Timbale de Bécasses Nesselrode (Woodcock Timbale Nesselrode)

Ingredients

• woodcocks
• raw foie gras
• game forcemeat with panade and butter
• fine Champagne
• truffles turned to the shape of olives
• fine pastry (pâte fine)
• butter
• sauce Espagnole
• sauce Demi-glace

Instructions

1. Pot-roast the woodcocks, keeping them underdone.
2. Lift the fillets and set them aside; bone the rest.
3. Pound the flesh obtained with a quarter of its weight of raw foie gras and pass it through a sieve.
4. Add an equal weight of game forcemeat made with panade and butter.
5. Add the chopped carcasses and a glass of fine Champagne to the pot-roasting liquor and cook a few minutes; strain.
6. Cook 150 grammes of truffles turned to the shape of olives in this liquor, for an ordinary timbale.
7. Line a buttered charlotte mould with fine pastry.
8. Garnish the bottom and sides with the prepared forcemeat.
9. Dress the escaloped woodcock fillets along this forcemeat.
10. Fill the centre with the truffles and cover them with a few spoonfuls of sauce Espagnole reduced with part of the fumet.
11. Complete with a layer of forcemeat and close the timbale with a sheet of pastry.
12. Bake three quarters of an hour in a moderate oven.
13. To serve, turn out onto the dish and surround with a few spoonfuls of sauce Demi-glace with the rest of the fumet added.
14. Serve a sauceboat of the same sauce separately.