French Provincial Cooking (65 page)

You have ready, or you now prepare, a purée from 4 large potatoes boiled in their skins, peeled and mashed very smooth with a little butter, salt and pepper, but no milk. Into this purée incorporate your meat mixture, and beat again until it is all well amalgamated.

Spread thickly on a lightly-buttered plate and leave to get quite cold, preferably until next day. You then take little spoonfuls of the mixture and, on a well-floured board, you roll them and shape them into little sausages no larger than small chipolatas or cocktail sausages. You fry them, not too fast, in good clear beef dripping or clarified butter, turning them over once or twice until they are golden and crisp on each side. Take them out, as they are done, with a perforated spoon.

Serve them very hot as a first course with, if you like, a freshly-made tomato sauce, but they are also excellent on their own.

Boil 2 lb. of potatoes in their skins, keeping them a little undercooked. Peel them, cut them into thick slices or rough cubes and season them. Melt a couple of tablespoons of pork or goose dripping or olive oil in a large shallow earthenware baking dish. Put in the potatoes. Cook them uncovered in a moderate oven, Gas No. 4, 350 deg. F., for about 45 minutes, turning them from time to time in the fat. By the end of the cooking time, each piece of potato should be shining and very slightly crisp on the outside. Add some parsley before serving.

Salsify is a very considerable trouble to clean, so it is really only worth cooking if you are sure that those who are to eat it will appreciate its delicate and subtle flavour.

The salsify root must be very thoroughly scraped clean of all its black skin and each one, as it is ready, put into a bowl of acidulated water. When all are done, cut them in half, then cut the thick ends in half lengthways. Plunge them into fast boiling salted water and cook them for 20 to 25 minutes. (Most cooks say 40 minutes: it is too long.) Drain them and then let them cook gently for a few minutes in a frying-pan with a little butter, so that they just turn a pale gold. Serve them with a little lemon juice squeezed over and a dusting of parsley.

Prepare and cook the salsify as above, keeping them slightly undercooked. Drain them well, steep them for an hour or so in oil and lemon juice, dip them in frying batter (page 245) and fry them crisp in a deep pan of olive oil.

A dish similar to
tomates provençales
but milder in flavour. It is to be made when large, sprawling, ripe tomatoes are available, and for 4 of these—one per person—the other ingredients are 2 slices of white bread, parsley, garlic and olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cut the tomatoes in half, score the cut surface with a sharp little knife, press in some salt and, when it has dissolved, turn the tomatoes upside down on a plate and leave them an hour or two. At the same time prepare the bread by cutting off the crusts, rubbing the crumb on both sides with a cut clove of garlic, sprinkling it with olive oil and leaving it to soften. Chop quite a lot of parsley—enough to make two good tablespoons, and then chop the softened bread with it, adding a seasoning of salt and pepper. Squeeze out the surplus juice and pulp from the tomatoes and press in the bread and parsley mixture. Sprinkle with more olive oil and cook the tomatoes in a fireproof gratin dish under the grill, slowly at first, then closer to the flame so that the surface browns.

Two snags about Jerusalem artichokes prevent them from being cooked more frequently than they are. They are tiresome to peel and they are apt to cook unevenly. There are, however, varieties now being cultivated which are much smoother than the old knobbly kind and which are scarcely more trouble to deal with than potatoes.

The Legumex, that admirable gadget which makes the skinning of potatoes, particularly new ones, so very easy, is also quite effective for Jerusalem artichokes. Some people skin the artichokes after they have been boiled; others tell me that they find it more satisfactory to part boil them, drain and skin them, and then finish cooking them. It is all a question of what you are used to. Personally, I prefer to get all the cleaning over before embarking on the cooking. As for the difficulty of timing them, they
can
be steamed in a potato steamer, but this is rather a long job and perhaps the best way out of the difficulty is to bring them to the boil on the top of the stove and then transfer the pan, covered, to a fairly fast oven. In about 15 to 20 minutes they should be cooked, and more evenly than when they are boiled over direct heat. Allow
lb. per person.

