French Provincial Cooking (17 page)

 

Étuvée, Cuisson à l’
To cook something in a hermetically sealed pot with very low heat all round, i.e.
petits pois a l’étuvée.
Some French cooking ranges have a special oven called a
fourneau à l’étuve
in which meat, poultry, vegetables and so on can be cooked in this way. It is more or less the equivalent of the coolest oven on our solid fuel stoves of the Aga and Esse types. The system can be usefully applied also to gas or electric ovens set to the lowest possible temperature. The
estouffat de bœuf à l’albigeoise
on page 342 is an example of such cooking.

 

Foncer, Marquer
To line a stew-pan or braising-pan with fat pork, vegetables, herbs and so on before putting in the meat.
Foncer
is also a pastry term meaning to line a tin with the prepared dough.

 

Fouler
To pound through a sieve. The word is said to be the origin of our fruit fools.

 

Frapper
To freeze a liquid, a cream. Also to chill wine or fruit, i.e.
champagne frappé
—chilled, not frozen, champagne;
melon frappé—
iced melon.

 

Fricasser
Literally this means to cook something in a saucepan, and although nowadays a
fricassée
is understood to mean a dish of chicken stewed in butter, the sauce thickened with egg yolks and/or cream, it formerly meant all sorts of ragoûts of meat, fish, poultry, etc. The English fricassée of left-over chicken would be called, in French,
émincés de volaille.

 

Friture
For deep frying, the French prefer the dripping from beef kidney fat (suet) to any other, sometimes mixing it with veal dripping. Pork lard, called
saindoux,
can also be used (see page 98). In olive-growing areas, naturally, oil is used. In times like recent years when olive oil has been very expensive, ground-nut oil (
huile d’arachides),
which is quite devoid of taste or smell, has to be substituted. But it does not produce such crisp results as olive oil. Oil, and all fats whether animal or vegetable, are improved for purposes of deep frying if simmered for the first time before using for about half an hour. The risk of frothing and boiling over is then diminished. Every time frying oil or fat has been used it is imperative to rid it of all particles and impurities by filtering it through a cloth or very fine sieve before it is put away for further use.

And since we are on the subject of frying fat, perhaps this is the place for me to beg once more of English housewives to abolish that sinister bowl of mixed fats, improperly filtered and therefore full of little specks of frizzled food and other impurities, which lurks in so many larders and refrigerators. To use these mixed fats for frying or for basting the joint is to spoil your dish from the start, for more often than not they are stale and sour, and naturally impart this horrible taste to the gravy, as well as to the meat or poultry which has been cooked in them. We all know that aftertaste of stale fat which ruins so much food in even the best restaurants. The smell as you go through the door is very often sufficient warning. In the home there is no excuse for it. By all means economise, as we were all obliged to do in the days of rationing, by saving good fat or dripping. But do not mix the fat from bacon, mutton, pork, beef, duck and so on all together in one bowl. Keep each one separate, perfectly filtered, and in a covered bowl, and do not try to keep them too long. Better to spend a few extra shillings on buying fresh lard, oil, or butter than to risk your family’s health and digestions by using stale fat.

The practice of half-frying certain foods and then leaving them until meal-times before re-cooking them is common in restaurants but also not unknown in the home. It is a dangerous practice, for in the meantime the food may become infected.

 

Glaçage
(
a
) The glazing of meat after it is cooked by anointing it with its own juices and subjecting it to fierce heat for a few seconds. The resulting varnish-like coating is for appearance’ sake rather than for any flavour which the process adds to the meat.

(
b
) The painting of cold joints with melted meat glaze to give a brilliant surface.

(
c
) The freezing of any food in ice or the refrigerator (not deep freezing).

(
d
) The icing of cakes and pastries with sugar icing.

(
e
) The dusting of sweet fritters, etc., with icing sugar.

Lardage des viandes
To lard a piece of meat is to introduce fat into an otherwise dry joint, such as veal, venison and second- and third-grade cuts of beef. It is done with a special larding needle (lardoire) and pieces of pork fat cut into little sticks of uniform size and shape (lardoons). These lardoons should penetrate right through the meat. Much the same results can be achieved by making deep incisions in the meat and then inserting the lardoons by hand. This is often done for a daube. The appearance of the meat is not so elegant when cut as it is if the larding has been done professionally, but the effect has been achieved. A characteristic dish in which the meat is always larded is
bœuf à la mode.
(See the drawing on page 70.)

 

Liaison d’une sauce
The binding or thickening of a sauce. This is achieved by various methods, each one of which is clearly explained in the relevant recipes in this book. The typical sauce thickened with egg yolks is
sauce béarnaise,
page 118. For a white flour-based sauce, Béchamel on page 114 is the prototype; and for one in which the flour is browned before the addition of the liquid see the
saupiquet des Amognes
, page 231: this sauce is really a variation of
espagnole.
For a sauce made purely of butter and cream, see the recipe for the cream sauce to serve with
poule au pot à la normande,
page 403; for a cream sauce plus the butter and juices in the pan the
escalope cauchoise,
page 373, can be taken as an example. For a sauce containing flour, cream and eggs, see the cream sauce served with the
poule au riz à la crème,
page 404, from which it can be observed that when flour is present in a sauce the added egg yolks can be allowed to come to the simmering point, which would be disastrous in a sauce like Béarnaise in which there is no flour.

