French Provincial Cooking (62 page)

In a heavy saucepan heart
oz. butter; in this melt a small onion thinly sliced; add the drained lentils. Give them a stir, pour in 2
pints of hot water, add the piece of salt pork and a bouquet of bayleaf, parsley, and a crushed clove of garlic, tied with a thread. Simmer for 1
to 1
hours uncovered. By this time the liquid should all be absorbed and the lentils quite tender. Remove the pork, taste the lentils for seasoning and add salt if necessary; turn into a shallow serving dish; squeeze in a little lemon juice; cut the pork into squares or strips and put them on top of the lentils. Strew with a little parsley and serve hot.

A tremendous fuss is made about the difficulty of shelling and skinning chestnuts. It is really very easy but people who are not accustomed to cooking and, consequently, to handling food when it is hot, are better advised to leave the job to more experienced cooks and housewives. It is all a question of how much heat your hands can stand, and it is well known that women are better at this than men. The procedure is as follows:

Score the chestnuts across on the rounded side and put them in a baking tin in a gentle oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., for 15 to 20 minutes, or else drop them in boiling water and boil them for about 8 minutes. Extract a few at a time so that the rest do not get cool, for then they become difficult to peel. Squeeze each chestnut so that the shell cracks and then, with the aid of a small knife, it is quite easy to remove both skins and shell. The chestnuts are now ready to be simmered gently in water to cover, until they are quite soft.

For four people, 1 lb. of chestnuts makes an ample amount.

Prepare the chestnuts as explained above. When they are shelled and skinned, put them in a saucepan and cover them completely with half milk and half water or stock. Simmer very gently indeed for about an hour until they are very soft and only a little of the liquid is left. Sieve them, or purée them in the electric blender, with the liquid. The resulting purée should be rather liquid. To heat it up, put it into the top half of a double saucepan with a small piece of butter and light seasoning of salt. Cook over gently boiling water, stirring frequently. Chestnut purée very easily dries up and becomes stodgy but, done in this way, it should remain creamy and rather liquid. Before serving, stir in a tablespoon or two of the sauce or juice of the bird, meat or game which it is to accompany. A good chestnut purée should be café au lait colour rather than dark brown.

Cook shelled and skinned chestnuts in stock or water to cover, very gently, until tender. Extract them with a perforated spoon rather than by tipping them into a colander, and put them in a sieve to drain. Sprinkle them with salt and a little cayenne pepper. Fry them very gently in a little olive oil, for a minute or two only.

Nice with bacon or grilled gammon rashers, or with a roast saddle of hare.

Pare 2 lb. of very small turnips. Throw them into boiling salted water and cook for 10 minutes. Drain, cut them in halves or quarters, put them in a sauté pan in which 1
oz. of butter has been heated, cover the pan and cook gently till the turnips are tender (about 15 minutes), shaking the pan from time to time to make sure they do not stick. Now add
lb. ham cut into thick strips; just let it heat through and serve the turnips with a sprinkling of chives on the top. Enough for four.

Give the turnips a preliminary cooking as above, and the second cooking in olive oil instead of butter. When they are all but done, add 3 tablespoons of breadcrumbs mixed with chopped parsley, and a chopped shallot. By the time the olive oil has been absorbed by the breadcrumbs the vegetables should be ready. The contrast of the crisp breadcrumbs, with the soft turnips is particularly pleasing.

There are two or three ways of cooking this dish, of which the simplest is the same method as that used for
carottes glacées,
page 247. The turnips should be very young and tender ones, peeled and cut into quarters or eighths, according to their size. If they are large and beginning to get tough and strong in flavour, they should, when peeled and quartered, be given a preliminary blanching for 10 minutes in boiling salted water.

Glazed turnips make an excellent garnish for mutton and lamb dishes and for duck.

To make glazed onions use the small silverskin pickling onions when they are available, or new white onions, or the French ones called
grelots
. They should be all the same size. Peel them; sauté them gently in butter until they acquire a very pale golden colour. Sprinkle them with sugar, cover with stock or water and simmer until the liquid has almost evaporated and the onions are beginning to be caramelised.

This is a dish to make when you have a glass of wine, red, white, rosé, sweet, dry or aromatic (i.e. some sort of Vermouth) to spare and also, perhaps, when you have been bullied or cajoled by one of the Breton onion boys into buying far more onions than you know what to do with. You peel 6 to 8 rather large onions, all the same size. You put them with a tablespoon of olive oil in a thick pan in which they just fit comfortably. You start them off over a moderate flame and, when the oil is beginning to sizzle, you pour in a small glass of your wine. Let it boil fiercely a few seconds. Add water to come half-way up the onions. Transfer to a low oven and cook uncovered for about 1
hours. Put back on top of the stove over a fast flame for 2 or 3 minutes, until the wine sauce is thick and syrupy. Season. Serve as a separate vegetable, or round a roast.

Medium-sized whole onions, unpeeled, are cooked in a baking tin in a slow oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., for 1
to 2 hours. Serve them hot with salt and butter, or cold with a
vinaigrette
dressing.