Whisk Wednesdays: Rouelles de Veau Bourgeoise (Veal Shanks with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms)

      The recipe prepared for this week's assignment for Whisk Wednesdays is from Class 24, Part 1: Rouelles de Veau Bourgeoise (Veal Shanks with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms).  It can be found in the cookbook Le Cordon Bleu at Home on pages 18-19. 

      This is part of the Menu section of classes, so I made it last week with the eggplant. 

      I bought actual veal, despite my feelings of such.  It was expensive and I had to visit a specialty butcher shop, but the butcher gave me a very nice deal (2-1/2 pounds of veal shanks for the price of 1-1/2 pounds...he now has a new customer). 

      It was okay.  I think (know) we prefer the beef version better.  There is something about veal that I just can't get past, so I ate a bite or two and called it a day.  I tried to eat a piece for lunch a few days later, and let's just say the Tibbies, Pippin and Vash, were very happy that I cannot enjoy veal. 

      The recipe was fairly simple...lots of steps, several pans, and fairly common ingredients (pearl onions and mushrooms) to go along with the veal.  The veal was cooked a fair amount of time, the veggies cooked separately, and then it all brought together at the end.  The sauce was the liquid the meat cooked in and egg yolk whisked in at the very last to give it a creamy consistency.  

      Since it cooked until it just fell off the bones (shanks), it was very tender to taste.  If only it wasn't veal. 

      Suffice it to say, from here on out, veal and I are parting ways.  If people want to eat veal, they are going to have to score it in the restaurants or on the streets, because it is definitely not happening in my kitchen again.  I think I will try this recipe with beef shanks and see how that goes...no sense in wasting a good recipe.   

      If you would  like to see how the other Whisk Wednesday members fared in this class,  click here, and then on the Whisk Wednesdays connect to individual bloggers, or better yet, come and join us!  Shari has the ingredients posted on her site at the click, so while we can't post the recipe instructions, you can at least look at the ingredients, and I bet you can figure out a lot of it from there. 

Next Week's Assignment:

The next few assignments are Menus, so we are going to make the menu for one meal (hopefully), but then post each dish separately in its own week as posting it all at once seemed a bit much, following the schedule below.
Class 24: Menu #1 (Make in one session, if you can, between April 29 and May 6)
• Aubergines Bayildi (Gratin of Stuffed Eggplant) pages 255-256 (Post Wednesday, May 6, 2009)
• Rouelles de Veau Bourgeoise (Veal Shanks with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms) pages 18-19 (Post Wednesday, May 13, 2009)
• Gratin de Fruits au Marasquin (Fruit Gratin with Maraschino Liqueur) page 376 (Post Wednesday, May 20, 2009)