For a stew in which the meat is cooked in an already thickened sauce
bœuf bourguignonne
, page 343, is the best example, but such stews are not so common in French household cookery as they are in our own. They should be cooked on top of the stove rather than in the oven, because all-round heat tends to disintegrate the sauce. This misfortune may also occur, especially when it is a question of a small quantity of sauce, when something has cooked too fast on top of the stove, and you find that your meat is floating in a little clear liquid while all the nice thick juices are beginning to stick to the bottom of the pan. To remedy this, remove your meat and keep it warm; pour off the clear liquid; heat it in a separate pan, adding extra stock or water; gradually pour it back over the juices in the original pan, and cook gently, stirring all the time, for about 10 minutes, and you will find your sauce has reintegrated. It is amazing what can be done in cookery by keeping one’s head and making use of a small quantity of plain water. Sometimes even a curdled cream or egg sauce can be brought back by a similar method.

The last-minute thickening of a sauce with
beurre manié,
in other words butter and flour worked together cold, is explained in the recipe for
coq au vin,
page 399. People are frightened of this method, perhaps because of the many conflicting instructions one sees in cookery books regarding the manner of its use. It is really very simple, but I think myself it is a system to which one should not have recourse too often. Flour-thickened sauces pall very easily, whereas those obtained by reduction (see the simplified recipe for meat stock and meat glaze, page 112) tend to have a much truer taste. In fact that one word
reduction
lies at the base of a really very large proportion of the most
soigné
and high-class dishes.

Thickened sauces obtained
à froid
or without cooking are emulsions of egg yolk and olive oil (mayonnaise, page 120); and the little known
sauce bretonne,
page 124, is a cross between mayonnaise and Béarnaise, being a mixture of egg yolks and barely melted butter, plus herbs, mustard and vinegar.

Beurre blanc,
page 306, and
hollandaise,
page 119, are obtained by a fusion of butter with other ingredients at very low heat. The sauces of
bouillabaisse
and of
matelotes
are on the contrary obtained by the cooking of oil, water and/or wine together as fiercely and rapidly as possible. A very simple version of this system is the recipe for
moules à la marseillaise,
page 319.

There are also, of course, the straightforward sauces, of which tomato sauce is typical, and which are really purées, or
coulis
, needing no sort of extra thickenings.

Once these few different principles of sauce-making have been mastered—and, of course, many people are conversant with them without precisely knowing the reasons for what they are doing—it becomes possible to make almost any sauce without fear of failure.

Marinage des Viandes, Poisons, Gibiers
To marinate is to steep meat, poultry or game in a mixture of wine, spices, aromatic herbs and vegetables for anything from an hour to several days. The objects in so doing are (
a
) to tenderise tough meat, (
b
) to give moisture to dry meat—such as an old hare or venison; for these olive oil is usually added to the marinade, (
c
) to preserve meat or game which, although
à point
, it may be more convenient to keep for a day or two. You have to use your own judgment as to the length of time to marinate a given piece of meat. In warm or stuffy weather it should obviously be for a shorter time than in the winter. When instructed to marinate fish, this will usually mean for an hour or so, in oil and lemon juice, or possibly white wine.

It is not, perhaps, imperative to go quite so far as M. Edouard Nignon, the famous
chef de Cuisine
of Paillard’s in Paris and at one time of Claridges in London, who in one of his books instructs his readers to prepare the string for trussing a chicken by first soaking it in cognac. . . .

Mijoter
To simmer, to cook gently over low heat.

Mitonner
To cook bread in broth or soup.

Panage
The coating of something to be fried, or grilled, with breadcrumbs, which are made from bread dried in the oven, either until it is a pale golden colour or else removed before it has turned colour. The breadcrumbs made from the former by pounding and sieving, are called
chapelure blonde or brune
, and the latter
chapelure blanche
. Some writers, however, only refer to
chapelure
when they mean browned breadcrumbs to cover a gratin, and to white breadcrumbs, for coating, as
panure.
A
panade
is something different again, meaning generally a preparation of flour, breadcrumbs, butter, etc., used for binding
quenelles
and croquettes; the English panada, or basic preparation for a soufflé, is in French an
appareil à soufflé.

Panure à l’anglaise
The food to be fried, such as escalopes of veal, fish fillets, cutlets, etc., is first dipped in beaten egg, then in the breadcrumbs. (Some cooks advocate a preliminary coating of flour, but it is not really necessary.) The operation is often repeated twice, and it is essential to have very fine breadcrumbs or the final result will be that all too familiar thick and greasy blanket. Having coated the food, smooth it down with a palette knife and leave it for a little time on a grid to set. Sometimes, especially for grilling, the food is painted with melted butter instead of egg, and is then breadcrumbed. This is
panure au beurre.
If grated Parmesan is mixed with the breadcrumbs it is
panure à la
milanaise

 

Papillotes
Paper cases in which small items like veal cutlets or red mullet are cooked in the oven, having sometimes been already partly cooked. The object of cooking
en papillotes
is to preserve all the juices and aromas intact, and the food is brought to table still in its cases. The paper should be well buttered or oiled inside before the food is wrapped in it. The illustration shows how the paper is cut and folded for a veal cutlet or other small piece of meat.

Piquage
A process distinct from larding in that while in the latter case the lardoons are drawn right through the meat, in the former they are only sewn, or darned, through on the outer surface. The function of
piquage
is not to provide interior fat for the piece of meat so treated, but rather to act as a sort of elaborate barding or wrapping, to make a decorative appearance, and to add to the savour of meat such as veal. A
fricandeau de veau
, an old-fashioned dish seldom seen nowadays, and a
râble de lièvre
(saddle of hare) are two of the classic examples of piquéd meat and game.