French Provincial Cooking (15 page)

 

Mouvette
Wooden spoon for stirring sauces.

 

Panier à friture
Wire frying basket for deep frying of potatoes, fish, etc.

 

Panier à salade
Wire salad basket for shaking lettuce and other green salad dry after washing it.

 

Passoire
Sieve, colander.

 

Pilon
Pestle.

 

Plafond
A shallow rectangular baking or roasting tin or baking sheet.

 

Planche a découper
Carving board, usually made of beechwood, with a channel or groove for catching the juices which run out when the meat is cut.

 

Planche à hacher
A chopping board. It should be at least an inch thick with no central join. One of the most essential objects in any kitchen, however modest. It should always be kept conveniently to hand. When it has been scrubbed (butchers chopping boards are scraped, never scrubbed) do not put it by the fire or in any other hot place to dry or it will warp. The board in the drawing on page 237 is a typical French one.

Planche à pâtisserie
Pastry board.

Plaque a pâtisserie
A baking sheet.

Plaque à rôtir
Shallow copper, iron or tin baking dish in which a grid will stand, and in which joints or birds are roasted in the oven.

Plat à gratin
Shallow metal, tinned copper, fireproof china, enamelled cast-iron or earthenware dish, oval or round, which exposes a large area of the food to be cooked to the top heat of the oven or grill so that a light crust is formed on the top.

Platine
Small plaque (see above).

Poêle à frire
Frying-pan.

Poêle à crêpes
Small, very shallow iron frying-pan for pancakes.

Poêle à friture
Deep-frying pan.

Poêle à œufs
A small metal, fireproof china, enamelled cast-iron or earthenware dish, with side-handles or ears, in which eggs are cooked and served; e.g.
œufs sur le plat
, the French version of fried eggs. Earthenware, however rustically attractive it may look, is unsatisfactory for this purpose. The eggs stick, and the dish becomes very difficult to clean.

Poêle à omelette
Omelette pan. The sloping inner sides of the pan facilitate the sliding out of the cooked omelette on to the serving dish. Although omelette pans should always be heavy with an absolutely flat base, there exists nowadays such a variety of these pans made of enamelled cast-iron, heavy aluminium, copper, etc., which can be washed and kept clean like any other pan, that they are replacing the old iron omelette pans which have to be kept greased and not washed because of the danger of rust. Many cooks, however, insist upon the old iron omelette pans, for all manner of superstitious beliefs surround the very simple process of cooking an omelette. Anyhow, it is certainly an asset to every household to possess two omelette pans, a 10-inch pan for 3- or 4-egg omelettes for two people, and a 6-inch pan for a 2-egg omelette for one person.

Poêlon
A small earthenware or metal frying or sauté pan with a handle; deeper than an ordinary frying-pan, and often with rounded sides sloping to a small flat base.

 

Poêlon à sucre
Untinned copper sugar-boiling saucepan.

Poissonnière
Fish kettle.

Ramequin
Diminutive fireproof porcelain or glass cocotte or ramekin in which individual souffiés or cheese creams (
ramequins au fromage
) are cooked and served. See also Cocotte (
b
).

 

Ravier
A shallow boat-shaped china dish for hors-d’œuvre. The most suitable dish for the serving of the simple hors-d’œuvre of French household meals, such as olives, radishes, butter, sardines, potato salad and egg mayonnaise.

Rondin
A round stew-pan with two handles and a close-fitting lid. Also called
a fait-tout.

Rouleau
Rolling pin. To do its work efficiently a rolling pin should be plumb straight. French boxwood (
buis
) pins are good, and a patented French pin, ridged and on ball bearings is marvellously effective for puff and croissant pastry. This pin, called a Tutove, is horribly expensive. The price does not deter French professional pastry cooks and cookery school teachers from buying the Tutove in considerable quantities.

Saladier
Salad bowl. The most characteristic French salad bowl is in plain white china, deep and round (see the drawing on page 129) or with squared corners. The enormous wooden bowls so popular here are seldom seen in France, except in rough wood for mixing bowls (called
sébilles
). When a recipe tells you to turn something into a
saladier
to set or to cool, it simply means that a large china vessel, such as a mixing bowl, should be used.

 

Salamandre
(
a
) A round iron utensil with a long handle, also called a
fer
à
glacer
and a
pelle rouge.
The iron is made red hot and held close to the surface of a dish the top of which is by this means instantaneously browned, without the possibility of the main body of the dish being overheated and therefore altering in any way in consistency. These utensils are now all but obsolete, at any rate in England, and so far as I know nothing has yet been devised to replace them in the domestic kitchen.

(
b
) A grill with a very rapid action serving the same purpose as the old-fashioned salamander. Grills on household cookers do not usually, however, work in this manner, and when trying to obtain a good browned or glazed surface on the top of a dish you simply have to allow for the fact that the rest of the contents will go on cooking.

Sauteuse
A heavy and shallow straight-sided saucepan with a handle, in which small cuts of meat, vegetables, etc., are
sauté,
or tossed (or jumped as the dictionary says) in butter or other fat. The idea is that during the cooking you shake the pan to prevent the food from sticking.
Sautoir,
Casserole à sauter, Plat à sauter
Much the same as a
sauteuse,
except that technically the
sautoir
is supposed to have outwardly sloping sides. In fact the terms are entirely interchangeable. Few English kitchens seem to possess sauté pans, and while it is true that a good heavy frying-pan is a reasonable substitute, there are well-designed and inexpensive sauté pans in the shops, and they are most useful in any kitchen. (See also
Casserole
.)

Soupière
Soup tureen.

Spatule
Spatula or palette knife.

Tamis de crin
A hair sieve on a wooden frame. Hair sieves are now mostly replaced, not very satisfactorily, by nylon.

Terrine
Strictly speaking, an earthenware cooking pot, of varying dimensions, round or oval, without handles, but often with ears. Fairly deep, and if there is a lid this is pierced with a hole for the escape of steam during cooking. The name of the utensil has also come to mean the food cooked in it, e.g.
terrine de gibier
is a game pâté cooked in an earthenware or other fireproof dish, and a pâté en
terrine
indicates that the pâté concerned has been cooked and is served in the terrine rather than in a crust, which would properly be a pâté
en croûte.
Also, when one is told by cookery books to pour something into a terrine, this simply indicates that a china or glazed earthenware, rather than a metal, recipient must be used.