French Provincial Cooking (85 page)

Have ready half a cupful of chopped parsley mixed with fine breadcrumbs. Remove the paper from the meat, and spread the parsley mixture over the fat side, pressing it gently down with a knife. Lower the oven to No. 2, 310 deg. F., and cook for another 35 to 50 minutes, basting the meat now and again with its own liquid so that the breadcrumbs and parsley form a nice golden coating.

Serve with the
pommes mousseline façon provençale,
as described on page 272. Ample for four.

Chop 3 or 4 shallots very finely with parsley; season with salt and pepper; score 4 pork chops lightly on each side and spread with the shallot mixture. Moisten with melted butter or olive oil, and grill. Have ready a glass of cider heated in a small pan and when the chops are cooked transfer the grilling pan to the top of the stove; pour in the cider; let it bubble over a very fast flame until it has amalgamated with the juices from the meat and formed a sauce, which will take 2 or 3 minutes. If Calvados is available, add a small quantity after the cider has been poured into the pan. It cuts the richness of the pork. Straw potatoes, or a purée, or simply a plain green salad go with the pork chops. For four people.

This dish, a speciality of Tours, is a sumptuous one, rich and handsome in appearance as well as in its flavours. But it is not one to try out for the first time on guests, unless you can be sure of ten minutes or so uninterrupted in the kitchen while you make the sauce. Neither is the dish exactly a light one, and is perhaps best eaten, as pork dishes are always supposed to be, at midday rather than in the evening.

Ingredients are 6 to 8
noisettes
cut from the boned and skinned chump end of the loin of pork, each one weighing about 3 oz.; 1 lb. of very fine large juicy prunes (there should be approximately 2 dozen, and the best Californian prunes are perfect for the dish); a half-bottle of wine, which should, by rights, be white Vouvray, a tablespoon of red-currant jelly, approximately
pint of thick cream (you may not use it all but it is as well to have this quantity, as I will explain presently); 2 oz. of butter, a little flour, seasonings.

Both the utensil for cooking the pork and the dish to serve it in are important. The first should be a shallow and heavy pan to go on top of the stove, either a sauté pan or the kind of dish in which a whole flat fish is poached; failing this the meat will first have to be browned in a frying-pan and then transferred to an oven dish. The serving dish should be a big oval one, preferably one which can go for a few minutes into the oven without risk.

First, put the prunes to steep in a bowl covered with
pint of the wine; this is supposed to be done overnight, but with good prunes a half-day will be sufficient. After which, cover them and put them in a very low oven to cook. They can stay there an hour or more. They should be quite tender but not mushy, and the wine must not evaporate.

Season the pork very well with freshly-milled pepper and salt and sprinkle each
noisette
with flour. Melt the butter in the pan; put in the meat; let it gently take colour on one side and turn it. Keep the heat low, because the butter must not brown. After 10 minutes pour in the remaining 2 tablespoons or so of the white wine. Cover the pan. Cook very gently, covered, on top of the stove, or in the oven if necessary, for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, but the timing must depend upon the quality of the meat. Test it with a skewer to see if it is tender.

When it is nearly ready (but it will not, being pork, come to harm if left a bit longer even after it is tender), pour the juice from the prunes over the meat—this, of course, must be done over direct heat on top of the stove—and keep the prunes themselves hot in the oven. When the juice has bubbled and reduced a little, transfer the meat to the serving dish and keep it hot.

To the sauce in the pan add the red-currant jelly and stir until it has dissolved. Now pour in some of the cream; if the pan is wide enough it will almost instantly start bubbling and thickening; stir it, shake the pan and add a little more cream, and when the sauce is just beginning to get shiny and really thick, pour it over the meat, arrange the prunes all round and serve it quickly. The amount of cream you use depends both on how much juice there was from the prunes and how quickly the sauce has thickened; sometimes it gets too thick too quickly, and a little more cream must be added. In any case there should be enough sauce to cover the meat, but not, of course, the prunes. These are served as they are, not ‘boned,’ as the French cooks say.

On the whole, I think it is better to drink red wine than white with this dish. And, of course, you do not serve any vegetables with it. Even with light first and last-course dishes, 8
noisettes
should be enough for four people.

