French Provincial Cooking (51 page)

‘Lay the skin of the duck out flat, spread it with the stuffing and in the centre put the liver of the duck, a little more
foie gras
and some slices of truffle. Draw the edges of the skin together, and sew them up with a trussing needle.

‘This operation complete, the duck will look like a long fat sausage with the feet of the duck sticking out at the end. Wrap it up in fine slices of back pork fat, and cover the whole with greaseproof paper. Cook 50 minutes in a fairly hot oven, basting it frequently with its own juices.’

 

This pâté is served as an hors-d’œuvre, quite alone of course, no salad or anything else whatever.

As an alternative to a home-made pâté,
rillettes
, which might be described as a kind of potted pork, are quite easy to make at home, and as they keep well, can be made in a fair quantity and stored.

Get the butcher to remove the rind and the bones of approximately 2 lb. of belly or neck of pork and 1 lb. of back pork fat. Rub the meat well with salt and leave it to stand for 4 to 6 hours in summer, overnight in winter. Cut it in thick strips along the grooves from where the bones were taken out, then again into little strips rather shorter than a match and about twice as thick. Put all these into an earthenware or other oven dish, with the pork fat also cut into small pieces; bury a crushed clove of garlic and a bouquet of herbs in the centre, season with a little pepper, add a soup ladle of water, put on the lid of the pan and cook in a very low oven, Gas No. 1, 290 deg. F. for about 4 hours.

By this time the meat should be very soft and swimming in its own limpid fat. Taste to see if more salt or pepper are needed.
Rillettes
are insipid if not properly seasoned.

Turn the contents of the pan into a wire sieve standing over a big bowl, so that the fat drips through. When well drained, partly pound and then with two forks pull the
rillettes
until they are in fine shreds rather than a paste. Pile lightly into a glazed earthenware or china jar or two or three little ones. Pour the fat over the top of the
rillettes
, leaving behind any sediment and juices, and completely filling the jars. Cover with foil.
Rillettes
should be of a soft texture, so if they have to be stored in a refrigerator, the jars should be removed several hours before serving time.

As I have described in the introductory chapter dealing with the food of the Loire valley,
rillettes
and another version of the same dish, called
rillons
, in which the pieces of pork are much larger, are to be bought in every
charcuterie
and are served in every restaurant. Nowadays the final shredding of
rillettes
is often done by machine, but the good
charcutiers
will tell you that this is not satisfactory, for it reduces them to too purée-like a consistency.

Few people nowadays would want to cut up a goose simply to make
rillettes
, but when you have, say, a leg of roast goose and some good pieces of the carcase meat left over at Christmas time, this is an excellent dish in which to use it up.

Cut the goose meat from the bones and cook it with 1
to 2 lb. of fat pork and seasonings exactly as described above, plus about 4 tablespoons of the fat saved from the goose when it was roasted.

The timing and finishing of the dish are also as for the pork rillettes.

About
lb. of rabbit meat, weighed uncooked and cut from the bone, to 1
lb. of fat pork, the whole cooked exactly as described for the pork
rillettes
, make an excellent little hors-d’œuvre.

For this galantine the ideal cut is a hand of pork, an inexpensive joint comprising both a good proportion of lean meat and the trotter which, together with the rind of the meat, supply the necessary gelatinous elements.

An average hand of pork will weigh about 5 lb. Get the butcher to remove the rind and bone and tie the joint. Other ingredients are 2 wineglasses of dry white wine, 4 or 5 little onions and the same number of carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, a tomato, a bouquet consisting of a stick of celery, a leek, 2 bay leaves, several sprigs of parsley and a little piece of lemon peel; seasonings are a scant dessertspoon of salt, 4 crushed juniper berries, 6 peppercorns.

Split the trotter. Put it together with the rind of the pork cut into strips, and the bones from the joint, into a big saucepan in which all the ingredients will fit without leaving too much space. Add the vegetables, the bouquet, the seasonings, and the meat tied into a sausage shape. Put in the wine and enough water to just about cover the whole contents of the pan, bring very gently to the boil, skim, cover the pan, and cook extremely slowly for about 2 to 2
hours. Remove the meat, which by now should be very tender. Continue cooking the rest for another hour, then strain the liquid into a bowl and leave it to set. (With the debris a second-stock can be made for some other dish.)

