French Provincial Cooking (44 page)

Enough for two or three people, for it is rather a filling dish.

The blood sausages, or black puddings, of Nancy in Lorraine, are renowned. The usual variety to be bought in England are rather insipid, but for those who make their own or can buy them from a pork butcher who makes them properly flavoured with onions, here is a very excellent recipe.

About 6 oz. of blood sausage is cut into thickish slices which are fried lightly in butter. Chop very finely a couple of shallots and some parsley. Melt this mixture in butter; add it to 6 eggs and beat them lightly with salt and pepper. Using half the eggs make an omelette, turn it out flat on to a hot round dish. On top place the slices of
boudin
. Make another flat omelette with the rest of the eggs, turn it out on top of the sausage, and serve instantly.

In other parts of France I have come across an
omelette campagnarde,
a very similar omelette to the above, made with ordinary pork sausage of the coarsely-cut Toulouse type. It makes a very good lunch dish for two people. The sausage used can be either a cooked or uncooked one; if it is already cooked, skin and slice it and just heat the slices very gently in butter for a few seconds, and proceed as for the
omelette au boudin.

An ordinary folded omelette can also, of course, be made with sausage but, in this case, cut the sausage into rather small cubes.

Scrub, beard and thoroughly clean 1 pint of mussels—small ones when possible. Reject any which are gaping open or broken. Put them in a saucepan with just a little water, and cook over a fast flame until they open, which takes 5 to 7 minutes. Remove each from the pan as soon as it is properly open.

In a mixture of butter and oil melt the finely chopped white part of 1 fairly big leek; add 2 skinned, roughly chopped tomatoes and seasonings of freshly milled pepper, a little salt, a scrap of garlic if you like. Let all this cook until it is quite thick. Put in the shelled mussels and moisten with a few drops of their stock, filtered through a fine cloth. Add plenty of chopped parsley. This filling is added to the omelette when the eggs are already in the pan, and makes enough for two, or even three, 2-egg omelettes.

First prepare a
beurre maître-d’hôtel
by working together a tablespoon of butter, a little chopped parsley, salt and lemon juice. Then in a small saucepan heat for a minute or two, in butter, a heaped tablespoon of tunny fish drained from its oil and mixed with a scrap of garlic, about half a chopped shallot, and freshly-ground pepper. While butter to cook the omelette is heating in the omelette pan, put the
beurre maître-d’hôtel
on to a warmed omelette dish. As soon as the eggs are in the pan add to them the tunny preparation. Turn the completed omelette out on top of the
maître-d’hôtel
butter, which should by now be just melting, and eat it at once. Proportions for a 3- or 4-egg omelette.

What, it may be asked, is to be done with the rest of the tin of tunny fish? The omelette is so good that perhaps it will be wanted to make another next day; or it can be pounded up and stirred into a mayonnaise for hard-boiled eggs; or added to a rice stuffing for peppers, or to a risotto; but don’t spoil the omelette by adding another ha’porth of tunny fish just to finish it up.

Wash a few sorrel leaves, not more than a handful. Chop them very fine. Melt them in butter; add a little salt; cook 4 or 5 minutes. Add this mixture to the omelette when it is already in the pan. One of the nicest of omelettes.

Périgord truffles are more highly prized than those of the Vaucluse, for they have a more powerful scent. There is, however, quite an important truffle market in the Vaucluse, of which the highly interesting little town of Carpentras is the centre.

In a village not far from Carpentras the local truffle hunter (he used a trained dog to sniff them out, not pigs as they do in the Périgord) who used occasionally to sell me two or three imperfect truffles for what amounted to a pittance compared to what he got on the Carpentras market for good specimens, told me that the proper way to make a truffle omelette is first to break your eggs into a bowl, then add your truffle, neither peeled nor cooked, but well scrubbed, and cut into fine rounds; cover the bowl and leave for several hours. By the time you come to beat up the eggs and make your omelette the eggs are beautifully scented with the truffle, and the minute or so which they spend in the pan with the eggs is quite sufficient to cook them.

Although in England the exact method of cooking a truffle omelette is not of very great moment, since we cannot buy fresh truffles, the truffle hunter’s system is all the same of some interest because I have never seen it mentioned in any cookery book, and the omelettes made in this way have a much better flavour than those one usually gets in restaurants. Like many such small culinary details, it is a question of putting one’s observations to practical use. For the truffle, from the moment it is dug out of the ground, starts giving off its powerful scent, which slowly loses its potency. Eggs, on the other hand, have a unique capacity for absorbing scents; therefore lose no time in putting your truffles and your eggs together, and the result will be a truffle omelette made under the best possible auspices.

For scrambled eggs, unlike those for an omelette, the eggs should be very well beaten, and it is an improvement to extract 1 white in every 4. For the rest, everybody has his own method, which is invariably the only right and proper one. Mine is to melt a very large lump of butter in a thick non-sticking saucepan, add the well-seasoned and beaten eggs, and stir over a low flame until they start to thicken. At this stage, add another lump of butter, and take the saucepan from the fire as soon as the first characteristic granules begin to appear. Go on stirring, because the eggs will continue to cook simply with the heat from the saucepan. Scrambled eggs should be evenly creamy and granulated, not half liquid and half set. Of course, they must be served at once, in a very hot dish. And eggs for scrambling must be of the most absolute freshness.

As far as French dishes of scrambled eggs are concerned, although one finds quite a variety given in cookery books, the only ones I remember ever having eaten in France (except in houses belonging to English people) were both in the Béarnais country. One was a dish of artichoke hearts filled with very creamy scrambled eggs and surrounded with a freshly made tomato sauce, the other the famous
pipérade,
for which the recipe follows.

