French Provincial Cooking (57 page)

Peel them and serve them hot with salt and butter, or slice them and season them while still warm for salad. Baked in this manner, the flavour is infinitely superior to that of boiled beets.

The large fleshy-stalked green leaves called
blettes
are occasionally to be found in England and are known as Swiss chard. They have not a great deal of flavour and the best way to serve them is in a creamy sauce.

Wash the leaves, remove the hardest part of the stalks and leaf centres, and cook them in a little water in the same way as spinach. Drain them, press them as dry as possible and chop them.

Prepare, for 1 lb. of chard, a béchamel as described on page 114, and enrich it with
pint of cream. Cover the bottom of a wide gratin dish with a thin layer of the sauce, put the chopped chard on the top and cover it completely with the rest of the sauce. Put a few little knobs of butter on the top and cook in a moderate oven—Gas No. 3 or 4, 330 to 355 deg. F.—for 20 to 25 minutes, until the surface is barely beginning to turn pale gold. Enough for two, as a separate course.

This is also an excellent way of serving coarse-leaved spinach and beet spinach.

This is one of the best known vegetable dishes of French cookery. It is exceedingly simple, and makes a particularly welcome dish in the spring before the new peas and beans have arrived.

New carrots are scraped, and sliced into bias-cut rounds about
inch thick. Put them into a heavy pan with 1oz of butter, a pinch of salt, 2 lumps of sugar, and
pint of water per pound of carrots. Cook uncovered for 20 to 25 minutes until nearly all the water has evaporated and the carrots are tender. Add another lump of butter and shake the pan so that the carrots do not stick. Add a little finely-chopped parsley before serving.

The water of the Vichy region is non-chalky and is therefore said to be particularly satisfactory for the cooking of vegetables, and it is this circumstance which no doubt gives the dish its name. A pinch of bicarbonate of soda in the water helps to produce the same effect.

Carottes Vichy
can be served as a garnish to meat or as a separate dish.

Cook the carrots as above and, instead of the final addition of butter, pour a little boiling cream into the saucepan and shake it over the flame until it has slightly thickened.

Glazed carrots are cooked in much the same way as
Carottes Vichy
but are usually cut in quarters or thick chunks instead of in slices, and a larger proportion of water is needed to cook them. Take care not to put more than a pinch of salt in the water or, when it has evaporated, the carrots will be too salt. Add about a teaspoon of soft sugar with the final lump of butter, and let this mixture cook until it has formed a little thick syrup which coats the carrots, but don’t let it turn to toffee.

Whenever a meat dish is described in a menu as
à la nivernaise,
it means there are glazed carrots and onions as a garnish.

Cook the carrots as for
carottes glacées,
adding if possible a little good, clear stock or meat glaze when the water has evaporated. Little glazed onions cooked as described on page 265 are then mixed with the carrots and these vegetables are arranged round a joint of beef or lamb.

This is a delicious and simple vegetable dish which goes equally well with a roast of lamb, a chicken, or a beef stew.

To 1 lb. of rather large new potatoes, you needs
lb. of carrots, 2 or 3 shallots or little onions, parsley, seasonings, and about 2 oz. of butter. Boil the scraped potatoes and carrots separately in salted water until they are only two-thirds cooked. Drain them and cut the potatoes into inch squares and the carrots into thick strips. Chop the peeled shallots or onions, mix all together, and finish cooking them in a frying-pan in the foaming butter, turning the vegetables over and over, and shaking the pan until they are all buttery and beginning to turn crisp. Then lower the heat and cook gently until the potatoes and carrots are tender. Stir in a little chopped parsley just before they are served.

The old way of preparing whole celery hearts, blanched, then stewed in butter and finally enriched with meat glaze has become a rather costly dish, since at least one heart must be allowed for each person, and celery is now an expensive vegetable.

A more economical way is as follows: having trimmed and washed the celery very thoroughly, cut all except the very coarse outside sticks (but even these can be used if you take the trouble to scrape the strings off with a sharp knife) into chunks about
inch long. Melt a large lump of butter and a few drops of olive oil in a thick frying-pan and in this let the celery stew gently, covered, with a very little seasoning of salt, for about 15 minutes. If you have a little good clear meat, chicken or game stock, add a spoonful or two and let it reduce so that it forms a little syrupy sauce.

This dish makes a splendid accompaniment for pheasant and other game dishes, as well as for lamb, pork and fried or baked sausages.

Celeriac, or celery-root, is appearing in increasing quantities in the shops and makes most delicious winter salads and vegetable dishes as well as soups.

Peel a celeriac, rinse it, and shred it into fine strips. If you possess a mandoline (see page 64), it is a matter of moments to do this on the fluted blade. Cook the celeriac in butter in a frying-pan for about 10 minutes, turning it over and over; towards the end of the cooking time, add salt, pepper, a teaspoon of French mustard, a dash of tarragon or wine vinegar and a little finely chopped parsley. The celeriac should retain some of its crispness and bite.

Scrub the celeriac and cook it unpeeled in plenty of water until it is quite tender. When it is cool enough to handle, peel and sieve it, then mix it with a purée of potatoes made separately. Season rather highly. Heat up in a double saucepan, with a good lump of butter and 2 or 3 tablespoons of cream.

Proportions are
lb. of potatoes to a celeriac weighting to
lb.

This purée is particularly nice with fried or grilled cutlets and with game dishes. As an alternative to the celeriac, Jerusalem artichokes can be used.

Of this famous dish, Alcide Bontou, author of the
Traité de Cuisine Bourgeoise
Bordelaise
(1929), says: ‘The cèpe was little known in Paris forty years ago, and was not listed on restaurant menus; I was the first to have them brought specially to the Café Anglais. Parisians could not accustom themselves to the oil and to the seasoning of garlic; we tried to cook them in butter, but the only way to prepare them is in the Bordelais way.’