French Provincial Cooking (87 page)

If it happens to be more convenient, use red wine, vermouth or cider instead of white wine for this dish.

One of the most difficult cuts of meat to get a butcher to supply in perfection is an escalope of veal. It should be cut on the bias, in clean, even slices from the topside of the leg of veal, or from the boned loin or fillet without seam, gristle or skin, and weighing a little over 3 oz. each. They should be thin enough not to need the whacking out with a heavy bat with which the majority of butchers finally remove all life and hope from the clumsily hacked lumps of meat which they sell as escalopes. Now, before any of my good and kind friends among London’s butchers rush at me with their steak-beaters, let me add that I am quite well aware that this question of cutting veal escalopes is deeply involved with the economics of butchering. Very briefly, the situation is that the English method of cutting up a leg of veal, crosswise into joints for roasting, precludes the possibility of cutting proper escalopes, because of the seams which run through the meat, whereas the Continental method of separating the leg, lengthways as it were, into the several joints into which it naturally falls produces at least four compact, self-contained cuts, each of which can be used whole as a roasting joint or from which escalopes can be cut. But even this method is still wasteful, because, if the escalopes are properly cut on the bias, there will always be end-pieces too small to do anything much with and which therefore have to be sold with various other bits and pieces as ‘pie veal’ or mince, at a much reduced price. Italian housewives are in the habit of buying these oddments from their butchers and making all sorts of little dishes out of them, and since Italian butchers know that they have a sale for these pieces they are always willing to cut their escalopes in the proper way. In France this can be almost as much of a struggle as it is here, but it is a struggle in which the housewife usually wins, for she knows the penalties of bad cutting.

What has happened here in England is that our demand for cuts of meat which are rapidly prepared and cooked has run ahead of our knowledge of the material with which we are dealing, and the butchers are really no more to blame than the customers who cheerfully pay fantastic prices for meat so ill-cut that however thin and flat it appears after its beating will buckle back to its original shape as soon as it comes into contact with the heat, will consequently cook unevenly and present a most lamentable appearance when it comes to table. To attempt to circumvent this difficulty by having slices of meat cut
inch thick and weighing in the region of
lb., as I have seen done in restaurants, is again a misunderstanding of the raw material, for these leg cuts of veal are too dry and fatless to be presented like a steak, and although they look nice are stodgy when you come to eat them.

It is for this reason that the French system of larding or piquéing with pork fat thick cuts of veal, such as the
fricandeau,
a cushion-shaped piece from the leg, or the little steaks called
grenadins,
also from a leg cut, has arisen. Such cuts are not, of course, for frying-pan cookery, and if frying-pan cookery you must have then it seems to me more satisfactory to call a truce with your butcher over the sore point of escalopes and to buy instead, if he will provide it, a solid piece of that little joint from the leg which is rather the shape of a sausage, which corresponds to the roll of the silverside or
gîte à la noix
in beef, and which is sometimes, although incorrectly, called the fillet. From this little joint it is easy to cut your own slices of meat into whatever thicknesses you please. Cut very thin and slightly flattened out they constitute the dish which the Italians call
scaloppine
or
frittura piccata,
miniature escalopes in fact, which are cooked in a minute or two. Cut about
inch thick, like minuscule fillet steaks, they become
médaillons,
which after a preliminary cooking on each side in butter are simmered gently for about 25 minutes. In either case the garnish and sauces, the cream, wine, mushrooms and so on given in recipes for escalopes can be adapted to these cuts, so long as the cooking times are adjusted.

Loin chops also offer good value; they are not very satisfactory for grilling, but once seized on each side and some sort of moistening in the way of stock or wine added, they can be transferred to the oven and thereafter more or less look after themselves.

Veal roasts such as the joints known to French butchers as the
noix,
the
sous-noix,
the
noix-patissière
(which are those which provide escalopes), the above-mentioned fillet, the
longe
or
rognonnade
, which is the equivalent of a saddle including the kidneys, but in the case of veal usually boned out, the
filet
proper which comes from the middle and back loin, the
carré,
which is the row of best end of neck cutlets on the bone, are all luxury cuts which contain plenty of good tender meat but which need sauces to enhance the somewhat insipid flavour, although the loin and the best end of neck or
carré
are much less dry than the leg cuts.
Quasi de veau
, rump end of loin, is a favourite French cut for a slow roast or a daube, and boned and rolled shoulder is another good slow-cooked oven dish.

