French Provincial Cooking (107 page)

In its extreme simplicity this sweet, native to Anjou and Saumur, is one of the most delicious in all French cookery; although in fact that is the wrong term to use, since there is no cooking involved—just a lot of fresh cream and some egg whites.
³²

For three or four people, whip
pint of fresh double cream until it is stiff. Fold in 2 egg whites beaten as for a soufflé. Have ready a square of fresh new muslin placed in a little mould pierced with holes. (There are special glazed earthenware or metal moulds sold in France for this purpose. One or two London shops sell them, but a small tin mould in which you make some holes with a tin opener will do, or even a large tumbler-shaped carton.) Turn your cream into this and fold over the corners. Stand the mould on some sort of trivet or stand over a plate, so that the cream can drain. Leave in a cold larder until the next day. Turn out the cream on to a plate; cover it completely with fresh plain unwhipped cream. Serve with plenty of soft white sugar and in the season with strawberries, raspberries or wild strawberries.

In the winter you can serve, instead of fresh fruit, quince or raspberry jelly. But also the
crémets
can quite well be served on their own, perhaps with a glass of one of the lovely soft fruity white wines of Vouvray, Saumur or Sancerre.

Another version of the many sweet cream cheese dishes current in French home cookery.

Buy
lb. of
unsalted
cream cheese, tasting it to make sure it
is
unsalted. If you cannot get it, use home-made milk cheese. The French cream cheeses called Isigny and Chambourcy can be used, but they are, of course, more expensive than the English ones. Turn the cream cheese into a bowl and mash it with a fork or, if it is the very grainy kind, press it through a sieve so that it is quite smooth. Add a tablespoon of caster sugar. Incorporate 3 stiffly beaten whites, as you would for a soufflé. Turn into a fresh muslin cloth or napkin; it should now go into a little rush basket or mould
³³
pierced with holes, or a shallow tin 2 inches deep and approximately 4
inches in diameter, pierced with holes. Leave in the refrigerator for 2 hours or so. To serve, turn out on to a plate, pour thick fresh cream over, about
pint for this amount, and serve caster sugar separately. Plenty for four.

On no account must this lovely sweet, or indeed any of these cream cheese dishes, be despoiled of their cool cream and white beauty by the addition of any trimming or irrelevant decoration. In the season, however, a mound of fresh strawberries or raspberries, or an uncooked purée of either, can accompany the cream cheese; and another good combination is a bowl of pears which have been stewed in red wine, as described on page 441.

Fontainebleau
is a very light and fluffy fresh cream cheese, which has now become a well-known commercial product, being sold in French dairies and restaurants enfolded in a little white cloth and served in individual portions in cartons or metal containers: and being prepared in large quantities by special machinery in a factory it attains a greater degree of aeration than can be achieved in the ordinary household. On the other hand, prepared at home it does not sink so quickly, is a fraction of the cost and tastes rather better. In the house where I stayed in Paris in my student days, we used to have it served in one large bowl from which we all helped ourselves to pretty big quantities. The consumption of cream in that establishment must have been huge by present-day standards.

For ample helpings for four people, the ingredients are
pint of double cream, about 2 oz. of very fresh milk (in those days in France both cream and milk were unpasteurised), about a dessertspoon of caster sugar or vanilla sugar, if available.

Pour the fresh cream into a bowl, cover it, leave it in a cool place but not in the refrigerator, for 3 or 4 days, according to the weather. If it is insufficiently ripened it will be insipid but, on the other hand, it must not have the slightest hint of a cheesy taste. The day it is to be eaten, buy the fresh milk. Sprinkle the sugar over the cream and start to whip it with a loop whisk or a fork. As it gets stiffer, add the milk a little at a time. Don’t whip it too stiff, or it will lose its lightness and turn to a buttery mass. Simply pile it up in a bowl or into little glasses and you will find that it keeps its shape. But if you want to make it fluffier, fold in a stiffly whipped egg white or two.

Serve it by itself, with caster sugar separately. When they were in season, we used to have fresh raspberries, or raspberries and red-currants mixed, or wild strawberries with our
Fontainebleau.

Nearly everyone knows and appreciates the old and reliable formula for a chocolate mousse—4 yolks beaten into 4 oz. of melted bitter chocolate, and the 4 whipped whites folded in. Here is a slightly different version, its faint orange flavour giving it originality.

Break 4 oz. of good quality bitter chocolate into squares and put in a fireproof dish in a low oven. When the chocolate is soft, after a few minutes, take it from the oven, stir in 4 well-beaten yolks, then 1 oz. of softened butter, then the juice of 1 orange. Use a Seville orange when in season; its aromatic flavour comes through better than that of the sweet orange.

Beat the 4 egg whites as for a soufflé and fold them into the chocolate mixture. Pour into little pots, glasses or coffee-cups. This quantity will fill 6. Put in the refrigerator or a cool larder until ready to serve.

Should you have some orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier or Curaçao, add a spoonful in place of the same amount of the orange juice.

The confection of sorbets and ice creams in refrigerator trays is only partially satisfactory. Timing is difficult to gauge, and, frozen statically, the cream mixture does not expand. The old hand-cranked ice tub or sorbetière can still be bought at big department stores and a few kitchen supply shops. Although efficient it devours ice and freezing salt and is mighty hard going to work. Electrically operated sorbetières, American, Canadian and French, are on the market. They are expensive, still require ice and freezing salt, although in smaller proportions than the hand-operated machine, and are really for restaurants or for largescale household use. For the small household a French-manufactured sorbètiere to fit in the freezing compartment of a refrigerator was for many years available on the English market, and was described in this chapter. This sorbètiere is no longer imported owing, I suspect, to various minor troubles with the mechanisim experienced by those who had bought the machine. In fairness, I should add that my own has proved satisfactory enough, and is still in use.

Many people now freeze their sorbets and ice creams by putting the mixture directly into moulds or containers in the deep freeze. This system has much the same disadvantages as that of the refrigerator tray, in that there is no expansion of the mixture, and that ice crystals form in it. The freezing process, however, is much quicker, the inconvenience of keeping the refrigerator at maximum freezing point for a long period is eliminated, and storage is no problem. For simple fruit sorbets the freezer system has fewer disadvantages than for cream ices. Even for these, the advantages of home-made ices over commercial ones seem to me very great, although it can rarely be claimed that they are cheaper.

pint of thin cream, the yolks of 4 small or 3 large eggs, 3 to 4 oz. of soft white sugar, the juice and grated peel of 1 large lemon.

Grate the peel of the lemon into the cream. Add the very well beaten egg yolks and the sugar. Stir over low heat until the mixture is the consistency of a thin custard. Remove from the fire, strain through a fine sieve and stir until cool. Add the strained juice of half the lemon. Freeze in the ice-tray of the refrigerator, turned to its maximum freezing temperature, for 2
to 3 hours. Have the tray covered with foil, and turn the cream sides to middle once or twice during freezing. For four.