French Provincial Cooking (12 page)

You settle in, realising that you are in a serious restaurant, and a serious provincial restaurant at that. You have no anxiety about the meal to come, and you are quite right. For any international Palace Hotel or expense-account restaurant can serve you oysters and
foie gras
, smoked salmon and caviar, in the very pink of condition (this is a question of good buying and has nothing to do with the chefs) and still follow them up with the deadliest of dull dinners. But the eye which picked out those bowls, the taste which decreed what was to go into them, and the hand which carved that butter into its meticuously studied carelessness of shape are scarcely likely to falter when it comes to the silver sea-bass roasted over a vinewood fire, the langouste in its tomato and brandy and garlic-scented sauce, the salad dressed with the fruity olive oil of Provence. Upon this last point, however, one must not enlarge too much. For we are at Montpellier, and as Madame Nénette observed, in tones of only very mild reproof, in answer to my question about her lobster dish, ‘Ah, nous ne sommes pas en Provence, Madame, ici c’est le Languedoc.’ So Madame Nénette’s lobster or, rather, crawfish dish is her own special version of
langouste à /a sètoise
or
civet de langouste,
a dish quite remarkably similar to the famous
homard à l’américaine.
Now the port of Sète in the Languedoc was the birthplace of the chef Pierre Fraisse, who is said to have originated this famous dish, and one way and another it seems fairly obvious that, with its tomato and oil and garlic, it was adapted from the methods traditional to the fishermen of Sète and, indeed, of the whole Mediterranean coast, and never had much to do either with America or with Armorique (the old name for Brittany), where they had no oil, no tomatoes and precious little cognac; but after the 1914 war patriotic Frenchmen decided that it was absurd that a famous French dish should be attributed to America, so they came to the conclusion that the name was due to a spelling mistake, and did not stop to think of the more rational explanation that the dish was a typically Mediterranean one. Fraisse, the Sétois chef who first put the dish upon his menu in his Paris restaurant (Noël Peters in the Passage des Princes) had spent some years in America (these facts are all on record and can be read in M. Robert Courtine’s book,
Le Plus Doux des Péchés,
⁴
) and the whole thing seems to be explained. This comfortable theory, however, is swiftly demolished by Pierre Andrieu in
Fine Bouche
(Cassell, 1956) who says that although Fraisse may have been the originator of the name, he certainly did not create the dish, which was well known under the name of
homard Bonnefoy
, at the restaurant of that name, before 1870. He quotes Philéas Gilbert as saying that the dish was originally known as
langouste niçoise.
So we are back to the Mediterranean origin of the dish.

Whichever came first, the Sétois and Provençal versions of the dish are simply the
langouste,
or lobster,
à l’américaine,
in a rather rougher form. Nénette’s variation consists in the addition of
aïoli
to the sauce, a quite common usage in Provençal and Languedoc fish cookery. Her recipe is on page 326, and it can be compared with the
américaine
version Escoffier gives in his
Guide Culinaire,
with Prosper Montagné’s note on the
civet de langouste
of the Languedoc in the
Larousse Gastronomique
, and with yet another version from Pierre Huguenin’s
Recettes de ma Pauvre Mère
.

From the Languedoc also come two more dishes among the most famous in the whole repertoire of French provincial cookery: the
Cassoulet
of Toulouse, with its variations from Carcassonne, Castelnaudary and Castelnau, and the
Brandade de Morue
(described on page 304), said to have originated at Nîmes.

The first, that sumptuous amalgamation of haricot beans, sausage, pork, mutton and preserved goose, aromatically spiced with garlic and herbs, is cooked at great length in an earthenware pot, emerging with a golden crust which conceals an interior of gently bubbling, creamy beans and uniquely savoury meats. A number of great cooks and restaurateurs have come out of the Languedoc, the most famous being Prosper Montagné, who had a small but world-renowned restaurant in the rue de l’Échelle in Paris between the wars. He described the
Cassoulet
over and over again in his many works on cookery (apart from the numerous books which bear his name he also compiled and edited the
Larousse Gastronomique,
a truly immense labour), and used to tell the story that in the town of Castelnaudary where he was born he went one ordinary working day to the shoemaker’s and saw that the doors were locked and the shutters closed. Fearing a death in the house, he went to have a closer look. Pinned to the door was a paper bearing the notice ‘FERMÉ POUR CAUSE DE CASSOULET.’

It was probably Montagné who did more than anyone else to popularise this remarkable farmhouse dish in Paris and to send it on its travels round the world, although Anatole France had already written about it in lyrical, if somewhat fanciful terms, and Auguste Colombié, also a native of the Languedoc and one of the great teaching cooks of the latter part of the nineteenth century, had also published recipes for it. It was Colombié who, to the great indignation of his professional colleagues (‘Giving away professional secrets—we shall all be out of work,’ they said) founded the first cookery school in Paris for ‘les dames et demoiselles du monde.’