Pork chops can be marinated and cooked in the same way as the leg of pork described on page 364. Cut the rind from 4 thick loin chops, and reduce the quantities of the marinade by half; leave them for 2 to 4 days.

Cook them in the same way for about 45 minutes. Alternatively, shake flour over the chops when you take them from the marinade, brown them lightly in butter; add the heated and strained marinade plus a
pint of good stock, or, in default, water. When the meat is tender, put it on the serving dish and keep it hot while you stir a tablespoon of red-currant jelly into the sauce and thicken it a little by letting it boil, stirring and lifting it so that it does not stick. Pour it over the meat, and serve with stewed celery (page 248) or prunes cooked as in the foregoing recipe for
noisettes de porc aux pruneaux,
or a potato purée.

This is a useful recipe to know for those occasions when it may be necessary to buy one’s meat in advance or, alternatively, when one has a small quantity of wine to use up for cooking.

4 pork chops, 1
lb. of potatoes, a small glass of white wine, 1 onion, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, a few juniper berries, parsley, 4 oz. of ham or bacon.

Peel the potatoes and slice them evenly and very thinly. Arrange half of them, and half the sliced onion, in an earthenware casserole.

Near the bone of each pork chop put a small clove of garlic and a couple of juniper berries. Brown them on each side in a little pork dripping. Put them on top of the potatoes. Cover them with the remaining half of the potatoes and onion; season with salt and pepper. Cover with the bacon or ham in slices. Pour over the white wine. Put two or three layers of paper over the pot, then the lid. Cook in a very slow oven for about 3 hours. Before serving, pour off some of the abundant fat which will have come out of the meat, and garnish the dish with a little parsley. This is heavy, rustic food, but the flavour is delicious, and for lunch on a cold day it is a fine dish for three or four hungry people.

Cider can be used instead of wine.

This is a method of making domestic pig taste like wild boar. For those who happen to like this taste, it is remarkably successful. I don’t say it is a dish which one would want to eat very often but it is interesting to try once in a way, and also useful for those who have their own pigs and would like to vary the cooking of their pork from time to time.

For a half leg of fresh pork, weighing between 5 and 6 lb., the ingredients for the marinade are as follows:
pint of red wine, 4 tablespoons of vinegar, 2 carrots, 1 onion, 2 shallots, 2 cloves of garlic, 3 bayleaves, half a dozen or so parsley stalks, several sprigs each of wild thyme and marjoram, a dozen whole peppercorns, a half-dozen juniper berries, 2 teaspoons of salt.

Slice the carrots, onions and shallots, put all the ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer 5 minutes. Leave to cool.

Have the skin removed from the meat, which can be either boned or not, as you please; it is, of course, easier to deal with if it is boned, for a half leg is always an awkward piece to carve. Also score the fat lightly across the top, so that the marinade has more chance to sink in. Put the meat in a deep china bowl and pour the cooled marinade over it. Leave it to steep for 4 days, turning it once a day in the liquid.

Make a pint or so of well-seasoned stock from the skin of the pork, plus the bones if the meat has been boned, or some veal bones if it has not, vegetables and herbs. Strain, cool and remove the fat. To cook the meat you will need 2 tablespoons of olive oil or pork lard, 2 tablespoons of flour, the stock and the strained marinade.

Take the meat out of the marinade, remove any pieces of vegetables and herbs which may be adhering to it, wipe it dry, and let it brown on both sides in a heavy braising pan in which the oil or lard has been heated. Take it out of the pan. Bring the marinade, with all its vegetables, to the boil in a separate saucepan. Stir the flour into the fat in the pan; gradually add the marinade through a strainer; stir until it is smooth; add sufficient of the prepared stock to make the sauce about the consistency of a thin béchamel. Put back the meat. Cover the pan. Transfer to a low oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., and cook for 2
to 3 hours, by which time the pork should be quite tender and coming away from the bone. Transfer it to a hot serving dish. Leave the sauce to settle for a few minutes, then pour off as much of the excess fat as possible. Pour the rest of the sauce into a small saucepan, let it come to the boil and reduce a little. Taste for seasoning. Serve it separately in a sauce-boat.