French Provincial Cooking (76 page)

Heat the butter in a thick saucepan; in this melt the finely-chopped shallot, but do not let it fry. Pour in the Pineau (this is a white wine and brandy apéritif drink made in the Charente district; it can be obtained in England but any good dry white vermouth will do as well) and let it bubble fast for a minute or two. Lower the heat and stir in the flour. When it has thickened, start adding the cream rather slowly, stirring all the time. Season with a little salt, pepper and nutmeg. Put the saucepan on a mat and let the sauce barely simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring it at frequent intervals. Stir in the mustard and the grated cheese.

Remove all the flesh from the claws and tails of the split lobsters. Slice it into neat little rounds. Pour a little of the sauce into each shell. Arrange the slices of lobster meat tidily on top. Cover with the sauce. Strew breadcrumbs over the top and add a few very small knobs of butter. Put the lobsters thus prepared in fireproof gratin dishes. Heat very slowly in the oven, covered if possible, for 15 minutes. Then put under the hot grill until the surface is golden and bubbling.

When all is said and done, plain freshly-boiled lobster or crawfish served either hot or cold is infinitely superior to all the fancy and showy dishes such as Newburg,
à l’américaine
and the rest. In towns, lobsters are seldom sold alive, nor would one wish to have to carry them home, struggling and clacking their claws in the most alarming way. Having done this job in seaside villages in Cornwall and in the west of Scotland, in Greece and in Provence, having manœuvred them into cauldrons of cold water, brought them gràdually to the boil in the way recommended by the R.S.P.C.A. and eaten them in the freshest possible condition, I think I would still rather buy them ready cooked from a reliable fishmonger, who will choose good ones, split them, crack the claws and send them more or less ready to serve. Medium-sized or small ones are the best, very large ones often being old and tough. If you can get hen lobsters or crawfish, so much the better. The red coral part inside can be pounded up and mixed into your mayonnaise, and gives it a most delicious flavour.

This is really a way of making your lobster go rather further than it normally would; it can be an excellent dish but rather overwhelming and is best, perhaps, served in small quantities as a first course rather than as a main dish.

It is made in the same way as any
mayonnaise de poisson
(page 288), with the lobster flesh cut into neat escalopes, the creamy parts rubbed through a sieve into the mayonnaise, the whole piled up in a pyramid in a shallow dish and the coral, if any, sprinkled over the top as a garnish. Crisp little lettuce hearts should be arranged round the base of the pyramid. The tails of
langoustines
or Dublin Bay prawns, freshly boiled (personally I do not think frozen ones worth buying) can be served in the same way.

While looking up references to the
homard à l’américaine,
it occurred to me that it would be interesting to know how the lobster and the
langouste
were served by French cooks before the
américaine
dish became so fashionable. Among the rather scarce earlier recipes was a spit-roasted one with truffles and champagne in the sauce, another with the juice of a Seville orange squeezed over it; several cold lobster dishes with varying forms of
ravigote
or
rémoulade
sauce, and one which appears, with slight variations, in three well-known cookery books: first in the
Dictionnaire Général de la Cuisine Française
, 1866, originally published in 1834 under the title
Néo-Physiologie du Goût
; in Dumas the Elder’s
Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine
, 1873; and in the
366 Menus de Baron Brisse,
1875 edition (first published 1867) which also, incidentally, contains a recipe for
homards à la bordelaise
which is suspiciously like our friend the
américaine
again. The Baron Brisse calls the dish
homard au court-bouillon.
Neither of the other authors provides it with a name, and I have called it after the Comte de Courchamps, author of the
Néo-Physiologie du Goût.
Here is the recipe.

The lobster is boiled in the usual way but with the addition of a ‘full goblet’ of Madeira wine, a large lump of butter, a bunch of parsley, a red pepper and the white part of 2 or 3 leeks to the salted water, and the lobster is left to cool in its broth.

The sauce is made as follows: ‘all the creamy parts, and the red coral if it is a hen lobster, are mixed with fruity olive oil, a full spoonful of good mustard, 10 to 12 drops of Chinese soy sauce, a good pinch of chopped
fines herbes,
2 crushed shallots, a fair quantity of mignonette pepper and finally a half-glass of
anisette de Bordeaux,
or simply of aniseed ratafia. When all these ingredients are well amalgamated, you add the juice of 2 or 3 lemons according to the size of the lobster and you serve the sauce “à proximité de ce plat d’entremets.” ’

The recipe rather implies that the flesh of the lobster is served on a dish without the shell, for the instructions are to ‘detach all the white flesh with the end of a sharpened quill.’

It sounds, to say the least, outlandish, but I never believe in condemning recipes simply because they sound unorthodox or because they happen to have escaped the attention of the great professional masters of the past. (The three authors mentioned above were all amateurs.)

A certain degree of curiosity is surely necessary to a cook. And curiosity nagged at me until I finally went out and bought a bottle of Chinese soy sauce, some Marie Brizard
anisette
liqueur and a nice, freshly-boiled hen lobster. It would have to do without its bath of Madeira, butter and herbs, for as none of the cooking liquid is used for the sauce this really does seem rather wasteful, although of course it should make the basis of a pretty high-class soup.

To make the sauce I used, apart from the exact quantities of shallot, soy and the cream and coral from the lobster as specified, a teaspoon of chopped tarragon and parsley, 1 of yellow Dijon mustard, not much more than 2 teaspoons of
anisette,
4 tablespoons of fruity olive oil and the juice of one small lemon (lemons are said to be much larger nowadays than they were when these recipes were written).

