles in the pan on the side where you’ve closed the crepe first, and turn it now and again until it has been fried golden all around. Once fried, take the risolles from the oil and let it drip dry on paper towel. Keep them in the oven at 80-90° when you want to serve them afterwards. Fry all risolles until done.


Pan fry in oil
Turn the risolles to get brown all around

Serving the risolles

Risolles should be eaten warm. As sauce you can add either a sweet chilli sauce or mustard.
Risolles which has been prepared and fried can be kept in the freezer. To warm them up after taking them from the freezer heat up your oven to a 150°C (hot air oven) or a 170°C ( gas oven).


This is what risolles looks like after frying,
while drip drying on paper towel


Bon appetit!

20 comments:

Sal DeTraglia said...

Mr. X:

Those babies look awesome! But really...any dish that has butter, cream AND whiskey could only be awesome. Thanks very much for sharing that recipe. And I'm happy to report that all of the ingredients are easily found in Spain. That's good, because there aren't many Indonesian restaurants where I live.

Mark my words: I WILL make them.

Sal

Unknown said...

yum - those look so good! Way to go Orange!!

My biggest problem...

I'm so fried from cooking every meal right now though so my effort level is not good... Geeze I need some inspiration to get back so I'd do that! But I assure you, they look incredible...

P. said...

OrangeX,

I'll make some for ET :)

Thanks for the great recipe and step-by-step instructions. I should have no problem finding all those ingredients where I live.

If your future cooking posts are as good as this one you might just have discovered a second career!

P.

Anonymous said...

those look wonderful! As you may well know I am not that experienced with other cultured foods (well, other than some german dishes.. and japanese). So this was a great instructional on how to make this!
Great outline, easy to follow and perfect pictures. I agree with p. you may have discovered your 2nd career.

christina said...

Excellent! Those look SO good and not difficult to make. More recipes, please! :-)

Mark said...

Thank you all for the compliments and I can inform you that CS and I enjoyed the risolles last night! I'll put up some recipes in the coming time. Maybe I should consider a change of career? :-) Anyway, it's always good to have an alternative once we go over to Canada. Maybe we'll open "Toko Orange"...

CanadianSwiss said...

They were DE-LI-IOUS! Thank you, sweetheart!

Miss Kim said...

They really do look soooooo lekker! We adore Indonesian food and I make a mean Nasi Goreng :)
I've just added your blog to my blogroll since we have so many blogger friends in common. And not only that but I love all your answers about the letter H, and we're both from Ontario etc etc.

Great blog!

CanadianSwiss said...

Thanks, Traveller One, and welcome! I'm always up for a good Nasi ;-) I'll add you to my blogroll, too.

Michael Lehet said...

Those look delicious....when are you heating up the leftovers?

Mark said...

Oh Michael, you sound like you're hungry. You're welcome to join in when you're around :-) Just inform us 30 min. prior to arriving ,so we can heat up the oven!

Mrs. TBF said...

I'm very impressed with your meticulous attention to detail and how neat your risolles look! I think if TBF made these they would also look perfect. If I did it, they would not look nearly as nice and neat! Keep the recipes coming.

Rob7534 said...

Great! I love reading recipe blogs!

The Big Finn said...

Hey...how did my name get dragged into this?

Mark said...

TBF, you're known as a "gourmet". That's probably why your name got dragged in. But be honest, you, as "chef de cuisine", must have had some thoughts while reading this post. Thank God for French lessons!

Anonymous said...

Hey, next time you´re up here you have to cook them....no probably you won´t have time because you and H. will be standing all day long in front of the grill....:-)

Mark said...

Hi swissmiss, alternatively I'll prepare them up front and bring them frozen! Then we'll still have plenty of time to grill :-)

Unknown said...

My mouth is watering! I'm going to copy that for later use, if you don't mind. It sounds perfectly wonderful! Kiss CS!

Ginnie Hart said...

I think the best thing for me about this post, Orange-X, was how you started it out: "While CS was blogging away, I did some cooking for tonight." You are such a cool couple! And I also liked hearing of your Indonesian background, which was news for me. I'm very sure I would like ANYTHING you cooked! And I agree that you have great attention to detail, which would make following this recipe very doable. With great pics to go along! :)

Traveller One makes a great addition to your blogroll :)

Mark said...

Babs, I kissed CS many times in the meantime! Hope you will try the recipe and enjoy it!

Ginnie, I'm the first generation Dutch in my family although my parents were in their teens when they came to Holland. And cooking is a real big passion of mine. Hopefully we finish the move and oranisation today. I need a weekend without work. I just want to relax for 2 days...