Tender quail suprême, calamari and tiger prawns on puff pastry with petite corn lettuce, squid-ink coulis and persillade

Name: Tender quail suprême, calamari and tiger prawns on puff pastry with petite corn lettuce, squid-ink coulis and persillade
Yield: Serves 8
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1 bottle dry white wine; 2 x 4 g packets squid-ink paste or powder (most delis stock this); 50 g butter; olive oil; 4 tablespoons finely chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons finely crushed garlic; juice of half a lemon; 320 g butter (salted); water for sprinkling; 8 squares puff pastry (see BASICS) cut 7 cm x 7 cm, 1 cm thick; 1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped; 1 celery stick, washed and finely chopped; shells and heads of prawns; 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped; 1 tin tomato pulp; 1 small head of garlic, cloves separated and crushed; 8 quail suprêmes (deboned breasts with wing attached); 400 g tenderised calamari steaks, cut into ½ cm strips; 2 egg yolks; 250 g corn (mâche) lettuce, washed; 16 medium tiger prawns, cleaned and butterflied (keep all heads and shells, remove tails as well)

Preparation info

Serves
8

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Feast

By Franck Dangereux

Published 2004

About

I like to call this one of La Colombe’s ‘surf-and-turf combos’. It is a magnificent mix of delicate sea and earth flavours. Corn lettuce complements the dish because it is completely sweet, with no sharpness or bitterness. The French nickname for it is doucette.

Ingredients

8 squares puff pastry (see BASICS) cut 7 cm x 7 cm, 1 cm thick
water for sprinkling
2 egg yolks

Method

The word suprême in this case describes a quail breast that has been deboned, but still has the wing bone attached. It’s best to buy four partially deboned quails (the chest bones have been removed so the birds are almost flat), then separate the legs and the breast/wing sections. Keep the legs aside to serve as an aperitif – simply fry them in hot oil, adding persillade and salt when they are