French Provincial Cooking (82 page)

Steep the oxtail in cold water for a minimum of 2 hours, so that the blood soaks out.

Cut the bacon, without the rind, into little cubes. Chop the onions and dice the carrots. At the bottom of a heavy cooking pot put the bacon with the vegetables on top. Start off on a low flame and cook 10 minutes until the fat from the bacon is running. Now put in the pieces of oxtail, and put the bouquet in the centre. Season the meat. Cover the pot and cook gently for 20 minutes. Now add the grapes, which you have picked off their stalks and crushed slightly in a bowl. Cover the pot with 2 sheets of grease-proof paper and the lid. Transfer to a very slow oven, Gas No. 1, 290 deg. F., and cook for a minimum of 3
hours. Oxtail varies very much in quality, and sometimes takes a good deal longer, and unless the meat is so soft and tender it is almost falling from the bones it will not be good. Once cooked, quickly transfer the pieces of oxtail and a few of the little bits of bacon to another terrine or to a serving dish, and keep them hot while you sieve all the rest of the ingredients through the finest mesh of the
mouli-légumes.
Pour the resulting sauce over the oxtail. A dish of potatoes boiled in their skins, or a potato purée, should accompany the dish.

An alternative method is to cook the dish for half an hour less, take out the oxtail, and leave the sieved sauce separately so that excess fat can be removed from the top when it is cold. Having done this, pour the sauce, warmed, over the meat and heat on top of the stove rather than in the oven, because all-round heat tends to make the sauce oily, whereas with direct heat it will retain its consistency. The dish can, as a matter of fact, be reheated two or three times without damage.

Two oxtails should make six to eight ample helpings.

Oxtail cooked in the
pot-au-feu
(see page 156) or left over from a stew makes a good and useful hot hors-d’œuvre or luncheon dish. Paint the pieces with softened butter, coat them with breadcrumbs and bake them in the oven, finishing them under the grill as explained for pigs’ trotters, page 224. Serve with a
vinaigrette
or, if there is any left, some of the sauce which went with the original dish.

Cooked in this way the toughest ox kidney will become tender and have a most excellent flavour. Ingredients are
lb. ox kidney, 2 oz. mushrooms, 2 oz. cream, brandy, white wine, butter, meat stock.

Soak the skinned kidney in warm, salted water for a couple of hours. Slice into pieces about
inch thick. Heat a little butter in a frying-pan and turn the kidneys over and over in this for a minute or so. Add salt and pepper, and the chopped mushrooms. Pour over 2 tablespoons of brandy warmed in a soup ladle, set light to it and shake the pan until the flames go out. Pour a small glass of white wine into the pan, let it bubble, then add about a coffee-cupful (after-dinner size) of very good meat stock. Turn the kidneys and their juice into a small earthenware casserole, cover and put into a low oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Boil the cream in a small, wide pan; pour in the sauce from the kidneys. Stir, and cook quickly until the sauce is thick. Pour back over the kidneys; serve with croûtons of fried bread. Enough for two or three.

One way of making the sauce for this dish less expensive is to cook it when you have some rich gravy left over from any of the meat stews already described. The wine can then be omitted, for the gravy is already flavoured with it.

French methods of cutting up lamb and mutton are substantially the same as our own, except that the shoulder is very often boned, and sometimes tied into a round shape, when it is described as a
ballotine d’agneau.
The saddle is cut shorter than in England, and the leg often has the central bone removed while retaining the shank bone. The
carré
or row of best end of neck cutlets is trimmed right down to the bones, which are cut short, making it into a very elegant and manageable little joint, which can equally well be cooked on top of the stove or in the oven. If it is from very small tender lamb it can be grilled.

