Sweetbread with mushrooms

An advantage of our local butcher, who visits the village each Friday in his van, is that he offers from time-to-time products that he does not always carry.

So it was that he had some sweetbread, ris-de-veau, that looked very decent.

We had been experimenting with some readymade fillings for pastries (vol au vent) but sweetbread is what ought to go into such a “salpicon” or “godiveau”.

The trick with sweetbread is to clean it properly.

cut-up sweetbread

For this you put it in cold water for several hours and change the water from time to time. You “blanch” it in slightly simmering water with some lemon juice or vinegar.

Then you let it cool, dry it, press it slightly to remove excess liquid and then you peel away the membranes and cut or tear it into small pieces.

I had some “fond de veau” in the freezer, a rich veal sauce base I made months ago.

I had bought some white mushroom that I had quartered and put that in a skillet with a large nob of butter.

When they started to brown, I added a glass of white wine and let it reduce and then I added the fond and the sweetbread pieces and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.

In another pan, I had melted butter, added flour, and stirred into a gluey mass to which I added cream and pepper on a very low flame so that it could thicken into a cream.

I added some Spanish pepper powder (pimenton de la vera) and combined the cream with the meat and mushrooms and served it over pasta.

sweetbread and mushrooms in sauce

Ingredients

• One sweetbread
• 150 gr of capped white mushrooms
• One glass of wine
• A quart of cream
• 50 gr of white flour
• 200 gr of butter
• Fond de veau (optional, can be replaced with beef or mushroom stock powder)

with cream