What the 'Tourte'

A tourte is defined as a covered round pie consisting of a short flaky crust or puff pastry that can be savoury or sweet. Wrapping a shortcrust or puff pastry helps retain the moisture of the filling. Tourtes have lost their major roles as classic entrees or deserts in the culinary world to fancier versions such as en croutes, vol- au vent and pies. 

Lately tourte has taken a comfortable place on the menu and here's how my favourite of them all is done at the restaurant.

For the chicken tourte: First, the poultry is first cured with salt overnight, then deboned. The silver veins on the leg of the chicken are then removed before getting diced into cubes. 

On the other hand, the breast meat of the chicken is blended into a paste before getting pushed through a sieve to remove any remaining veins and also to get a fine smooth farce. The farce is seasoned with pepper, cream, chicken jus before diced foie gras is added. 

Then, they are portioned accordingly and wrapped in cling film to form a shape of a ball. After spending some time in the fridge to allow the farce to set, they are wrapped in blanched spinach and puff pastry. 

It may seem like whole lot of work but the end product is just amazing. Whenever we have this on the menu i'll get lots of 'love' from my colleagues hoping to get a hand on any leftover tourtes from the service.

Chicken Pate and foie gras, portioned and moulded into balls 

wrap them in spinach before wrapping in puff pastry to avoid having the juices from the pate from soaking the crust

I did a different tourte with unagi and foie gras for our lunch menu 

Scallop Mousse + Chopped Unagi

Cover in Scallop Mousse

Wrap in spinach 

At the restaurant, we use hand made puff pastry to encase the filling.

Make sure there are no air pockets when sealing to avoid having a  large cavity in the tourte after baking 

Make an insertion of "chimneys" on top to allow steam to escape during baking, keeping the pastry crust from turning damp or soggy and to also avoid the seams to burst from the pressure during cooking. The surface is scored with a paring knife for presentation purposes

Baked Tourte should be given time to rest before cutting to allow the pate to reabsorb the juices released during cooking

Duck Foie Gras Tourte + Watercress (Made with roughly minced duck pate)

Pigeon and Foie Gras Tourte

Three Way Corn Fed Chicken - Sous Vide Breast + Roasted Leg + Seared Foie Gras + Chicken Tourte

Unagi Foie Gras Tourte