We challenged Chris Morocco to recreate chef Wolfgang Puck's chicken pot pie recipe in the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. The catch? He’s doing it blindfolded with with only his other senses to guide him.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Jesse, and I'm in the BA Test Kitchen
00:02to have a super secret conversation about Chris Morocco.
00:05Once again, we're putting Chris's
00:07super tasting abilities to the test.
00:09This is Wolfgang Puck's chicken pot pie.
00:12I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish
00:14using old ingredients in just one day.
00:16He'll be able to taste it, touch it, and smell it,
00:19but at no point will he be able to see this dish.
00:22At the end of the day,
00:23we'll come back to see his final creation,
00:26and I'll be the judge.
00:30♪♪
00:38♪♪
00:42It honestly does smell a bit like French toast,
00:45like eggy.
00:46Oh, wow.
00:47This, like, profoundly domed situation here,
00:51there's kind of, like, a flake to it.
00:53It almost has the aroma of puff pastry.
00:57This, like, wonderful, deep, toasty,
01:00dairy-intense richness.
01:03Is this, like, a lid that needs to be kind of undomed?
01:07Oh, wow.
01:09I'm getting a lot of butter,
01:11and I'm getting a lot of flour.
01:13The open, airy construction of this thing
01:16is just wild to behold.
01:19That is really cool.
01:21Inside is where it takes, like, a decidedly savory turn.
01:24It's gonna sound crazy.
01:25It sort of smells a little bit like pot pie filling.
01:27Ha.
01:29It's pretty hot, so I just want to, like, let it cool down
01:32and see if I can separate out any of these components in here.
01:36I seem to be tasting chicken.
01:39All right, definitely a pearl onion.
01:41Baby peas.
01:43I f***ing love a pea.
01:45Expecting to find a carrot in here.
01:47I'm not finding a carrot.
01:50Found my carrot. Okay.
01:52There's a lusciousness to this sauce,
01:54like a meat-based broth,
01:56sort of bound and thickened with flour or roux in some way.
02:01So, other things that I'm thinking about,
02:03herbs, fresh thyme or something,
02:05maybe just a touch of brightness to this,
02:08like a touch of white wine.
02:09Just want to make sure, like,
02:10there isn't mushroom or something like that.
02:14I think it's just the papery skin of the onion,
02:16but there just feels so, like, weird and gelatinous here.
02:21Like, the thought that comes to mind
02:23is that it's, like, almost like a thin shaving of truffle,
02:26and yet it has, like, no apparent flavor to it.
02:31The flavors here are very right-down-the-middle
02:33chicken pot pie.
02:35Yeah, we're gonna need to talk about this.
02:38So, working title is pot pie.
02:41We've got a dough component,
02:42a dough that can skew sweet or savory,
02:44like really eggy and not flaky
02:47in the way that puff pastry is.
02:49AP flour, butter, eggs, salt,
02:53and then I've got the pot pie element.
02:55Chicken thighs, broth, maybe, like, a fresh thyme,
03:00white wine.
03:05All right, this is what I've got so far.
03:07So, where my brain is glitching,
03:09if I kept tasting a piece of, like, weird onion skin,
03:14it's a really specific thing to think,
03:16oh, this is a piece of truffle,
03:19and yet I don't taste anything.
03:22That's my list.
03:23Somebody's gonna go out and shop for me,
03:25and then I'm gonna have my first attempt at the dish.
03:32I can never figure out
03:33what the right order of operations is.
03:36I was gonna punt on the plan and just start with the peas,
03:39and then sort of build outward from there.
03:41Also, I have a thing about baby peas.
03:44If you just let them defrost in water,
03:46they don't get that kind of, like, wrinkly, dried-out skin.
03:49Great.
03:50I'm gonna start with the filling here
03:51in the hope that I can get our vegetables
03:53and our chicken cooked in about the same amount of time
03:56it takes to make our pastry.
03:59I went for the chicken thigh
04:00because I just felt like I was getting some, like, pieces
04:03that felt a little bit irregular to me,
04:05whereas if you do chicken breasts,
04:06chances are it's gonna be more like cubes.
04:09I've often seen people use, like, pre-cooked chicken,
04:13like, shred them, and then throw it in.
04:16Get our onions going.
04:18So, I want generously salted water.
04:20So, we're gonna blanch those onions,
04:22get them cooked before they go into our sauce.