Reasonable bargains for anyone not deterred by the necessity for lengthy cooking are shin (to my mind one of the best of all veal cuts), rolled and stuffed breast, and the strips of cartilaginous meat cut from between the end of the ribs next the flank which are called
tendrons
or sometimes
côtelettes parisiennes.

Curiously enough, French cookery does not seem to provide any equivalent of the best of all cheap veal dishes, the Lombard ossi
buchi,
shin of very young veal sawn into short chunks and stewed with tomato and white wine, although there is a Provençal dish called
aïllade de jarret de veau
in which the shin meat is cut from the bone in solid strips, and stewed with tomato, which seems to have a natural affinity with veal, with the addition of garlic and parsley.
Blanquette de veau
, made alternatively from a mixture of breast and shoulder, or shoulder only, is famous, but to my taste this dish with its creamy white sauce is rather insipid, and I find that the same cuts stewed in the Marengo fashion, with oil, tomato and white wine, have a good deal more character.

In the recipes in this section I have tried to show methods, some of them purely local, of cooking veal which are not normally to be found in cookery books; and once one has understood the type of meat with which one is dealing it is very easy to devise one’s own recipes, for veal is a meat which makes a good background for quite a variety of flavourings and sauces.

Whatever one may feel about the desirability or otherwise of the expensive cuts and those roasts with little clumps of vegetables called
jardinière, printanière
and the rest which become so monotonous on Continental hotel menus, particularly in Switzerland, it must be remembered that veal is an immensely useful, indeed almost essential ingredient in good cookery. This is mainly because of the gelatinous quality but neutral flavour imparted to stocks and broths and sauces by the bones, trimmings, feet, shin and head; and the close texture and mild flavour of lean, minced veal makes it an indispensable ingredient in numbers of pies and pâtés, galantines, and stuffings for game and poultry.

A perfect summer dish, which owes its characteristic flavour to the white Alsatian wine in which the meat is cooked.

Ingredients are a
noix
of veal, the cut approximating to the topside of the leg in beef, weighing 2
to 3 lb., trimmed of all fat and tied into a sausage shape; a large onion and a large carrot, 2 thickish rashers of very fat smoked bacon, a wine-glass of dry white Alsatian wine (Hugels Flambeau d’Alsace is ideal) and approximately the same quantity of clear, well-flavoured stock made from shin of veal so that it will set when the dish is cold; parsley and tarragon; butter.

Cut each rasher of bacon into three strips lengthwise; roll these in salt and pepper; if you have no larding needle make three deep incisions lengthwise in the meat from both ends, and push the strips as far in as possible with a knife, so that, working from both ends, the meat will be larded right through. Cut the carrot into small cubes and chop the onion. In an oval earthenware or iron pot in which the meat will just about fit, melt a good lump of butter. Let the vegetables stew in this until they start to turn golden. Put in the veal and let it brown a little. Heat the wine and pour it over. Let it bubble and reduce a little. Add a good soup ladle of the stock. Cover the pot with foil or greaseproof paper, then the lid. Put in a slow oven, Gas No. 2, 310 deg. F., and cook for 2 hours or a little over. Remove the meat and the vegetables and leave them to cool. Pour the juice into another bowl and leave it to set, so that the fat can be easily removed. Heat the jelly in a saucepan until just melted, stir in a tablespoon each of very finely chopped tarragon and parsley, and taste for seasoning. Having cut the string from the meat and put it in a shallow bowl with the onions and carrot round it, pour the liquefied jelly over it. There will not be enough jelly to cover it but just sufficient to make a little sauce. Natural aspic jelly does not keep well in hot weather so it is useless to make a great deal. If preferred the jelly can be clarified by the usual process, with white of egg, the chopped herbs naturally being added afterwards, but although it will look more elegant, it will lose some of its flavour, and also diminish somewhat in volume. There should be plenty of meat for six people.