Vol-au-Vent — The Crust That Holds When Everything Else Is Soft

Sven and I made our morning circuit — kitchen, back hallway, front porch, lakefront walk, kitchen again, breakfast for both of us. The same circuit every day for years. The repetition is its own grace. There are people who would find such a routine unbearable, and there are people who would find it salvific. I am the second kind. The routine is the rope I hold in the dark, and the rope is what gets me from one end of a day to the other. Mamma's hands shake more than they did last month. I do not point it out. I notice. I notice everything. The shake is small — barely visible when she is at rest, more visible when she lifts her coffee cup, most visible when she is trying to thread a needle. She still threads needles. She still bakes. She still calls me on Tuesdays at 10. The hands shake. The shaking does not stop the doing. The doing is what Mamma is. Karin and I talked Sunday. Stockholm in winter is dark. Duluth in winter is dark. We compared darknesses. We laughed. Karin said: "Linda, do you remember the time Pappa drove us to Two Harbors in a blizzard because Mamma wanted lutefisk?" I said yes. The story unspooled across the phone for twenty minutes. I had forgotten half of it. Karin remembered all of it. The memory was, briefly, complete between us. I cooked Chicken pot pie this week. Whole chicken poached for stock and meat. Pie crust made with butter and lard (half and half — the lard makes it flaky, the butter makes it taste good). Diced potato, carrot, peas, pearl onions, the shredded chicken in a white roux thickened with the chicken stock and milk. Topped with a lid of crust. Baked until the crust is gold and the filling bubbles through the slits. The Damiano Center: the regular Thursday. The soup is the soup. The conversations are the conversations. The week is held by the Thursday. I do not know what I would do without the Thursday. The Thursday is the structural element of the week. The structural element does not collapse if the rest of the week goes sideways. The Thursday holds. The lake was iron gray. The kind of gray Paul loved. He used to say: "That is the gray that means weather is coming." He was always right. I miss being told. I miss being told what the lake means by a man who knew what the lake meant. I have learned to read the lake on my own. I am, at this point, an adequate reader. I am not as good as Paul was. I am better than I would have been if I had not had to learn. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. The phone rings less than it used to. Not because fewer people are calling, but because the people who call are mostly the family, and the family has settled into a rhythm — Peter daily, Anna twice a week, Sophie weekly, Elsa biweekly, Karin Sundays, Astrid Sundays. The phone rings predictably. I pick up predictably. The predictability is the love at this stage of life. It is enough.

The pot pie I made this week was the kind of cooking that does not require thought — only hands and habit, which is exactly what I had to offer. The crust came together the way it always does, and the filling went in, and the whole thing came out of the oven gold and steady. If you want to serve that same filling in individual shells — the kind that feel a little more like an occasion, the kind Mamma might have called festlig — vol-au-vent is the answer. The structure is the same: pastry, cream, chicken, the small vegetables that make it feel like a proper meal. The difference is that each person gets their own shell, their own sealed and golden thing, and there is something right about that this time of year.

Vol-au-Vent

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 sheet (about 14 oz) puff pastry, thawed if frozen
• 1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 small yellow onion, finely diced
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced
• 1 medium carrot, finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 cup whole milk or heavy cream
• 2 cups cooked chicken, shredded or diced (rotisserie or poached)
• 1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/4 teaspoon dried)
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

1. Preheat and prep. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Cut the pastry shells. On a lightly floured surface, roll out puff pastry to about 1/4-inch thickness. Using a 4-inch round cutter, cut 8 circles. Using a 3-inch round cutter, score — but do not cut through — the center of 4 of the circles to create lids. Leave the remaining 4 circles whole as bases.
3. Assemble and bake the shells. Place the 4 whole base circles on the prepared baking sheet. Brush the edges with egg wash and place the scored circles on top, pressing gently to seal. Brush the tops with egg wash, avoiding the scored inner circle. Bake 18–22 minutes until deeply golden and puffed. Remove from oven and let cool slightly, then press the scored center down gently with a spoon to create a hollow for the filling.
4. Make the filling. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and carrot and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and thyme and cook 1 minute more.
5. Build the roux. Sprinkle flour over the vegetables and stir to coat. Cook 1–2 minutes, stirring constantly, until the flour smells faintly nutty. Slowly whisk in the chicken stock, a little at a time, then whisk in the milk or cream. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 4–5 minutes.
6. Finish the filling. Stir in the shredded chicken and peas. Season generously with salt and pepper. Keep warm over low heat.
7. Fill and serve. Spoon the warm chicken filling into each vol-au-vent shell. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately, with the pastry lid resting alongside or set back on top at an angle.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 540 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 31g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 620mg