04:25I wanna cook these till they're tender.
04:27I'm making roux.
04:28So, as soon as the butter is melted,
04:30I'm gonna put in some flour.
04:32We want, ultimately, a pretty tight mixture.
04:34Like, we want a thick sauce
04:36that really drapes over these vegetables.
04:38Oh, gosh, that's getting dark fast
04:39while I'm, like, yammering on.
04:41A little darker than I wanted.
04:43Let's get our broth in it and keep going.
04:45I'm gonna go for half of this,
04:47so that's about two cups.
04:49White wine.
04:50In the original dish,
04:52there was, like, a little bit of a lift to those flavors.
04:55So, I wanna get it nice and bubbly,
04:58fully activate the starch.
05:00Let me just get some salt in here.
05:02Thyme.
05:03This is gonna give us, like, a pretty good base.
05:06This doesn't taste amazing, but it tastes like something.
05:09I wanna end up in a place
05:10that's, like, a little bit thicker than where we are now,
05:12but at the point at which the chicken
05:14and the vegetables feel tender to me.
05:16Hit this with a little bit of black pepper,
05:18and we can let it roll, gentle simmer.
05:22It is time to make some pastry.
05:25The experience of eating the pastry
05:27felt a lot closer to a super egg-forward preparation.
05:33I'm thinking about something in the paprizee world.
05:37Paprizee is a shortcrust pastry,
05:40something akin to pie dough,
05:42but rather than using water to hydrate it, it uses egg.
05:46The egginess, the eggy aromas of the pastry,
05:49this approach is the one
05:52that seems to make the most sense to me.
05:54Just wanna shape the dough,
05:56get it integrated without overworking it, hopefully.
05:59This is looking good.
06:02This is a great time to just make sure
06:04any bits of dry flour are incorporated,
06:06so that can hydrate and chill.
06:09I'm just gonna drain off these onions.
06:14That is just objectively jammy.
06:17Was that the texture of the onion skin you were taking?
06:19Absolutely not.
06:20In the original dish, there was a very thin slice
06:22of something that had just a tiny bit of texture around it,
06:25shaggy, firm edge around the exterior.
06:29Even if you look at the roughest bit,
06:32I'm certainly not getting that from these onions.
06:35The chicken is cooked through.
06:37It is wanting to kind of break apart,
06:39so honestly, maybe we're in okay shape here.
06:42Keep this going another 10 minutes or so,
06:45and then cool it down.
06:46I don't want it going into a baking vessel, ripping hot.
06:51It's just gonna heat up the vessel,
06:52which is then gonna start to melt the dough.
06:54Onions are gonna go in, drain the peas off.
06:58I wanna discard thyme.
07:01With that mixture getting cold,
07:02it really wants to coat these elements,
07:04so I'm feeling okay about filling,
07:07less great about dough in a perfect world.
07:09It would have chilled for at least an hour.
07:12That allows the dough to relax
07:14and fully hydrates the flour and gets it cold.
07:18The only way that it makes sense
07:20to have the dough experience that I had
07:23would be to essentially almost put more of a liquid batter
07:27on top of the chicken mixture.
07:31So the path is now gonna diverge, okay?
07:33I'm gonna do two approaches to a pastry topper.
07:37One is gonna be topped by the pate brisee,
07:39which is currently cooling in the freezer.
07:41Other is gonna be topped by a kind of like a savory
07:44sort of Dutch baby kind of type batter,
07:48and we're gonna see what happens
07:50when that type of liquid batter
07:52cooks directly on top of the pot pie.
07:54We're gonna find out here.
07:56We're gonna settle this once and for all.
07:59A Dutch baby, there's no chemical leavener in it.
08:02It all works based on the ability of the egg
08:06to incorporate air into it.
08:09It's building volume.
08:10That trapped air expands in the oven
08:14into like all kinds of like kind of crazy puffy shapes.
08:17So flour and salt are gonna go in.
08:20I've got my melted butter.
08:24I don't know.
08:25I don't hate it.
08:26Okay, dough is out of the freezer.
08:28I'm gonna start to roll it out.
08:30It's not entirely hydrated and not entirely chilled,
08:33but it's gonna be great.
08:36So I just wanna trace around this.
08:37I wanna give myself like enough of an edge for it to adhere.
08:41Pot pie filling is going in to each.
08:45So this is our pate brisee version.
08:47I wanna really clamp this pastry down onto it.