Simmer your artichokes in salted water until they are almost, but not quite, cooked. Strain them. Cut each in two. Heat a little olive oil in a heavy pan, put in the artichokes and, for each pound, add 2 skinned and chopped tomatoes, and a seasoning of dried basil or marjoram chopped with a little scrap of garlic, salt and freshly-milled pepper. By the time the tomatoes have melted to form a sauce, the artichokes should be quite tender and the dish ready to serve, either by itself or as an accompaniment to lamb, pork or sausages. This is a dish which also goes remarkably well with goose.

Choose large artichokes for this dish, allowing
lb. per person, and, having peeled them, slice them as evenly as possible, about
inch thick. In a thick frying-pan, melt a little butter, put in the artichokes, rinsed and drained, and let them absorb the butter. Season, just cover with water, and cook steadily in the open pan until nearly all the liquid is evaporated and the artichokes tender. For 1 lb. of artichokes pour in 3 tablespoons of cream, a scrap of nutmeg, some chopped parsley, cook another minute and squeeze in a few drops of lemon.

Prepare and cook as above, using chicken or meat stock instead of water, and when there is just enough left to form a sauce, add another lump of butter and a squeeze of lemon juice. Shake the pan so that the butter melts quickly.

‛I have little to say about this expensive luxury. If you have only a few truffles, use them to stuff a chicken or flavour an egg dish. If you have a quantity, cook them in port and serve them with meat.’

EDOUARD DE POMIANE:
Le Code de la Bonne Chère,
1930

 

‘The
réveillon
took place at the Marquise’s flat, just a quiet, greedy supper with pounds of beautiful truffles quite plain, cooked under the ashes, of which Colette and myself ate an enormous amount. Willy was not feeling well, ate none and drank Vittel water. I particularly remember this meal as it was very different, conversation and all, from our previous suppers; quite like a simple family gathering, but with a kind of “atmosphere” —also the truffles were perfection.’

MARCEL BOULESTIN:
Myself, My Two Countries
, Cassell, 1936

 

‘Once a year at home we had truffle-day. But that could only take place if the bank account allowed, for Colette used to say: “If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles,” and she declared they should be eaten like potatoes. We waited until, with the coming of the frost, Périgord should send the finest of its mushrooms. It appears that cleaning them is an art and Colette would not entrust the responsibility for this to anyone else. You put half a bottle of dry champagne in a black stew-pan, with some bits of bacon fat lightly browned, salt and pepper. When this mixture boils you throw in the truffles. A divine and slightly suspect odour, like everything that smells really good, floats through the house. Under no pretext must the truffles leave the stew-pan, the scented sauce is served separately, hot in port glasses, and anyone who does not declare himself ready to leave Paradise or Hell for such a treat is not worthy to be born again.’

MAURICE GOUDEKET:
Close to Colette

 

A recipe for a truffle omelette is on page 197, and one for a lovely dish of pork studded with truffles on pages 365-6. Some notes on truffles are on pages 101-3.

PROBABLY some of everyone’s most dismal nursery memories are connected with food. One might come to accept the stewed prunes, the hateful greens, even the tapioca pudding, as part of Nannie’s mysterious lore as to what it was necessary to eat in order to survive the perils of childhood. The miseries of fish days were harder to overcome because the food looked so terrifying even before it was on your plate. Egg sauce didn’t do much to compensate for the black skin and monstrous head of boiled cod; fish pudding, a few spiteful bones inevitably lying in wait in that viscous mass, and whitings biting their own tails, were frightening dishes for children, and often painful too. Later came schoolday experiences of limp fried plaice, followed by tinned apricots and custard, of the boiled salt cod which on Fridays so unnervingly replaced the normally delicious food eaten by the family with whom I lived in Paris; of fried eel nauseatingly flavoured with sage and regarded as a treat in a Munich household. None of these dishes did anything to allay the suspicion which I fancy is shared by a good many English people when ‘fish for dinner today’ is announced.

Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that lobster à
l’américaine,
or fillets of sole in some rich cream sauce, represent to many Englishmen the very height of sophisticated cookery; with such a dish you know you are safe from lurking bones, from black mackintosh skin, from the empty eye-socket and accusing stare; nothing is there to recall the nursery, the schoolroom or the railway dining-car.