French Provincial Cooking (31 page)

Sometimes jellied eggs are turned out, but this is a tricky business, because either the jelly or the egg or both tend to break, and then the dish is spoilt. Special hinged oval moulds are in fact made especially for jellied eggs, but they are really just as nice in their little china pots.

The jelly from
bœuf à /a mode
, clarified, makes delicious jellied eggs.

Allow 1 large leaf artichoke per person. Rinse them in cold water and, holding them upside down, shake them so that any grit may fall out. Cut off the stalks level with the heads, so that they will stand up nicely on the plate when they are served. Put them into a very large saucepan of boiling salted water with half a lemon. Cook for 25 to 40 minutes, until one of the outer leaves will come away easily when you pull it.

Serve cold with the vinaigrette sauce separately. But make it with only a minimum of vinegar, or better still, lemon juice instead of vinegar.

Pound 2 cloves of garlic in a mortar, then add the contents of two 2 oz. tins of flat anchovies in olive oil, and pound them to a rough paste. Thin with olive oil, about a tablespoon, added gradually, and a few drops of vinegar. Toast 8 rather thick slices of bread on one side only. While it is still hot spread the anchovy paste on the untoasted side with a fork, pressing it well down into the bread. Heat in a fast oven for 3 or 4 minutes. This is not so much an hors-d’œuvre as the sort of thing to get ready quickly any time when you are hungry and want something to go with a glass of wine (after you have eaten it you may no longer be hungry, but you will certainly be thirsty).

There are many versions of
anchoïade,
and all sorts of things can be added, such as black olives, a few drops of cognac, a pounded tomato or a little concentrated tomato paste. (If whole anchovies in brine are being used, allow 6 oz. Skin and bone them, divide them into fillets and de-salt them in warm water for half an hour.) It is by no means an everyday dish, but like so many dishes which one forgets about for months at a time, when one wants it one feels that nothing else will quite do. Rustic and coarse though it is,
anchoïade
was not disdained by the famous Caramello who presided over the kitchens of the Réserve at Beaulieu, for years the best known restaurant on the coast, and then went to the Réserve at Monte Carlo. Expensive, solid, elegant in an old-fashioned way, the comfortable restaurant of this hotel used to provide unusually good food on a lavish scale. The
anchoïade
here was outstandingly good and I remember, in spite of the immense portions served, ordering, much to the amusement of the head waiter, a second helping. When I returned to the restaurant a few days later, he was ready with my double portion of
anchoïade
before I had even asked for it.

For each pound of morello cherries (the bright red bitter cherries which come into season in August) use 6 oz. of white sugar, 12 fl. oz. of wine vinegar and 6 whole cloves. Leave an inch or so of stalk on the cherries, discard any that are at all damaged or bruised and pack the rest into wide preserving jars, filling them about three-quarters full.

Boil the vinegar, sugar and cloves together for 10 minutes. Leave until cold and then pour over the cherries. Screw down the tops, and leave for a month before opening.

Served like olives, these sweet-sour cherries are delicious as part of a mixed hors-d’œuvre, and are obviously a useful standby, for they will keep for a year.

Although not, one would think, a typical French recipe, I first came across these cherries served as an hors-d’œuvre at la Mère Germaine’s
¹¹
at Chateauneuf du Pape. The hors-d’œuvre are beautifully served here, in small oval
raviers
of glowing deep yellow Provençal pottery. Brought on a basket tray which was left on the table so that we could help ourselves, they consisted only of olives, marinaded mushrooms, a rice and prawn salad, anchovies, these pickled cherries and the
tapénade
already described on page 142. But the visual effect had been skilfully thought out, and against the yellow background these few simple things made a dazzling display of colour.

From Roquebrune in the Var comes this curious sauce which, served as an hors-d’œuvre to be spread on bread, or in sandwiches for tea, has a cool, fresh and original taste.

Pound 4 fresh mint leaves to a paste, then add 4 anchovy fillets. Have ready 2 oz. of finely ground almonds, about 2 oz. of olive oil, and half a coffee-cup (after-dinner size) of water. Stir in these three ingredients alternately, a little of each at a time, until all are used up. The result should be a thick mass, in consistency something like a very solid mayonnaise. Season with a little salt if necessary, and a drop of lemon juice.

This is always served as an hors-d’œuvre. The ingredients depend upon the season and what is available. But hard-boiled eggs, anchovy fillets, black olives and tomatoes, with garlic in the dressing, are pretty well constant elements in what should be a rough country salad, rather than a fussy chef’s concoction.

Arrange a quartered lettuce in your salad bowl. Add 2 hard-boiled eggs, cut in half, 2 very firm quartered tomatoes, not more than half a dozen anchovy fillets and 8 or 10 black olives, and if you like them, a few capers. Only when the salad is about to be eaten, mix it with the dressing, made from the best fruity olive oil you can lay hands on, tarragon vinegar, salt, pepper, a crushed clove of garlic. It is up to you to choose the other ingredients: tunny fish, cooked french beans, raw sliced red peppers, beetroot, potatoes, artichoke hearts. It depends what is to come afterwards.

Tunny fish in oil, the flesh of tomatoes, diced anchovy fillets. Seasoning of tarragon, chervil and chopped chives, with or without mustard.