08:51So now I'm gonna brush egg wash onto it,
08:53which is gonna help it develop really nice color
08:56and turn crisp.
08:59It feels really wrong to put this on that.
09:02So Dutch baby floater here, pate brisee there.
09:06Going into a hot oven, 425.
09:10We want steam.
09:12We want transformation.
09:14We want like a hot temperature
09:16to sort of push things up and out.
09:19Let's take a look.
09:20Good color on both.
09:22It's so interesting,
09:23because you know these doughs
09:25could not be more different really.
09:27This obviously has so much more egg proportionately,
09:31and the pate brisee has so much more fat.
09:34It doesn't create a very extensible dough, right?
09:36It's not a dough that you can bend
09:39the same way that you might with like puff pastry.
09:41The dough just sank.
09:43It didn't have enough elasticity.
09:45Obviously like this is a bit of a fail, right?
09:48I'm very intrigued by the Dutch baby topper here.
09:51The color is good.
09:52The rise was really good.
09:54The Dutch baby approach is feeling more solid of the two.
09:58All right, here is my first attempt at the dish.
10:01Even though we all know there was another attempt,
10:04but we're not gonna talk about that anymore.
10:06There's no way to really sort of say
10:08this is 100% the right way to go
10:10until I pop this top and see what's happening
10:12in the undercarriage, you know?
10:14The dough definitely is not as good as the original.
10:17A little tough and a little rubbery.
10:19We lost a good bit of our sauciness
10:21looking a little dry in here.
10:22The pate brisee, you know,
10:23I think we decided we're gonna move away from,
10:25but that's a really nice cook.
10:27Obviously it lacks the drama,
10:29but the dough's a good bit more tender, melts in the mouth.
10:34It's making me reconsider the Dutch baby approach.
10:37I mean, I'm thrilled that a Dutch baby topper
10:39can theoretically work.
10:41I just don't think I have the right batter.
10:44Let's talk scores.
10:45So for ingredients, 80.
10:48Technique, 75.
10:51Appearance, gonna be 80.
10:53Flavor, I'm sort of back down to more of like a 70.
10:59The filling is a little bit heavier on wine and time
11:03than it needs to be.
11:04All right, actual scores coming in.
11:07Woof, 65.
11:10Not entirely surprised.
11:11I don't know.
11:12I mean, I think I'm like really counting
11:14on the second tasting to reveal
11:16the inner truth of this dish.
11:18Second tasting, here we go.
11:21Mm, okay.
11:26All right, so we've got like, you know,
11:27some dramatic rise above.
11:30What the f*** is that?
11:32Were these always on here?
11:34Like even in the first one?
11:35Well, this is our thin shaved element, right?
11:39Definitely giving me thinly shaved truffle.
11:42I would have expected the flavor and aroma to be stronger.
11:46The dough is kind of pinned down
11:48to the outside of the vessel.
11:51It's quite a dramatic kind of puff to it.
11:56It's possible that this is just store-bought puff pastry.
11:59It's buttery, it's tender.
12:01It does what you want it to do.
12:03One thing that really strikes me is like
12:04the level of filling is up to the rim.
12:08Definitely getting a little more truffle aroma
12:10than I was before.
12:11Truffle acting in concert with cream.
12:15I don't think the chicken was seared
12:17or cooked outside of liquid.
12:20I think it's just kind of like
12:21that kind of connective tissue and things with it.
12:25Just overall, I think I'm getting more richness.
12:27Just wondering if there could be like onion or shallot
12:30as part of like the savory base to this.
12:34Maybe it's like the pearl onions
12:35just need to cook into this sucker.
12:38Ship it.
12:40Slightly amended group of ingredients.
12:43Obviously, most notably puff pastry and black truffle.
12:48Summer truffle.
12:49Yeah, exactly.
12:51Like it smells like a truffle
12:52but there's almost like a high note.
12:55It's not as funky and deep.
12:57A truffle undeniably has like incredible power
13:01and used as a pretext to charge people a lot of money.
13:05Having someone kind of cruise by
13:09and like for like $125,
13:13like it's not the world I'm living in.
13:16A key difference from last time
13:18is I'm gonna sweat out some onion with the butter
13:21to develop a really nice base of savory flavor
13:24before the flour goes in this time.
13:26It got a little dark last time.
13:29Temperature is much more moderate this time.
13:31Color difference should be minimal.
