French Provincial Cooking (54 page)

Start off the cooking in sufficient time before dinner to allow you to leave the gammon in its pan of water for about 20 minutes after cooking time is finished. This slight cooling will give the joint time to get a little firmer and make it much easier both to skin and to carve.

In the meantime, while the gammon was cooking you will have made your sauce, as in the foregoing recipe, but in double quantities to serve, say, six to eight people.

Take the gammon from the pan, put it on a board, run a sharp little knife down between the fat and the skin and then peel the skin off. It should come away very easily in one whole piece.

Carve two fairly thin slices of the gammon per person and arrange them in a shallow metal dish. Pour some of the hot sauce over them, put the dish over a low flame for a few seconds just to give the ham time to heat up again, and serve at once.

The rest of the ham can be kept warm in a low oven, and more carved for second helpings.

Although vegetables are not usually served with this dish, you can, if you like, have a few plain boiled potatoes. A straightforward green salad afterwards will be welcome.

Make a cream sauce with 1
oz. of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour and, when these have amalgamated, 4 tablespoons of warmed white wine. Then add
pint of warmed milk. Season with a little salt and a generous amount of freshly milled pepper. Simmer this sauce, very gently, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes. Now transfer the saucepan in which it is cooking into another large and shallow one containing hot water (or, of course, a proper
bain-marie
if you happen to possess such a thing) and add 4 or 5 tablespoons of fresh thick cream. Stir again. Lastly, add 2 tablespoons of grated Gruyère or Parmesan cheese. The cheese must not dominate the sauce but is there to give it pungency, as a condiment. Add more salt if necessary, always taking into consideration the saltiness of the ham. Of this you needs
lb., cooked, and cut in thin even slices. Into a shallow
gratin
dish, pour a little of the cream sauce. On top put the ham, in one layer, with the slices overlapping each other. Cover completely with the rest of the sauce. Add some minuscule little knobs of butter. Place in a hot oven, near the top, for 5 to 10 minutes. Finish under a hot grill for a minute or two and serve immediately, when the surface is blistering and bubbling.

This is a dish I remember from my first visit to Corsica, which now seems a very long time ago. In the little town of Piana of the red rocks, I took a room in the house of a very humble family. There were a large number of children in their teens. Their mother was a great big brawny woman with a robust sense of humour. Amid a tremendous clatter we would all sit down to meals at one big table. Madame’s cooking was of the same nature as her own: rough, generous, full of character and colour. There were great dishes of ham and tomatoes, eggs and olives, plenty of salads and oil, huge hunks of bread and great bowls of bursting ripe figs. In all the years since then I have never quite forgotten the very special savour of that food. The ham dish was made with thick slices of the Corsican version of
prosciutto,
or raw ham, fried and served on top of a tomato sauce freshly cooked in oil and well spiced with garlic, pepper and herbs. Nowadays I sometimes make it with gammon rashers, but cooked in a baking tin, just covered in water, in the oven, then drained and just barely browned in olive oil. Served on a big round earthenware dish, surrounded by the tomato sauce, flavoured with plenty of dried basil as well as garlic, and with some croûtons of bread fried in oil, this makes a splendid quickly cooked dish for lunch or supper.

The old-fashioned French farmhouse way of cooking a ham was to tie it in a cloth, place it on a bed of sweet hay, completely surround it with more hay, then cover it with water and boil it in the usual way. The hay is said to give a particularly fragrant flavour to the ham.

A purée of dried split peas would often be the accompaniment to hot boiled ham.

A
jambonneau
is a little knuckle of pork, cut and cured separately from the ham, being simply salted for about 6 to 8 days. It is then simmered for about 2 hours in stock with carrots, onions, a clove or two, and a bouquet of herbs, including a bay leaf.

It is left to cool in the broth, but before it is quite cold the skin is removed and the exposed surface breadcrumbed in the same way as a ham. The meat is pressed down a little from the top, exposing the bone, which is then garnished with a little cutlet frill so that the whole thing looks like a miniature ham. A
jambonneau
may also be served without the skin being taken off, in which case it is brushed with butter and coated with breadcrumbs while still warm. (See the drawing on page 213.) Saltpetre is usually included with the curing salt, so that the
jambonneau
has a good pink colour. Alternatively, 20 grammes (i.e.
oz.) of saltpetre can be added to the cooking liquid.

Jambonneaux
are to be bought ready prepared in most French
charcuteries
but are not to be confused with
jambonnettes,
the Ardéchois speciality described in the introduction to this chapter and which is a boned and stuffed knuckle, formed into a little fat cushion shape.

This is a useful dish for using up a piece of cooked ham. Ingredients are
lb. of cooked lean mild ham,
lb. of cooked salt tongue, 3 leaves of gelatine, 2 whites of egg,
pint of double cream. First of all prepare the gelatine. Cut the leaves into small pieces, put them into the top half of a double saucepan, pour over them
pint of hot, not boiling, water and steam gently over hot water until the gelatine is quite dissolved, and you have a perfectly clear liquid. Leave to cool.

Now chop the ham finely and then pound it to a paste in a mortar or in the electric blender. Cut the tongue into little dice, and mix the two together. Pour in the cooled gelatine, through a strainer. Mix very thoroughly. Now fold in the cream, whipped until it is light and frothy. Season with a little freshly-milled pepper but no salt. Turn into a bowl and leave in the refrigerator or a cold larder for about an hour. It should be firm but not quite set. Whip the whites stiffly; fold them into the mixture with great care and thoroughness. Put into a soufflé dish or other mould which can be brought to table, of 1 pint capacity. Pile it up so that the mixture comes about 1
inches above the top and when it is served it will look like a risen soufflé. Put in the refrigerator to set. If the weather is very warm, it may be necessary to pin a band of oiled paper round the outside of the dish to enclose the mousse, but in normal weather this can be dispensed with. Alternatively, an extra leaf of gelatine can be used, but the charm of this mousse is its delicate creamy taste and texture, which is spoilt if it is too rock-like.