I have a crude and brightly coloured picture of him demonstrating cookery to a crowd of these elegantly hatted and plumed young women. Two of them, in flowered toques and high-boned muslin collars, lacy aprons pinned over their sweeping gowns, are gingerly stirring and chopping as M. Colombié beams indulgently from behind his primitive gas stove. It is not easy to visualise these frail and pampered-looking beauties coming to grips with a hefty, earthy dish like the cassoulet, but then one must remember that it takes more than an elegant dress and a swirl of frills and laces to come between a Frenchwoman and the enjoyment of her food.

SINCE 1960, when this book was first published, scores of new kitchen equipment shops catering for the needs of the serious amateur cook have been established in London and throughout the provinces. There are now (1977) so many of these shops that to single out any particular names tends to be misleading. Stocks, prices, and buying policies are subject to rapid change. Supplies of kitchenware, whether imported or English made, are erratic, owing to heavy demand and limited output. Under the circumstances any list of shops is out of date almost before it has gone to press. Where possible in the present edition I have therefore deleted references to stockists of specialized equipment.

There is one development in the manufacture of cooking equipment which I think that many people will find particularly welcome. This is the great improvement in recent years in the quality and design of enamelled steel pots and pans, some English, the majority West German, and all of them suitable for all fuels. These casseroles, stewing pots, stock pots and saucepans provide a sound alternative to their weighty enamelled cast-iron equivalents, particularly for older people who find cast iron too cumbersome to handle.

 

To know the correct type of saucepan or pot in which to cook any given dish is often as important as getting the right ingredients; and the proper knives, chopping boards, and other essential utensils make the cook’s work infinitely quicker and more efficient. French has for long been the international language of cooking, and a good many of these things are still known in the trade by their French names. But during the course of time the words have become confused, corrupted and misunderstood. Not long ago I overheard a salesman blandly assuring a customer that an omelette
dish
was the same thing as an omelette
pan
. A small misunderstanding as far as the words are concerned, but a very large one when it comes to cooking the omelette. Again, even those people who read French cookery books with ease are sometimes confronted with an unfamiliar term or word not to be found in the ordinary dictionary, and the glossaries provided in cookery books are not always very helpful. They will tell you that a
bain-marie
is a Mary-bath and that a
couteau d’office
is an office knife, and it is up to you to find out for what purpose such objects could possibly be needed in the kitchen.

It is obvious that few of us possess, are in a position to acquire, or even necessarily need such things as a
poissonnière
or a
bain-marie,
or are required to make fine distinctions between a
savarin
, a
baba
and a
timbale
mould. But knowing what
should
be used to produce the best results makes it very much easier to find or to improvise a substitute.

The following brief list of French kitchen utensils, with their English equivalents, arranged in alphabetical order, gives an outline of the equipment which forms the nucleus of a well set up kitchen. I do not mean to imply that all these items are strictly necessary, but it is useful to know what they are, and for what purpose they were designed.

Bain-marie
A large shallow rectangular or round pan, or bath, in which a number of narrow, tall saucepans, with handles, can be placed so that the water round them comes not more than half-way up. The
bain-marie
or, more accurately, the
caisse à bain-marie
, and its several accompanying saucepans are especially designed for keeping sauces hot without danger of overheating or of their consistency altering. In small households the
bain-marie
is usually replaced with a double saucepan, or a more satisfactory method improvised from a wide shallow pan in which a small saucepan can be placed, so that there is heat all round it rather than just underneath.

 

Balance
Scales. Buy the best you can afford, for preference the old-fashioned type with weights. An accurately-marked measuring jug also seems to me a necessity.

 

Bassin, Bassine
(
a
) Egg bowl. A hemispheric, untinned, copper bowl for beating whites of eggs. Professionals say that the whites cannot be so successfully beaten in any other vessel, both because of its shape and because in no other metal, or in china, can you beat the eggs so stiff without ‘graining.’ Undoubtedly egg-whites beaten in this special copper bowl emerge creamier and better aerated than those beaten in an ordinary mixing bowl or in an electric mixer.

(
b
) A preserving pan, for cooking jams, jellies and so on.

Bassine à friture
Deep fryer.

Batte
Cutlet bat.

 

 

Bocal
Preserving jar, usually glass. In many ways French ones are more practical than our own because they tend to be squat and wide instead of tall and narrow, so there is no danger of fruit or vegetables breaking when you put them in or take them out.