13:34My working theory is that Stevie knew
13:38I was gonna balls up the first attempt.
13:40So she didn't even bother
13:42to get me the good chicken stock for it.
13:44She gave me the box stuff.
13:46But now she's giving me the like homemade rich,
13:49just almost like verging on gelatinous, you know?
13:52I don't know.
13:53This is like kind of against my better judgment
13:55to just put these onions in.
13:57Stick in with chicken thighs.
13:58Carrot, salt.
14:00I'm gonna kind of just let this go at a slow roll,
14:03let the chicken cook out, see where we're at.
14:07This has probably been 35, 40 minutes here.
14:10Carrots are tender.
14:12Onions are tender,
14:13but to some, you know,
14:15I wanna put in a little bit of cream
14:18and I'm gonna put in the truffle.
14:21This is a truffle shaver.
14:22It's really good at cutting through
14:25the knobby, craggy exterior.
14:27So I don't wanna overdo it, but I mean, we are here.
14:31So peas, truffle, and cream are in.
14:36Would have been good with the white wine,
14:37but it's fine, we're here.
14:40All right, so we're gonna use store-bought puff pastry.
14:44There was such a dramatic puff to this dish
14:46that the only way to get this substantively thicker
14:49would have been to fold the two halves together
14:51and then re-roll it, which we could have done,
14:52but I don't know, that seemed maybe excessive.
14:57So we're gonna go pretty full here.
15:01One of them, I might use a little bit of egg wash
15:03around the rim and hopefully form
15:05a pretty nice seal for me.
15:07Making the vent, doing a wash,
15:10in at 425, and see how we do.
15:15Part of the deal with puff pastry
15:17is that air gaps are created between the layers of dough
15:23as water from the butter evaporates,
15:26allowing it to kind of puff up and open up.
15:30We're bubbling deep burnished brown
15:32a click farther than it probably needed to.
15:35Obviously kind of missing the dome here.
15:37Fresh shavings of truffle over the top.
15:40Final attempt at the dish.
15:42Got great rise on the puff, great color, no dome.
15:46So ingredients, my actual was a 66.
15:50Let's be bold and say that maybe we pulled this up to an 80.
15:55Technique-wise, maybe we pulled this up to an 81.
15:58For appearance, significant difference here.
16:02We were at 57, maybe we're now at like 75.
16:07Taste, I guess we'll see.
16:08My judge is Jesse Shefchak.
16:11Jesse calls him like he sees him,
16:13and I don't know, maybe not the easiest judge in the world.
16:18Hey Jesse, how's it going?
16:20Good.
16:21Are you ready?
16:22I don't know if I'm ready,
16:23but I feel like you probably heard me talking
16:25about what I thought the dish might be earlier
16:28and probably got very nervous.
16:30You ended a lot better than you started.
16:32That is true.
16:33There was an evolution here, not a devolution.
16:36Are you ready to see it?
16:36Yeah, yeah.
16:38May I present to you Wolfgang Puck's Chicken Pot Pie.
16:42Wolfgang!
16:44It looks a little different.
16:45What the hell is that though?
16:47Does he do like a stack of puff?
16:50Like what has he done here?
16:52It is a stack.
16:53This looks good.
16:55Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:56It looks different.
16:57I wanted to see if I could get it to puff,
16:59but then counterintuitively to me,
17:02on the second attempt, I found that there was a vent
17:05and I was like, well, how do you vent it
17:07and get it to dome?
17:09And I think the short answer is you don't.
17:11Yeah, there's no vent here.
17:13It makes sense why you did that to me
17:14because you're trying to cook the pastry,
17:15but I think maybe it like worked against the lift almost.
17:18Like it collapsed in on itself.
17:20Given that it's Wolfgang Puck,
17:21I feel like I'm probably missing some ingredients in here.
17:24I know you used heavy cream.
17:25He uses creme fraiche
17:27to kind of reinforce the truffle.
17:30He seasons the filling with oil,
17:32which I know you're gonna hate.
17:35I already know, I know everything he's thinking right now.
17:38It has like a synthetic taste almost.
17:42There's also one other ingredient you missed.
17:43It's very old school.
17:44Okay.
17:45White pepper.
17:47Oh, that is like so French.
17:49It's so old school.
17:50It's so annoying.
17:51We don't want to add black specks
17:54to something that's white,
17:55but we want to taste pepper.
