French Provincial Cooking (86 page)

The accompanying vegetable can be a very creamy purée of chestnuts, lentils, or celeriac and potatoes, into which is incorporated a little of the sauce from the meat. Red-currant jelly can also be served with it. There should be enough for about ten people, but the dish is also excellent cold.

At one time such dishes as this were often made in imitation of wild boar, while haunches of mutton would be treated in similar ways to imitate venison. Probably the method was evolved as much to preserve meat when there were no refrigerators as to gratify a desire for game out of season.

For those who like pork, this is one of the loveliest dishes in the whole repertoire of south-western French cookery. It cannot very often be made in England in its full beauty because the pork should be studded with black truffles. Occasionally, though, when one feels like a little extra extravagance, even quite a small tin of truffles is sufficient to give the right flavour to the meat. It is one of the dishes which I like to make at Christmas as an alternative to the turkey, or to serve as a cold dish for a large lunch party. It is shown in the drawing on page 360.

Have a fine piece, about 4 lb. or more, of loin of pork, boned and with the rind removed. Lay the meat on a board, salt and pepper it, cut 2 or 3 truffles into thick little pieces and lay them at intervals along the meat. Add a few little spikes of garlic and some salt and pepper as well. Roll the meat up and tie it round with string so that it is the shape of a long, narrow bolster. Put in a baking dish with the bones, the rind cut into strips and all the trimmings. Let it cook about 30 minutes in a low oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F. When the meat has turned golden, pour in about a pint of clear hot meat stock or
pint of water and
pint of white wine, plus the liquid from the tin of truffles. Now cover the dish and leave the meat to cook another 2 to 2
hours.

Pour off the sauce and remove the fat when it has set. Chop the jelly which remains beneath the fat and arrange it round the cold pork in the serving dish. Enough for about ten people.

The beautifully flavoured fat from this pork dish can be spread on slices of toasted French bread and makes a treat for the children at tea-time, as used to be our own toast and beef dripping.

Without the truffles, this pork dish is sometimes cooked at the time of the grape harvest, and La Mazille, author of
La Bonne Cuisine
en
Périgord,
says that slices of bread spread with the dripping and a piece of the cold pork topped with a pickled gherkin are distributed to the harvesters for their collation.

Remember, also, that this beautifully flavoured pork dripping is a wonderful fat in which to fry bread or little whole potatoes.

This is really a more everyday version of the
enchaud de porc
described above.

Have a half leg of pork weighing about 5 lb. boned, the rind removed, and tied into a fat sausage shape.

Make two rows of incisions along the meat and into these press chopped fresh herbs and, if you like, little spikes of garlic, rolled in pepper and salt. Put the meat in a roasting pan with the bones, trimmings, skin cut into strips, and a pig’s foot split in two. Add water to come about half-way up the meat; cover the pan. Put in a slow oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., and cook for about 3
hours. Remove the meat; strain the liquid into a bowl. Leave both to cool.

Next day remove the fat from the stock, which should have set to a jelly; to serve the meat, remove string, carve into thin slices; turn out the jellied stock; chop it finely and arrange round the meat.

Serve with a potato salad, or a straightforward green salad. There should be enough for ten people.

If you happen to have a little white wine to spare, use it instead of a proportion of water.

For the stuffing for a sucking pig weighing within the region of 12 lb., mix together
lb. of fine dry breadcrumbs, a big bunch of parsley (about 2 oz.) finely chopped with 2 or 3 shallots, and a clove or two of garlic; add the grated peel of a whole large lemon and of 1 orange; add the juices of both. Mix in 6 oz. of softened butter, about a teaspoon of salt, plenty of freshly-milled pepper and a little grated nutmeg. Finally stir in 3 whole eggs well beaten. Taste to see if there is sufficient lemon, for sucking pig is a rich meat and the stuffing for it should provide a mildly acid counteracting flavour; for this reason sausage meat, chestnuts, prunes, and other such rather cloying ingredients are not so suitable for stuffings as the simple
fines herbes
and lemon mixture.

Having stuffed your pig, give it a generous coating of olive oil, and if possible cook it, lying on its side, on a rack placed in the baking dish so that the underside does not stew in its own juices. Put it in a moderate, preheated oven at Gas No. 4, 350 deg. F., for 2 to 2
hours altogether. From time to time baste it with its own juices, or with more olive oil, and at half-time turn the animal over with great care so as not to damage the crackling. When it is ready to serve transfer it to a hot dish and keep it in a low oven while you pour off from the baking tin as much as possible of the fat, transferring the gravy to a small pan. To this add a little glass of white wine and, if you have it, an equal quantity of clear veal or beef stock. Give it a quick boil and serve it separately.

Many modern domestic ovens are too small to take a whole sucking pig, although the length of the animal depends, of course, upon the breed of the pig. Should it be found that the piglet has to be cooked in two pieces, the best plan is to get the butcher to divide it in two and to roast the whole of the back and the hindquarters, the head and neck being kept for a separate dish such as the galantine described on page 222. In this case about half the quantities of stuffing will be sufficient.

Pig’s kidneys are cheaper than those of lamb or veal and are quite good provided they are given a preliminary soaking and blanching to rid them of their rather acrid smell.

Remove the skin of 2 kidneys, therefore, and soak them in warm salted water for a couple of hours. Cut them transversally in slices about
inch thick. Put them in a saucepan covered with cold water and bring slowly to the boil. Let the water boil not more than a minute and then drain it off. In a clean frying-pan melt an ounce of butter for 2 kidneys. Add a little fat bacon cut in very small dice—2 small rashers is enough. Put in the kidneys. Let them cook gently for a minute. Add 3 or 4 mushrooms cut in quarters, then a small glass, about 4 tablespoons, of white wine. Let it bubble. Turn the flame low, put in a little bouquet of parsley, bayleaf and thyme, season with salt and pepper, add 4 tablespoons of good meat stock and simmer gently with the cover on the pan for 10 to 15 minutes. Serve sprinkled with parsley and accompanied by little triangles of bread fried in butter, or a
mousseline
of potatoes (page 272). Enough for two.