Because this concoction of eggs and peppers from the Basque country is one of the most widely travelled of all French regional dishes, it is also one which is frequently misinterpreted. Here is the very simple recipe.

Heat a generous tablespoon of goose or pork dripping or olive oil in a large frying-pan, and in this cook a finely sliced onion until it begins to turn yellow. Add 6 green peppers, core and seeds removed and cut into quite large strips. Cook about 15 minutes before adding 2 lb. of tomatoes, skinned and roughly chopped. Add a little chopped garlic if you like, a pinch of dried basil, salt, and pepper if the mixture needs it. Cook until the tomatoes are almost in a pulp. Add 4 well-beaten eggs. Stir until they begin to thicken, like scrambled eggs, but take the pan from the fire before they have solidified. Serve on a heated omelette dish, with a slice of grilled or fried ham (in the Béarn this would be
Jambon de Bayonne,
and here gammon rashers from the middle or corner cut make a very respectable substitute) per person on the top. Or if something less substantial is needed simply surround the
pipérade
with a few croûtons of fried bread. The strips of green pepper should still retain something of their crispness, and be clearly distinguishable from the main mass. When green peppers are out of season they are sometimes replaced in the Béarn by peppers pickled in vinegar.

To some cooks the making of a soufflé appears to be perfectly effortless, to others a matter of careful measuring, clock watching and nervous anxiety. Those in the first category have certainly, perhaps even without knowing it, mastered the beating of the whites of the eggs to the precise point, and know how to fold them into the main mixture with speed and a light hand, for it is at this point that many a soufflé is foredoomed. The proceeding is as follows:

(1) Failing the special copper bowl which the professionals use for the purpose, at least one large china mixing bowl should be in every kitchen for the beating of egg whites.

(2) Any fat substance present in the whites will prevent them rising, so to start with the bowl itself and the whisk must be scrupulously clean and dry. Then if any of the yolk has slipped into the whites during the separation of the eggs, it must be carefully extracted, using a half-shell as a scoop.

(3) The whites need not be spanking fresh, so that if, say, the yolks have been used for a sauce the whites can be kept in a covered bowl in a larder for 2 or 3 days or in the refrigerator for as long as 5 or 6 days before they are used. But it is not at all advisable to keep them longer than this.

(4) Some cookery books tell you that the whites should be brought into a warm room half an hour before they are to be whipped. I find the exact opposite to be the case. They come up much better if put in the refrigerator for 20 to 30 minutes previous to beating.

(5) For a small quantity of whites, say up to 4 or 5, 1 find a small spiral wire whisk the most satisfactory implement. For a larger quantity a fairly large double-looped wire whisk is better. These implements produce properly aerated whites rather than the too compact mass achieved by many patent whisks and by the electric mixer.

(6) The moment to stop beating is when the eggs are sufficiently stiff and creamy to stand in peaks, and to remain adhering in a point on the top of the whisk when this is held upright. If they are beaten too long they will break when you start folding them into the main mixture and the result will be a soufflé insufficiently risen and grainy in the centre.

(7) Once the whites are ready, fold them without delay into the main mixture. If they are left waiting about there is a risk that they will sink and go watery.

(8) To fold in the whites the process is as follows: The whites, half at a time if the quantity is four or more, are tipped on to the basic mixture, which should be cool or tepid, for if it is very hot the whites will start coagulating before the soufflé gets into the oven. With the left hand rotate the bowl slowly while, with a knife, palette knife or wooden spatula, the whites are gradually incorporated into the main mass, being lifted, folded, lifted and folded again, care being taken that the mixing implement reaches right to the bottom and sides of the mixture. The process should be carried out with speed and thoroughness but with as light a touch as possible. When the folding in has been completed, the whole mixture should have a spongy, almost frothy appearance.

(9) Immediately, before it has time to lose this sponginess, turn the mixture into the utensil in which it is to be cooked; this must instantly be transferred to the preheated oven so that cooking starts without delay. It is a great help, with soufflés, to stand the dish on a baking sheet which has been standing in the oven so that it is already hot. In this way cooking starts from the bottom as well as the top, and the over-liquid layer which sometimes remains at the bottom of an otherwise well-cooked soufflé is avoided. On the other hand a good soufflé should retain a slightly creamy liquidity at its centre, which supplies the soufflé with, as it were, its own sauce.

(10) Although it is now considered essential to have special straight-sided fireproof china or glass dishes for soufflés, this was not always the case. They were formerly cooked in oval metal utensils which, when taken from the oven, were slipped inside a larger more ornamental dish with handles, in which they were brought to table. So, if called upon to do so, it should be quite easy to improvise a soufflé even in a pie dish or any other fireproof utensil.

Prepare the basic mixture by stirring one generous tablespoon of flour into 1 oz. of butter melted in a heavy saucepan. Gradually add just under
pint of warmed milk, stirring until your mixture is quite smooth. Let this sauce cook very gently over an asbestos mat, stirring frequently, for close on 10 minutes. Now stir in 2 oz. of finely grated Parmesan cheese (or if you prefer, 1 oz. each of Parmesan and Gruyère) and then the very thoroughly beaten yolks of 4 large eggs. Remove the mixture from the fire, and continue stirring for a few seconds. Now add a seasoning of salt (always to be added
after
the cheese) and quite a generous amount of freshly-ground pepper, plus, if you like, a scrap of cayenne. This basic mixture can be made well in advance.