French Provincial Cooking (104 page)

Cut the flesh from the saddle of hare into fillets; season them with salt and pepper, a little lemon juice squeezed over them and about 8 pounded juniper berries.

In butter, brown the chopped shallots, the ham cut into strips, and the fillets of hare, dusted with flour; pour over the white wine. Cook 5 minutes, then add the cleaned mushrooms, whole, and the stock. Simmer 15 minutes. Heat the cream to boiling point, in a separate pan; add it to the hare, stir, add seasoning if necessary. Strew breadcrumbs on the top, add a little butter and put in a moderate oven for a few minutes. This will be enough for only three people; for a bigger dish use as well fillets from the back legs, putting them to cook a few minutes before those from the saddle.

Buy about 2 lb. of shoulder or flank of venison in one piece. Tie it in a sausage shape and put it to marinate, in a glazed earthenware or china bowl, with 4 tablespoons each of port and wine vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Leave for 24 hours, then take out the meat, wipe it dry, roll it in flour and put it in a small oval earthenware dish in which it will just about fit. On top put a layer of sliced onions and then cover completely with thin slices of fat bacon. Pour over the marinade, add a seasoning of salt and pepper, cover with greaseproof paper and the lid of the dish and cook in a very slow oven, Gas No. 2, 310 deg. F., for 4 to 4
hours.

Serve in a very hot dish with very hot plates, for nothing gets colder or congeals more rapidly than venison. Red-currant or rowan jelly, or any sweet-sour pickled fruit goes well with venison, and an excellent accompaniment is the purée of celeriac and potatoes described on page 248.

In France it is
chevreuil
or roe-deer rather than the red deer or
cerf
which is cooked in small pieces such as cutlets, steaks or
noisettes,
and bought venison from the deep freeze is usually best stewed as in the above recipe. But if you happen to be given a joint, this method of dealing with the cutlets is a good one.

Have 6 to 8 neck cutlets of venison trimmed of fat and the bones laid bare as for lamb cutlets. Cook them exactly as for
côtes de veau à l’ardennaise
(page 374) but give them anything up to 30 minutes longer in the oven. Cutlets from the young roe-deer would, of course, require considerably less time. When they are tender pour off the sauce and keep the cutlets hot in the oven while you put the sauce into a wide, shallow pan and reduce it a little by fast boiling. At this moment you can add, if you like, a spoonful of red-currant jelly and the juice of half a bitter orange. Pour the sauce boiling over the venison cutlets and be sure to have your plates very hot.

Vegetables to go with venison, as well as a purée of celeriac and potatoes, are a purée of chestnuts (page 264), lentils
à la maître d’hôtel
(page 262) or a sauté of carrots and potatoes (page 247).

Edmond Richardin, in
L’Art du Bien Manger
, 1913, gives the following interesting recipe for wild boar:

 

‘In mild winters in the Pyrenees, when the snows do not reach the wooded zones, troops of wild boars feed there on acorns and beech nuts which have fallen in the autumn under cover of the forest. The flesh of wild boar killed at this period, and prepared with artistry, is not without delicacy.

‘The haunch of the young boar, skinned and with the sinews removed, is threaded with lardoons. Then it is put into a marinade composed of
litre of vinegar, a bottle of old red wine, thyme, parsley, wild marjoram, 5 bayleaves, some sliced onions, 3 cloves of garlic, 4 shallots, 2 sliced carrots, a plentiful amount of salt and pepper. Leave to steep for 4 days.

‘Take the haunch from the marinade, drain and dry it; let it take colour in very hot fat in a braising pan; remove it; prepare a
roux
by adding 4 tablespoons of flour to the same fat, then gradually adding some of the marinade strained through a tammy cloth. Replace the meat and cook gently for 1 hour. Moisten with the remaining marinade, add a glass of old cognac and seasoning, and cook over a gentle fire for another 1
hours. Serve after having poured excess fat off the sauce.’

Wild boar is not uncommon in France. A number of Paris restaurants serve it during the winter, nearly always accompanied by a creamy chestnut purée. In Sardinia and in Italy I have also eaten this rather attractive game dish, and admirers of Norman Douglas will remember the splendid recipe he gives in
Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology.

A joint of fresh pork may be prepared and cooked in a very similar way to that explained by Richardin, and tastes remarkably like the game it is intended to imitate. The recipe is on page 364.