For breast of lamb, which is really, apart from the scrag end of neck, the only cut which could fairly be described as cheap, the French method of two separate and distinct processes of cooking is probably one of the very best. According to this system, usually known as
à la Ste
.
Ménéhould
and applied to pigs’ and sheep’s trotters, as well as to breast of veal and lamb, the meat is first slowly braised, left to cool, boned (if this has not already been done prior to cooking), divided into strips, coated with breadcrumbs and grilled, so that you get a dry crisp outer covering for your fat and gelatinous meat inside.

Small quantities of already cooked breast of lamb can also very successfully be used to make a pilaff or risotto, and to stuff tomatoes and aubergines.

Not many of the legs of lamb and mutton served daily in Paris restaurants under this name come from animals pastured in the salt meadows of Brittany; and, indeed, unless they figure on the menu as
gigot de
pré-salé
there is no reason to assume that they are anything of the kind. It is the invariable garnish of haricot beans which is characteristically Breton.

The joint, a clove or two of garlic pushed in near the bone, is roasted in the routine way, being basted from time to time with a little stock. The beans, soaked overnight, are prepared as explained in the following recipe, but, of course, for a whole leg of lamb you need more beans than for a small joint like the best end of neck. Allow 1 lb. or even more, for if any are left over they can always be heated up a second time.

It is as well to bear in mind, when ordering roast lamb in a French restaurant, that the French like this meat rather underdone—sometimes uneatably so to English tastes—so that it is advisable to inquire as to this point before giving your order.

The
carré
(see the drawing opposite) is the French butcher’s term for the best end of neck joint, consisting of eight cutlets. It is trimmed exactly as the cutlets would be if they were to be cut separately for grilling, with the chine bone and most of the fat removed, so that only the actual cutlets with their bones are left. Neatly tied, it makes a compact little joint, very easy to cook and carve, and suitable for a small party when a leg or saddle would be too much. It should make ample helpings for four.

First of all, prepare a stock from the bones and trimmings, with an onion, garlic, carrot and seasoning, and water barely to cover. Simmer for an hour or so, strain, leave to cool and skim off the fat. This stock is for basting the joint, so only about a breakfast cup is needed.

To cook the joint, butter the roasting tin, lay the joint in it fat side up, and cover with a thickly-buttered greaseproof paper or aluminium foil. Put a lid on the roasting-pan, and put in the centre of a preheated oven at Gas No. 5, 380 deg. F. After about 20 minutes remove the paper and baste the meat with the juices in the pan and some of the prepared stock, heated. Altogether, the joint will take about 50 minutes to cook and should be basted three or four times, being left uncovered for the last 10 minutes so that the outer coating of fat browns. Red wine instead of stock can, if preferred, be used for basting. In this case, pour a large glass of red wine into a saucepan, add either a couple of chopped shallots or 3 or 4 whole cloves of garlic, and boil until the wine is reduced by half. Use in the same way as the stock.

When the meat is cooked, keep it hot in a large shallow serving dish. Put the rest of your stock or wine into the roasting-pan, scrape up all the juices, let it bubble a minute and add a little of it to the prepared haricot beans and serve the rest separately.

The dried haricot beans are cooked
à la bretonne
: 12 oz. of medium-sized and long, rather than round, white haricot beans are soaked overnight if for lunch, or for 6-8 hours (which is quite long enough provided the beans are those of the current season and not a couple of years old) if for dinner. Drain them, simmer them in water to cover by 2 inches, with a carrot, an onion, a bouquet of herbs and a piece of celery. According to the quality of the beans they may take anything from 1
to 3 hours. So it is best, if you don’t know your beans, to prepare them in advance. They have to be reheated anyhow. When they are tender, but not broken, drain them, reserving the liquid, and season them well with salt. Extract the carrot and the herbs and throw them away. Chop the onion and fry it in butter. Add 3 or 4 skinned and chopped tomatoes and cook till soft, thinning with a little of the reserved cooking liquid. The beans are gently reheated in this mixture, the juice from the roast being added when they are ready. The beans are then turned into the serving dish round the meat or, if preferred, served in a separate dish. Little paper frills are slipped on to the end of the bones, and the joint is carved straight down into cutlets.