French Provincial Cooking (103 page)

‘You find this recipe astonishing?’ adds Tendret. ‘Try it and do not argue.’

Not everyone will have the faith which Lucien Tendret asks of his readers. So perhaps I had better say that he is quite right about the cream sauce: it
does
right itself. For the rest, the best way to proceed is as follows: Put the saddle from a young hare (don’t forget to remove the membrane, as explained in the following recipe) into a long, narrow terrine or other fireproof dish. Add the chopped shallots,
pint of double cream and 2 tablespoons of wine vinegar—half a claret glass as specified by Tendret being too much for my taste. Cover the dish and cook in a low oven, Gas No. 1, 290 deg. F., for an hour. There is no need for basting and, if you don’t look at the sauce, you won’t see any sinister happenings. Now uncover the dish, stir a little salt and pepper into the sauce and spoon some of it over the saddle. Leave uncovered for another 15 minutes. Now transfer the saddle to a hot serving dish. Pour the sauce off into a wide shallow pan. Bring it to the boil, stir and lift it. It will soon start to thicken and turn a beautiful pale coffee colour. It is a great improvement to add at this stage a tablespoon of red-currant jelly, stirring it well in until it has amalgamated with the cream. Carve your saddle, pour the sauce round and serve it, preferably with a purée of chestnuts or of celeriac and potatoes.

These quantities and the timing are for a fairly small saddle, weighing not more than 1
lb. The difficulty really is the dish to cook it in, for if this is too wide the cream will not cover the saddle. I have a beautiful old French terrine specially made for the cooking of a saddle of hare (it is in the drawing on page 424); I have also used for the purpose a boat-shaped fireproof fish dish, covering it with several sheets of foil. But failing some such dish, it is perhaps wiser not to attempt this particular recipe, unless of course you are prepared to lavish a lot of extra cream on it, but to try instead the following dish. The method is different but the result is very similar.

Carefully remove the membrane or iridescent skin covering the saddle (in this case the back only) of a young hare. Wrap it completely in thin slices of pork fat or fat bacon. Roast it in a moderate oven, Gas No. 5, 375 to 380 deg. F., for approximately 30 minutes. Unwrap it, carve it into long fillets ready for serving, reconstitute into its original shape and keep hot in the serving dish. To the juices in the roasting pan, from which the excess fat has been poured off, add
pint of thick cream and heat quickly on the top of the stove until the cream thickens. Pour over the hare and serve quickly.

For convenience’ sake, roast the saddle in a grill pan with a handle, so that you can tip it, rotate and manipulate it with one hand while, with a wooden spoon in the other, you stir and scrape up the sauce as the cream thickens. But don’t forget to have a thick cloth ready, because the handle of the pan will be pretty hot.

In Alsace boiled noodles are often served as an accompaniment to this and other meat and game dishes. Another alternative is the
pflütten
or potato and semolina gnocchi described on page 210, but without cheese, and poached as in the second method. But since neither of these accompaniments are very suitable for single-handed cooking, the more usual purée of chestnuts, celeriac or lentils, kept hot in a
bain-marie,
would do instead.

A saddle of young hare serves two or three people, or four if the rest of the meal is rather copious.

This excellent recipe was given by Dr. Édouard de Pomiane, most spirited and interesting of contemporary French cookery writers, in the magazine
Cuisine et Vins de France:

 

‘Having obtained or killed a hare, you leave it to hang for three days, provided it is not battered by shot. Should it have rather large wounds, it is risky to leave it to hang.

‘Skin and gut the hare. Separate the saddle (
râble
) which consists of the back and hind legs. Keep the fore legs and the liver, etc., to make a stew the next day. With a sharp knife remove the membrane covering the meat. Lard the flesh with strips of bacon. Place the saddle in an earthen baking dish in which some more strips of bacon have already heated in the oven so that their fat has seeped out. Return to a very hot oven for 20 minutes if you like your hare
saignant,
55 if you prefer it well cooked. As soon as it starts to take colour, baste it continuously with cream. Season with salt and pepper. The cream will separate into butter. No matter. Proceed. Five minutes before the end of the cooking pour into the dish a half tumbler of boiling water. Baste with this cream and water mixture. In this way a sauce is obtained but it is not smooth. The roast is ready.

‘Remove it from the oven. Pour the sauce into a saucepan. It will be fairly abundant. Bind it, over a
very low
flame, with thick cream mixed with a
suspicion
of flour. Let it boil just once. Keep it hot.

‘While the hare was roasting, you have chopped finely 1
to 1
lb. of cooked beetroot. You have reheated it with butter, salt, pepper, and have acidulated it very slightly with vinegar. All is ready. Carve the hare into slices. Arrange on a very hot dish, reconstituting the slices into their original shape. Make a ring all round with the beetroot. Moisten the hare only (not the beetroot) with a little of the sauce. Serve the rest separately.

‘If the idea of the beetroot alarms you, prepare the hare without it. You would, however, be wrong.’

 

When cooking a bought hare the provenance of which is uncertain, it is advisable, I think, to cook it rather more gently and for a little longer, or it may be tough: 45 minutes at Gas No. 5, 375 to 380 deg. F., is safer than 35 at a greater temperature. The amount of cream needed is about
pint altogether. Another point is that the saddle, in England, is usually understood to be the back only, minus the hind legs. It depends rather on how many people are to be served. The back only is sufficient for three or four at the most. With the hind legs, it is enough for six or seven.

I will give only a brief résumé of this recipe; it is a lovely dish but one which is very extravagant for an English kitchen.

A saddle of hare, piqued with pork fat, is to be marinated for two or three days with shallots, garlic, celery, thyme, bayleaves and
eau de vie de marc.
Roast the saddle so that the meat is still just pink; surround it with peeled and seeded grapes, white and black; pour in some warmed
marc
and set light to it. Just before serving pour round the juices which have come from the saddle during the roasting and to which have been added a spoonful of
poivrade
sauce and one of thick cream.

The recipe comes from Henri Racouchot, pre-war proprietor of the Restaurant des Trois Faisans in Dijon.
Eau de vie de marc,
distilled from the grape skins after the juice has been pressed for the wine, is made in every wine district of France; that of Burgundy is particularly reputed.

Poivrade
sauce is made on a basis of the brown sauce known as Espagnole, with the addition of some very much reduced stock or essence made from the trimmings of the hare or whatever game it is to accompany, plus a small proportion of the marinade and a plentiful seasoning of freshly-milled pepper.

A saddle of hare, 4 or 5 shallots, 2 oz. of ham,
lb. of mushrooms, 2 oz. cream, a glass of white wine, flour, a cup of stock, juniper berries, lemon.