Whoever invented that sauce knew what he was doing. It is remarkably well constructed, it has bones, guts and balance; its flavour is certainly original, but it is stimulating without being discordant, and one way and another this is the sauce I have adopted for cold lobster in preference to any other.

This is the variation of
langouste à /a sètoise
, in its turn a variation of
homard à l’américaine,
about which I have written in the introductory notes concerning the specialities of the Languedoc on pages 53-4 of this book.

 

‘Cut a live crawfish into not too large pieces; put them at once into a wide and shallow pan containing a little smoking olive oil, add salt and pepper and cook until the shell turns red. Add some finely chopped shallots and a clove or two of garlic, crushed and first cooked separately in a little oil.

‘Pour in a small glass of good cognac and set light to it; when the flames have gone out, add a half bottle of still champagne or chablis, and a spoonful of tomato purée. Cover the pan and cook over a steady fire for about 20 minutes. Remove the pieces of crawfish, which are now cooked, and keep them hot.

“Press the sauce through a very fine sieve, let it boil up again, season with a scrap of cayenne and, at the last minute, add 3 good spoonfuls of
aïoli.

‘Pour the sauce over the crawfish and sprinkle a little finely-chopped parsley over the dish.’

‘The
langouste
(crawfish), divided in pieces, is treated as described for
langouste à l’américaine,
the quantity of tomato being increased and a strong flavouring of garlic added.’

 

This note is given by Prosper Montagné in the
Larousse Gastronomique,
and he also observes that the dish belongs to the
Cuisine Catalane et du Languedoc.

Quantities for two people: 1 medium-sized hen crawfish, about 3 oz. of double cream, 1 teaspoon flour, 4 tablespoons dry white wine, 1 teaspoon brandy, 1 heaped teaspoon of French mustard, butter, dried or fresh tarragon, breadcrumbs, seasonings.

Have the cooked crawfish split in half and the claws cracked by the fishmonger. Scoop out all the coral and the creamy meat and set aside. Take the flesh from the tail, cut into neat scallops, return to the half shells, and put these in an oval gratin dish.

Prepare the sauce by melting about
oz. of butter in a thick saucepan. Stir in the flour; when it is smooth add the white wine; let this bubble quite fast for half a minute; stir in the mustard, then the cream (reserving one tablespoon), and when it is thick, the brandy (because it is not in this case flamed, a teaspoon is enough; more would overpower the other flavours). Season with a very little salt, freshly-ground pepper, a scrap of Cayenne, and half a teaspoon of chopped fresh or dried tarragon. Leave over a low flame while you pound the coral with the reserved cream. Stir this into the sauce, giving it a turn or two over the fire. Spoon it over the crawfish so that all the meat is quite covered. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs; pour over a little melted butter. Put in a low oven for 10 minutes, covered, so that it heats through gently, then finish under the hot grill until the surface starts to blister and bubble.

For each person have half a dozen tails of freshly-boiled Dublin Bay prawns. Take them from the shells without breaking them, season them with pepper and lemon juice, paint them with just melted butter, thread them on to small skewers, putting a whole mushroom head, also seasoned and buttered, between each. Grill them gently, turning the skewers round once or twice.

Serve either on a bed of rice cooked as for the mussel dish on page 320, or by themselves with a
sauce béarnaise, hollandaise
or
bretonne
. You can, of course, use frozen Dublin Bay prawns, or scampi as they are now called, but personally I would not, for immensely popular though they are, I cannot help but think that Dublin Bay prawns are one of the least successful of all frozen fish products, such flavour as they have being faintly unpleasant and in no way comparable to that of the fresh fish. Why this should be so I do not know, and perhaps those who have never tasted them as they are when freshly caught and boiled might not be aware of the difference.

Both on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of France (where they go by the name of
chipirones
), squid are a popular dish. They can be stewed, stuffed, fried, grilled, added to fish soups and to rice dishes. They have a rich, slightly sweet flavour, and although they are not to everyone’s taste, there are many people who regard them as the poor man’s lobster.

At one time the only places one could buy squid in England were two fishmongers’ shops in Soho. Recently, fishmongers in other areas where there are foreign customers have started to supply them. I would not say squid is a fish one would want to eat every day, but if you know how to clean and cook them they make an occasional excellent and cheap dish.

To clean them, put them in a bowl of water and pull out the tentacles and head to which are attached the intestines; these you detach and throw away, as also the transparent spine bone. Rub off the purplish outside skin, which comes away very easily. From each side of the head remove the ink bags, and also the little horny bit in the centre of the tentacles. Turn the pocket-like part of the fish inside out and rinse it free of grit under running cold water. By the time this cleaning operation, which is very quickly done, is finished, the inkfish is a beautiful milky-white colour and does not look at all frightening or unappetising.

Having cleaned 4 medium-sized inkfish as above, cut the body part into
inch rounds and slice the tentacles. Heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil in an earthenware or other stew-pan, and in this melt a couple of large sliced onions and a clove or two of garlic. Put in the inkfish and, after a minute or two, add a glass (4 oz.) of red, white or rosé wine, let it bubble a minute, then turn the flame low. Season with salt and pepper; put in a bouquet of herbs which should include, if possible, a sprig of fresh or dried fennel. Cover the pan, and cook very slowly indeed for an hour to an hour and a half, either on top of the stove or in the oven.