French Provincial Cooking (109 page)

Choose a large, handsome Charentais or Cantaloup melon. Cut a neat slice off the stalk end and put it aside. Remove the seeds and the fibrous centre, then carefully scoop out all the flesh without damaging the shell of the melon. Put the flesh in a saucepan with 4 to 6 oz. of soft white sugar, the exact amount depending on the size of the melon. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes until it is soft enough to sieve. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs until they are light and foamy. Blend with the fruit purée and cook over a low flame until thickened to the consistency of a thin custard. For safety this can be done in a double saucepan but it takes longer than if the saucepan is put over a direct flame. Very thorough whisking of the egg yolks diminishes the risk of curdling. When the mixture is quite cold, add a little glass of Kirsch and the juice of half a lemon. Then fold in
pint of whipped cream. Leave in a covered bowl in the refrigerator.

Three hours before dinner turn the refrigerator to its maximum freezing point; turn the prepared cream into the ice-trays, cover them with foil; freeze for 3 hours, stirring after the first hour and again after the second. To serve, fill the melon shell with the ice, closing it up with the top slice, and bring to table on one of those old-fashioned
compotiers
on a pedestal, or on a flat round dish lined with green leaves.

The melon ice has a strange, almost magic flavour and that is why I have called it after that French Caribbean island so unforgettably conjured out of the ocean, only to be once more submerged, by Patrick Leigh Fermor in
The Violins of St. Jacques.

In a certain country inn in the village of Inxent, in northern France, although the house, the dining-room and the service are very modest, the cooking is famous both because of the excellence of the materials employed and the skill and simplicity with which the dishes are chosen and presented. There is very little choice. You will probably start with a trout, killed on the spot and cooked
au bleu,
served with melted butter so white and creamy that it practically is cream. Almost certainly the next course will be a chicken, plump, tender, roasted a delicate gold in butter, so full of flavour, the cooking so perfectly timed that you begin to wonder if you have ever really eaten a roast chicken before. Then there will be a dish of vegetables, perhaps
haricots verts,
again quite plainly cooked, with their exquisite savour absolutely intact. What on earth could you eat after three such sumptuously simple dishes? Imagine the ridiculous anti-climax of a showy pastry, an elaborate
gâteau,
a decorated ice cream. But the ladies who run that inn know what they are about: their last dish is invariably a
soufflé omelette aux liqueurs,
brought to table frothing and spilling over the dish, an aroma of fresh eggs, sizzling butter and mellow liqueur sharpening your senses once more so that you are able to enjoy your last course as much as you did your first.

 

Ingredients are 3 eggs, 2 heaped tablespoons of caster sugar, the grated rind of 1 orange, 2 tablespoons of Kirsch, Grand Marnier, Curaçao, apricot brandy, or almost any liqueur you please.

Separate the eggs and beat the yolks very thoroughly with the sugar, grated orange rind and liqueur. For an ordinary omelette the eggs are only lightly beaten; for soufflé omelettes they must be well beaten. Whip the whites until they stand in peaks. Amalgamate the two, quickly and more thoroughly than for a soufflé.

Heat a 10-inch omelette pan and have hot plates and a hot omelette dish in readiness. Put a nut of butter into the hot omelette pan. Quickly pour in the egg mixture and give the pan a shake. The outer surface next to the pan will brown at once and the rest puff up, and it will be cooked in about 1 minute, but to get it a little hotter the omelette pan may be placed in a hot oven for about half a minute. Then take your omelette pan in one hand and the hot dish in the other, and holding the pan close to the dish, slide the omelette out, folding it over once as you do so.

This is an omelette for two people; do not attempt to make more than this in one pan. For four people double the quantities and make two omelettes.

Make a basic soufflé mixture with 1
oz. butter, 2 level tablespoons of flour and
pint of milk which has been heated with a vanilla pod and 3 oz. of soft white sugar; cook the sauce until it is very smooth and a little reduced. Remove the vanilla pod. Add the very well beaten yolks of 4 eggs, and remove the sauce from the fire. When the time comes to make the soufflé, whip the whites of 5 eggs until they stand in peaks. Fold them into the main mixture, turn into a 2-pint soufflé dish, make deep cross-cuts in the soufflé so that it is divided into four, place on a baking sheet and cook in a preheated moderate oven, Gas No. 4, 355 deg. F., for approximately 25 to 30 minutes. The places where the cuts were made should by this time have burst open. If they have not the soufflé is not yet ready. Shut the oven door gently and wait a few minutes before looking again.

This is quite a delicate soufflé in its own right, but the mixture can also be used as a basis for other flavours such as grated orange or lemon peel, or a sherry glass of liqueur substituted for an equal quantity of the milk and which should be added to the mixture at the same time as the egg yolks. This quantity makes enough for four.

For the beating and folding in of egg whites for a soufflé see pages 199 and 200.

Dried apricots are used for this soufflé, which is made with no basic soufflé mixture and with a large proportion of egg whites. A flour and milk mixture falsifies the taste of the apricots, and as the prepared apricot purée is very thick it takes the extra whites to aerate it.

Put
lb. of the best dried apricots to soak in water to cover them: 2 hours is enough but, if more convenient, they can be left overnight. Cook them uncovered in a very slow oven for about an hour until they are soft enough to put through a food mill. The improvement in the flavour of the apricots when they are oven-cooked rather than stewed is considerable. Drain off all the liquid before sieving them, as it will not be required. Into the warm purée stir 2 tablespoons of caster sugar, the well-beaten yolks of 2 eggs and 2 tablespoons of thick cream. When the mixture is cold, beat the whites of 5 eggs until they stand in peaks. Fold them into the apricot mixture very thoroughly but as lightly and quickly as possible. Turn into a 1
-pint size soufflé dish, which should be put on a baking sheet in the centre of a preheated oven at Gas No. 4, 355 deg. F.: 25 minutes is approximately the right cooking time but, as everybody who has ever cooked a soufflé will know, it is scarcely possible to give exact timing to the minute.

You can, if you like, serve fresh cream with this soufflé, which, although not a large one, should be enough for four.

A chocolate soufflé is made on a somewhat different system from other soufflés, the melted chocolate itself being so thick that no other basic mixture is required. Also it cooks very quickly and equally quickly becomes dry, so careful timing is necessary, for to be good a chocolate soufflé must be creamy in the middle.

Melt 4 oz. of bitter chocolate in the oven with 2 or 3 tablespoons of water, rum or brandy. Stir it smooth, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and the very well beaten yolks of 4 eggs, then fold in the beaten whites of 6. Turn into a 2-pint buttered soufflé dish and cook with the dish standing on a baking sheet in a preheated hot oven, Gas No. 6, 400 deg. F., for approximately 18 minutes. Enough for four people.

This is a soufflé which is improved by fresh cream served separately.

Flat, open fruit tarts are made with the same pastries as for the onion tart, the cheese tart and the
quiches
on pages 205-7, with a little sugar worked in with the dough. The fruit, sweet apples, quetsch or mirabelle plums or any suitable fruit in season, is first partly cooked with a little sugar and water. If apples are being used peel and slice them into thin, even-sized pieces; if plums or apricots, cut them in half and stone them. For an 8-inch tart tin allow 1
to 2 lb. of fruit, original weight, of any of these fruit.