17:57Even though like white pepper has that kind of like-
18:01It's like funky.
18:02Funky, pukey, doesn't meld as well
18:06with like understated Mediterranean cuisine.
18:09I agree.
18:10The first thing, as I know,
18:12that you used the stock on the second round.
18:14Yes.
18:15So Wolfgang, again, very chef-y,
18:17takes stock and then reinforces it again
18:21with more veggies, more chicken.
18:23Let's let simmer for two hours
18:25and those veggies are discarded,
18:27but the chicken is used in the pot pie.
18:29He also pre-cooks his carrots and his onions,
18:33like in butter.
18:34With water pulled down?
18:36Just butter.
18:37Yeah.
18:38You kind of simplified his process, honestly,
18:41and got to like a very similar result, it appears, so.
18:43I'm curious to taste these side by side.
18:45Should we try them?
18:46Yeah, let's try them.
18:46I feel like you need to destruct it,
18:47because-
18:48Yeah?
18:49Well, I can serve you.
18:53I definitely get trouble.
18:55The cook on the chicken is nice.
18:57It's really tender, it's very shreddy.
18:58I can see why you'd get confused with the pastry, though,
19:00because like here, and it's kind of like a Dutch baby.
19:03It's kind of like custardy.
19:04Yeah, like a popover or something.
19:06Let's try mine.
19:07It's dark, but I feel like it'll taste good.
19:09Yes.
19:10The filling looks very similar.
19:11Yours is like a little more emulsified.
19:14I don't really get any truffle in this one.
19:17The thing that's probably ultimately
19:19flavoring this more is the oil.
19:21Yeah.
19:22Yeah.
19:22It's good.
19:23Overall, I think it changed for the better,
19:25but given my druthers, I would always pre-cook pearl onions.
19:30This is worth a try.
19:31But you know, it's like why we're here, right?
19:33Yeah.
19:33So let's talk scores.
19:34Yes.
19:35Ingredient-wise, I do think you were very close.
19:38I think the only two buckets against you
19:40were the acids and the truffle oil.
19:42Yeah.
19:43You gave yourself an 80,
19:45and I'm also gonna give you an 80.
19:47Okay.
19:48In terms of technique,
19:49your gut was telling you to simplify it.
19:51Yeah.
19:52Which, great.
19:53You gave yourself an 81.
19:54I'll give you another 80.
19:56Appearance-wise, you gave yourself a 75.
20:00I also gave you a 75.
20:01This one's like way darker,
20:03and just like the height and the shape.
20:04Yeah.
20:05For tasting, what would you give yourself
20:08now that you've tried it?
20:09I'd probably go like maybe like more of like 75.
20:13Okay, wow.
20:14I gave you an 84.
20:15Oh, wow.
20:16Yeah.
20:17Okay.
20:17I mean, I think the filling is like such a,
20:18the foundation of this, honestly,
20:20and it tastes very similar.
20:21Just like put some truffle oil in here and a touch of acid,
20:24and it is the same to me.
20:25Yeah.
20:26So final scores.
20:27You gave yourself a 78.
20:29Okay.
20:30I gave you an 80.
20:31I think it's good.
20:33Apart from the pastry, you're really, really close.
20:36This is great.
20:38Cool, thanks man.
20:39I'll go back to my station.
20:40Woo!
20:40I mean, tasting my second attempt,
20:43yes, it was reading like a touch flat.
20:46Crème fraîche, lemon.
20:48You can employ a lot of different techniques
20:51and sometimes even different ingredients,
20:53and ultimately come up with something
20:55that's pretty darn close to the original.
20:57I think you're going to see like Dutch baby pot pie,
21:01Dutch baby pie.
21:03That's weird.
21:04Let's not call it that.
21:05You're going to see something someday.
21:07It's going to be like English roast dinner,
21:09but like casserole.
21:10And like maybe some live blackbirds
21:12are going to fly out of it.
21:15Brush it with a little egg,
21:17and you put your dough right on top.
21:20I can smell it.
21:21Wouldn't you be proud to-
21:23Hold on, hold on, Steve.
21:24Here's what went in.
21:25I want a chicken pot pie on the middle rack,
21:27and smell it.
21:28The magic of television.
21:28Wouldn't you be proud to bring that?
21:30That is not something special.
21:32I don't know what is special.
21:34This is one of-
21:36The culinary producer on that shoot
21:38definitely earned their rate that day, but.