Chop the meat and at least half of the rind roughly, not too small. Pack it into a fairly deep terrine or bowl of about 4-pint capacity so that it is about three-quarters full. See that it is well seasoned. Pour in about one soup ladle of the warm stock and leave the galantine to set. All this must be done while the meat and stock are still warm or the mixture will not coagulate.

This, in principle, makes the ordinary galantine, which can be sliced like a pâté. If it is for a special occasion, put the meat into an oblong tin or terrine so that it can be cut into elegant-looking slices. The jelly, which in the ordinary way is reserved for some other purpose, can accompany it. Proceed as follows:

Remove every speck of fat from the jelly when it has set. Beat the whites of 2 eggs just until they begin to froth. Put them into a saucepan with the jelly, bring very gradually to simmering point and leave over the lowest possible flame so that the liquid is only just moving, for 7 to 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave another 10 minutes. Strain through a cloth wrung out in warm water. The liquid should now be absolutely clear, and a pale straw colour. Leave it to set again.

To serve the galantine, slice it and arrange it in the centre of a long, flat dish. Surround it with the chopped jelly, which will be beautifully flavoured and as clear as glass.

This recipe is based on one used in Lorraine for making one of their traditional feast day dishes—a galantine for which a whole sucking pig is cut up. The wine, the vegetables, the herbs and spices, all combine to make it one of the best dishes of its type I have yet tasted; but pork galantine is not a long-keeping dish so don’t choose to make it in exceptionally hot or thundery weather.

Make your galantine as above (it can, of course, be made in smaller or larger quantities) and when the meat is ready chopped to go into the terrines, mix with it 3 or 4 tablespoons of parsley very finely chopped with a clove or two of garlic. This makes a particularly charming looking galantine, reminiscent in appearance of the famous Burgundian ham galantine, the
jambon persillé
, which is one of the great specialities of Burgundy, always served at Easter, and for which a whole, uncooked ham is simmered with pigs’ feet and white wine. The jelly, mixed with parsley and garlic, is poured over the ham, which is cut in fairly large pieces and pressed down into a big white salad bowl. But, unless you have your own home-cured hams or want to cook a whole one, this is not a practical proposition for English kitchens, for it is difficult to buy half or quarter of a cured, uncooked ham; and gammon, even unsmoked, does not quite do instead.

Pigs’ trotters are considered quite a delicacy in France and can usually be bought ready-cooked and breadcrumbed in the
charcuteries
, so that all you have to do is to heat them up under the grill.
Pieds de porc trufflés
have made the reputation of many a
charcutier
and restaurateur, and provide a good example of the way the humblest kind of plebeian dish can be transformed into a luxury; the cooked trotters are boned, stuffed with chopped pork or sausage meat and truffles, wrapped in
crépine
¹⁹
and grilled. But quite apart from the expense of the truffles, this is rather a performance to attempt at home and even penny-plain pigs’ trotters simply boiled, breadcrumbed and grilled make an excellent hot horsd’œuvre for those who do not despise cheap foods.

The method is as follows: for 4 pigs’ trotters the other ingredients are an onion, a couple of carrots, a big bouquet of parsley, bayleaf, a stick or two of celery and a strip of lemon peel tied together, seasonings and water. For the final operation, breadcrumbs, melted butter and, to serve with the trotters, a
sauce tartare
.

If possible, buy the trotters a day in advance, sprinkle them with coarse salt and leave them in a cool place until the time comes to cook them. Then rinse them, put them in a large saucepan with the vegetables, herbs and a little salt, and cover them completely with cold water. Bring to simmering point, take off the scum and cover the pan, tilting the lid so that steam can escape. Let them simmer for about 3
hours until you see that the skin and meat are coming loose from the bones. Take them out and leave in a dish to cool a little. Strain the stock and keep it. Cooked again with some minced beef it will make a fine jelly.