Food Wars Recipes - Shinomiya's Chou Farci (Part 2)

And we're back with part 2 of my attempts at making my own version of Shinomiya's chou farci (from Food Wars, a.k.a Shokugeki no Soma)!

So after a year of not attempting this recipe, it was time to face my fears and challenge this dish once more. I actually cooked this on the day of the chinese dumpling festival. (Fitting, since it kinda looks like a dumpling.) These are the ingredients I used for the dish this time:

For the chicken mousse:

• 1 large chicken breast (cut into smaller chunks)
• 1 medium-small egg
• 50ml cooking cream
• 15g butter
• Salt & pepper to taste

To fry and stuff:

• 5 asparagus stalks (cut into small pieces)
• 2 large dried shiitake mushrooms (rehydrated and cut into smaller pieces) 
• several dried scallops (rehydrated and boiled) (save the resulting stock for later!)
• some butter for frying

To wrap:

• 8 pieces of chinese white (napa) cabbage leaves (blanched)
• 2 strips of bacon

So, instead of chicken liver, I decided to use dried scallops to go with the dried mushrooms and asparagus. Also, I specially bought cooking cream this time to make the chicken mousse properly.

Time to prepare the mousse!

Put everything in here and...

Blend!

I actually made the mousse earlier in the day and kept it in the fridge until I was ready to cook. It was actually less stressful this way, since I didn't have to do everything at one go. Don't forget to season the mousse with salt and pepper before blending! (I forgot)

Time to fry the things to stuff with the chicken mousse!

I fried the bacon hoping to use some of its fat for cooking later.

I had to add butter to fry the asparagus, lol

Add the mushrooms and continue frying...

I added the scallops at the end to heat them up a bit.

(Since they're already cooked)

The dried mushrooms and scallops were also prepared in advance, since they need time to rehydrate. The cabbage leaves were also blanched before I fried the stuff. Oh, and I also cut the asparagus and mushrooms into smaller pieces after frying them, because I realised they were too big to mix with the chicken mousse evenly.

Ok, then. Time to stuff the cabbage!

Ready... set...

Wait, you may have noticed that something is missing... That's right, it's the butterflied chicken breast to wrap around the mousse! From my previous attempts, I concluded that the extra chicken did not really add to the dish, and in both times it turned out either dry, or meh. Unless you're using really good chicken meat, I feel that there's no point to adding that extra chicken wrapping. Ok then, moving on...

So far so good...

Looks like meat loaf, lol (and why is my hand so brown?)

Phew, all wrapped up!

Oh well, time to steam it!

The chou farci turned out to be bigger than I had anticipated... I couldn't even wrap the bacon around it, lol. Thinking back, I should have made two smaller ones.

There's water in the pan. You just can't see it, lol

Steaming...

Wow, so much water in the plate...

And it's done!

Now it's time to taste!

If you recall the ingredients I listed way up above, I mentioned saving the water/stock that's left over from boiling the scallops. I poured that over the freshly-steamed chou farci (after I had scooped out the excess water from the plate). I also sprinkled black pepper over the top like in the anime.

Wow, it actually held its shape, somewhat!

And... it's actually not bad! The chicken mousse is surprisingly tasty!  The dried scallops really elevated the dish, I think. The chicken mousse tasted sweet because of it. (Using cream instead of milk must have helped too.) Pity that I couldn't really taste the dried mushrooms. (I wonder if I had soaked them for too long?) And then I remembered that I forgot to add salt and pepper when cooking/blending... AAAAGH, a missed opportunity for even greater taste!! (I added soy sauce later, but it's still not good enough!)

There was also not enough bacon... Next time I should use more bacon.

Looks like the Assassin's Creed logo but upside down, lol

And I guess that's it. I've finally cooked a passable chou farci! Now I can conclude this long overdue blog post of (not)Shinomiya's chou farci! It's significantly better than my previous attempts, so that's one step ahead. There's still room for improvement though, so I have some ideas for my next attempt.(Whenever that may be.)

Next time I'll just use one mushroom, (I didn't expect the mushrooms to swell so much in size after rehydrating them) and in turn, use less asparagus. This way, I can taste more of the chicken mousse. I may even add a dried oyster to complete the trinity of expensive dried Chinese ingredients, lol.

And more bacon. Everything's better with more bacon. And don't forget the salt and pepper!!