ESCOFFIER’S version

Ingredients:
Young artichoke hearts in quarters, black olives, raw sweet peppers, quartered tomatoes, anchovy fillets.

Seasoning:
Olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard,
fines herbes.

HEYRAUD:
La Cuisine à Nice

Escudier
¹²
has yet another version. This salad, he says, which is a delicious summer hors-d’œuvre, is not served in a salad bowl, but in a flat round or oval dish.

Cut very firm tomatoes in slices and take out the seeds. Salt lightly. Arrange the slices in a dish. On top of the tomatoes lay some anchovy fillets. Strew with little lozenges of sweet green pepper and with black olives. Moisten with olive oil and vinegar, and pepper lightly. You can also sprinkle the salad with chopped basil leaves and decorate the border of the dish with slices of hard-boiled egg.

‘Choose very small green sweet peppers, no larger than a thumb, make an incision in the side, extract the seeds, and put them to soak in vinegar for 20 days. At the end of this time, take them out, dry them, and through the incision stuff them with the following mixture:

An onion finely chopped with stoned black olives, a few anchovy fillets and a handful of capers. The proportions are 5 parts of olives to 1 of capers, 1 of anchovies, and 1 medium-sized onion.

Arrange the little stuffed peppers in a jar and cover them with oil.’

HEYRAUD:
La Cuisine à Nice

This purely local Lyonnais hors-d’œuvre consists of several different meats each seasoned with an oil, vinegar, shallot and parsley dressing and served in separate dishes or bowls. The composition may vary slightly but the various components will be chosen from the following: pigs’ and sheep’s trotters cut into chunks, thinly sliced calf’s head, ox muzzle and boiled beef; there may also be some
cervelas
sausage, sliced and served with a mayonnaise. There are two distinct types of
cervelas
sausage, as I have explained elsewhere in this volume, and the one served with the
salade lyonnaise
is that variety which is lightly smoked and rather resembles a frankfurter in texture, although it is a much larger sausage.

Although not exactly what one might call a refined dish, the
salade lyonnaise
is excellent food of a rough kind, and very cheap if prepared in quantity. I would welcome it myself if it were occasionally to be offered in English restaurants as an alternative to the everlasting potted shrimps and indifferently made
pâté maison.

Here is a recipe for a very simple cold dish made on a large scale, sufficient for a dish at a buffet supper party for about twenty people. It is only an extension of the salad made regularly in French households with the boiled beef from the
pot-au-feu,
but it makes very good party food. It looks attractive, the meat is in manageable pieces, the sauce makes it sufficiently moist without being too runny, and it has plenty of character without being outlandish.

Ingredients are about 4 lb. of stewing beef, a piece of knuckle of veal weighing about 3 lb. including bone, 4 carrots, 2 onions, a bouquet of herbs, seasoning. The correct piece of beef is really ox muzzle or cheek, but this is not always obtainable, and shin or top rump can be used instead. Flank is also good but rather fat, and an extra pound is needed to allow for the waste when the fat is trimmed off after cooking. If possible have the meat, whatever it is, cut in one large piece, and tied into a good shape so that it will be easy to cut when cooked. For the sauce: 8 to 10 shallots, 2 oz. capers, 3 or 4 medium-sized pickled cucumbers, a little mustard, a very large bunch of parsley,
pint of olive oil, tarragon vinegar, 2 tomatoes.

Put the beef and veal into a deep pan with the onions, carrots and bouquet of herbs. Add 1 tablespoon of salt, cover with 7 to 8 pints of water, cook with the lid on the pan either in a very low oven or on top of the stove over a very gentle heat for 3
to 5 hours, depending upon the cut of meat (ox cheek takes the longest) until the meat is quite tender. Remove both veal and beef, sprinkle them with salt and olive oil and leave until next day. Keep the stock for soup. To make the salad, cut the meat when quite cold into thin slices, narrow and neat, a little smaller than a visiting card. Mix the veal and the beef together.

The sauce takes time to prepare. The shallots must be chopped exceedingly fine with the parsley, which must be first washed in cold water and squeezed dry; when both shallots and parsley are chopped almost to a pulp stir in a little French mustard, salt, pepper, the chopped pickled cucumber and the capers. Add the olive oil gradually, and a very little tarragon vinegar. Mix the sauce very thoroughly with the meat. Lastly add the roughly chopped tomatoes, which are there mainly for appearance’ sake. Leave for several hours before serving. Arrange in shallow dishes with a little extra chopped parsley on the top. There should be enough parsley in the sauce to make it quite thick and quite green.

This recipe can be applied to almost any kind of boiled meat or to fish and chicken, the quantities for the sauce being reduced in proportion to the amount of meat.

This is a plain lettuce or other green salad dressed only with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and served either with or after the meat, poultry or other main course.

The generally accepted formula for a so-called French dressing, for which, so far as I know, there is no French translation, is 3 tablespoons of oil to 1 of vinegar. This is much too vinegary even with a mild vinegar. Six to one is nearer the mark, although, naturally, this must remain a question of individual taste. Red or white wine vinegar, tarragon or Orléans vinegar are the ones to go for. The dressing should, however, taste predominantly of olive oil; when the salad has been turned gently over and over and over in the dressing (the best way to do it is with your hands), so that every leaf is coated with its film of oil, serve it at once, fresh, green and shining.