‘L’Art d‘accommoder les restes,’
says the
Larousse Gastronomique,
with some severity, ‘is not to be considered as the summit of culinary achievement.’ On the contrary, the writer of the article on
les restes
is of the opinion that any household where there is customarily an abundance of left-overs is badly run. Either the food has been carelessly bought or badly cooked.

However, Larousse makes a clear distinction between food left over through bad management and that intentionally cooked in large enough quantities to serve two or three meals. There are surely, though, other kinds of left-overs, and perfectly legitimate ones.

Without allowing economy to get out of hand to the point of hoarding things which should have been consigned to the dustbin in the first place, there are bones and trimmings from joints, small quantities of meat left on a chicken carcase, enough cold salmon or other fish to make a little dish for two people, the end of a ham or a piece of gammon, or a little rich sauce from a beef and wine stew.

The requisites of dishes made from such things are, as I see the matter, as follows. They should be cheap, quick and easy to cook, and the result should be as attractive as if all the ingredients had been chosen especially for that dish. These conditions preclude the buying of a lot of extra ingredients, the opening of jars of this and tins of that, which in their turn become left-overs; nine times out of ten a dish made in such a way is not only a false economy but a messy concoction, full of ingredients without point or purpose.

Next, and perhaps most important of all, use your little odds and ends of left-overs while they are still fresh; don’t hoard them in the larder or refrigerator until they are dried up and stale.

Lastly, when it comes to heating up already cooked food, leave the frying-pan out of it as much as possible and, instead of frizzling the food in fat, heat it as slowly as possible in stock in a covered pan.

Here is a brief list of recipes in this book in which left-overs can be used, and some suggestions as to the best purpose to which trimmings and oddments can be put.

White fish: Mayonnaise de poisson,
page 288.

In a creamy cheese sauce as for the skate dish, page 291.

Salmon: Mayonnaise de poisson,
page 288.

Mousse made as for the ham mousse, page 235.

Mussels, prawns and other shell fish: Riz pilaff
as for the mussel dish on page 320. Mussel omelette, page 196.

Stock from mussels: L’œuf
du
pêcheur,
page 189.

Boiled beef: Bœuf en salade,
page 147.

Roast beef:
Best cold with a potato or other vegetable salad.

Juice or sauce from beef stews: Œufs pochés à l’huguenote,
page 190. With
pommes mousseline façon provençale,
page 272.

Lamb, mutton, pork and veal:
With pilaff rice cooked as for the mussel dish on page 320. In salad as for the beef salad, page 147. In stuffed cabbage as on page 252.

Bones and trimmings:
For stock or to enrich the haricot bean and lentil dishes described in the chapter on vegetables.

Pork rinds and bones and veal bones:
To enrich stews and stocks, especially those destined for jelly.

Ham and tongue:
Ham mousse, page 235. Ham with cream sauce, pages 231-3.

Sausages:
In
omelette campagnarde,
page 196.

Kidneys:
In omelettes, with pilaff rice, with poached eggs.

Chicken, turkey: Mayonnaise de volaille,
page 407.
Émincés de volaille,
page 406. In salad as for beef salad, page 147. In pilaff. In stuffing for
paupiettes de veau,
page 376.

Chicken and turkey carcases:
In stock for celery soup, page 172. Carrot soup, page 168.

Goose: Rillettes d’oie,
page 222. In pilaff.

Duck carcase:
For stock for
potage de cèpes,
page 171, or beetroot consommé, page 380.

Game:
As above, and in pilaff.

Potatoes: Sauté à la lyonnaise,
page 273.

Choucroute:
Soup, page 420.

Rice:
In vegetable and fish soups. In stuffing for sweet peppers, page 269, or in tomatoes cooked in the same way.

Very small quantities of chicken, meat or fish: Saucisses de pommes de terre,
page 274. Stuffed cabbage, page 252.

I think that any cook, however inexperienced, who cares to start from these few basic ideas, will very soon be able to devise his own dishes using up left-overs to the best advantage.

PLEASE do not look in this chapter for anything but the simplest of creams and pastries, soufflés, ices and fruit dishes. Elaborate
pâtisserie
and confectionery require practical experience and knowledge of an art quite distinct from that of normal household cookery.