French Provincial Cooking (27 page)

To the salmon of the summer months, lacking the exquisite curdy flesh of the early part of the year,
sauce verte
supplies the interest which might otherwise be lacking, but it need not be confined to fish. An hors-d’œuvre of hard-boiled eggs with this green sauce is just that much grander than an ordinary egg mayonnaise. It never fails to please.

This is an egg and butter sauce reduced to its greatest possible simplicity. It has no relation to the
sauce bretonne
of the chefs.

Stir the yolks of 2 eggs in a bowl; add a pinch of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of yellow French mustard; then a few drops of tarragon vinegar; then a heaped teaspoon of fresh herbs finely chopped. These can be chosen according to what dish the sauce is to go with; fennel and parsley for fish; tarragon and chervil for steak; mint for grilled lamb cutlets, and so on. Have ready 2 oz. of unsalted butter just barely melted over hot water, and not at all hot. Add this gradually to the eggs and stop stirring as soon as it has reached the consistency of a mayonnaise.

Sometimes, if the sauce is made in advance, it goes grainy as the butter coagulates. The remedy is to stand the bowl inside another containing a little hot water; stir until the sauce is smooth again.

This, although so little known, is an immensely useful sauce for those with little time to spare, for it can take the place of
hollandaise
or
béarnaise
to serve with steak, fish, grilled chicken and so on, and for those who cannot eat olive oil it can even do duty instead of mayonnaise. It has not, however, the body which these sauces have, so it should always be served separately in a sauce-boat, not used as a
coating
sauce.

One of the nicest of the old-fashioned sauces, seldom met with nowadays. It can be made in two ways, with stock or with milk. The first method makes the better sauce, if you have some veal and beef
bouillon
available.

Slice
lb. onions, weighed when peeled, very thin. Soften them in 1
oz. of butter, letting them just turn pale yellow. This takes about 7 minutes. Stir in one dessertspoon of sieved flour; add a seasoning of salt, pepper and nutmeg, then just over
pint of warmed, clear stock or milk. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Sieve. If the resulting purée is too thick, thin it with a few drops of the stock. If too thin, let it simmer again until it has reduced.

Serve hot as a background to poached or fried eggs and fried bread, or with roast pork, chicken or mutton.

Sauce Robert
is made in much the same manner, with the addition of a fairly strong seasoning of French mustard stirred in while the sauce is being heated up for serving.

Although it is so well known, I find that many amateur cooks are uncertain about how to make a good tomato sauce from the fresh fruit. It is very useful and very easy but, all the same, demands a certain care in the seasoning, and judgment as to the length of the cooking time. Here it is, in its simplest form, without stock, wine, thickening or meat.

Ingredients are 1 small onion, 1
to 1
lb. of very ripe tomatoes,
oz. of butter, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, a lump of sugar, a teaspoon of chopped celery leaves or parsley, a clove of garlic, a couple of fresh or dried basil leaves if available.

Melt the butter and olive oil in a shallow wide pan and in this cook the finely sliced onion very gently until it turns yellow. Add the chopped tomatoes and all the other ingredients. Simmer over a moderate fire for 15 to 20 minutes. Put through the food mill. If it is at all watery, put it back into the rinsed-out pan and set it over a gentle flame until it has dried out a little. Taste for seasoning, as some tomatoes need more sugar than others.

As well as being the traditional accompaniment of spaghetti dishes, a tomato sauce goes well with fried chicken, with all manner of croquettes, with fried steak and with fried eggs.

Put 1 lb. of chopped tomatoes in a thick pan with a tablespoon of olive oil, a chopped onion, a clove of garlic, a chopped carrot, some parsley stalks, a little fresh or dried marjoram or basil, a little salt and freshly ground pepper. Simmer until the moisture has reduced and the tomatoes are a thick pulp. Sieve, and taste for seasoning.

From the Perpignan district, to the west of the Languedoc, where the cookery has a distinct Spanish influence, comes this sauce which in its native region goes particularly with partridges and with pork. But it is good with other things from chicken and mutton to fried eggs or slices of baked gammon.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a sauté pan. Put in several whole cloves of garlic and add immediately about 1 lb. of ripe, peeled tomatoes, roughly cut up. Season with a little salt, pepper and a lump of sugar, and cook for 10 minutes. Now add half a dozen slices of Seville or bitter orange, pips, but not rind, removed. Cook uncovered for another 20 minutes, until the sauce is thick. Remove the garlic before serving. (In the Roussillon they like a colossal quantity of garlic and do not, of course, take it out; but then they are accustomed to these large amounts of garlic, whereas here we are not.) The bitter orange slices give a curious and interesting flavour to the sauce but do not let them cook it in more than 20 minutes or they will be too bitter.

Wash and chop very finely a small handful of sorrel leaves, not much more than
lb. Melt it gently in
oz. of butter. Stir in, bit by bit,
pint of cream previously boiled (this is important, for sorrel is very acid and there is a risk of the cream curdling when the two come into contact) and then thin it with a tablespoon or two of the stock from the dish the sauce is to accompany—usually veal or fish. A very excellent little sauce, which also makes, in larger quantities, a good accompaniment to poached eggs.