French Provincial Cooking (52 page)

While the trotters are still warm, coat them with barely melted butter and then with dried breadcrumbs. One coating will be sufficient but it should be a very thick one and should be well pressed down. About 1
oz. each of breadcrumbs and butter should be enough for this operation.

Now the theory is that the trotters should be put straight under the grill and cooked until the outside is brown and crunchy but, in practice, this does not work very well because, under the grill of a domestic cooker, the outer coating will be cooked before the trotters are really hot, so the best system is to put them in a flat fireproof dish or in the grill pan, pour a little more melted butter over them and let them get thoroughly hot in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes. Then transfer the dish to the grill and let the outer coating get thoroughly browned and crisp. Trotters must be served absolutely sizzling hot on sizzling hot plates; the
sauce tartare
, or
rémoulade
, should be rather highly flavoured, and there should be plenty of it.

The sausage used in Lyon, where this dish is a renowned speciality, may be one of three kinds; it may be one of the routine cooking sausages, very coarsely cut and interlarded with large cubes of fat; it may be a
cervelas
, a close-textured sausage, very lightly smoked; or it may be a
cervelas truffé
, an unsmoked sausage of coarsely-cut pork generously truffled and spiced. Whichever it is, it will weigh in the region of 12 to 14 oz. and be about 1
inches in diameter, and because the pork for these sausages (as indeed for the majority of fresh or partly cured French sausages) is either brined for a night and a day or has saltpetre added to the mixture before the skins are filled, the colour of the finished sausage is a good red instead of the pinkish-grey characteristic of our own sausages.

Randall & Aubin, in Brewer Street, Soho, sell a coarsely-cut garlic-flavoured sausage which is not unlike the Lyon sausage, and the Italian shops of Soho supply
cotechino,
the Modena boiling sausage which is also suitable for this dish; and at Harrods’ butchery counter there is a special pure pork luncheon sausage, English in character, which is admirable for this dish and for the two which follow, for I see no reason why we should not adapt these splendid French dishes using the ingredients which are available to us here. And no doubt many readers will be able to persuade their own local butchers to obtain the right casings for these large sausages and to fill them with their own favourite sausage mixture. But it should be borne in mind that if you are going to wrap a sausage in a brioche dough or even a flaky pastry, as for our own sausage rolls, it is really preferable to have a pure meat sausage. If you use a sausage containing the usual English mixture of 35 per cent bread or rusk, it means you are going to eat a rather doughy dish.

Now for the recipe.

It must be given in some detail and will take up a good deal of space, but I trust that its rather formidable length will not deter readers from trying it, for in many ways it makes the almost perfect hot first course dish, the majority of the work being done well in advance and the timing of the final cooking such that it can be put in the oven a few moments before your guests are expected and, in half an hour, is ready to emerge, a beautiful, golden roll of brioche enclosing the delicious savoury sausage. The procedure is as follows:

 

(1) If the sausage is to be served at lunch, the brioche dough is made the previous night; if for dinner, in the early morning of the same day. It is extremely easy, for this is a simplified brioche dough. First you mix to a paste a scant
oz. of baker’s yeast and 2 tablespoons of barely tepid milk. In a bowl you then put 6 oz. of plain flour, a half teaspoon of salt and 1 of sugar. Make a well in the centre. Into this break 2 whole eggs, and add the yeast mixture. Fold the flour over the eggs and yeast and knead all together until the mixture is smooth. Now beat in with your hands 4 oz. of the best butter, softened but not melted. Knead again and shape it into a ball. Put it in a clean bowl, a wooden one for preference, in which you have sprinkled some flour. Make a deep crosswise incision across the top of the ball of dough with a knife. Cover it with a clean, folded muslin. Put the bowl in a warm place, such as a heated linen cupboard or near the boiler, or in the plate drawer of the cooker with the oven turned on to a very low temperature. Leave it for 2 hours, by which time it should have risen to at least twice its original volume and will look and feel light and spongy. Break it down, knead it lightly once more into a ball, cover it again, and this time put the bowl in a cool larder and leave it until next day, or until the evening.

(2) Put your large sausage (the quantity of dough is enough for a 12 to 14 oz. sausage) into a pan in which it will lie flat. Cover completely with cold water. Bring very gently to simmering point and thereafter let it cook with the water barely moving for 45 minutes to an hour. Take it out and put it on a board or dish until it is cool enough to handle. Now remove the skin, very carefully.

(3) Allowing yourself half an hour the first few times you do this dish (afterwards it will be much quicker) make the final preparations. Very lightly rub a baking sheet with butter. Put your dough on this, sprinkle it with flour, and with your hands spread and pat it out into a rectangular shape on the baking sheet. Turn it over (by this time you can, or should be able to, handle the dough as easily as if it were a piece of material). Put your skinned sausage, still warm, in the centre. Gather up the edges of the dough and, having dipped your fingers in cold water, pinch the edges lightly together, along the top and at the ends, so that the whole thing looks rather like a small bolster. Now dip a pastry brush in cream and paint the whole of the exposed surface with it (cream makes the best glaze for these sorts of dishes—not so shiny as egg and smoother than milk). With the back of a knife lightly mark a few criss-cross lines on the dough. The sausage and its brioche can now be left for 15 to 20 minutes, ready on its baking sheet, before it goes into the centre of a pre-heated oven at Gas No. 5, 375-380 deg. F., to bake for 30 minutes. When you take it from the oven, leave the brioche standing for 5 minutes before transferring it, with the aid of a flat fish slice, to a serving dish, and carving it deftly into thickish slices, starting in the middle and working outwards. It will be ample for four.

 

One should not perhaps expect this dish to come exactly right the first time, except for those accustomed to working with yeast doughs. But although it may sound complicated, after one or two tries it becomes a matter of timing rather than of any special knowledge, and you get a splendid-looking delicious dish with absurdly little trouble. It is mainly a question of assembling all your ingredients and utensils before each of the two main operations—the original mixing of the dough and the final wrapping of the sausage in it. Points to observe carefully are:

 

(1) Brioche dough is very much more liquid than bread dough, but if after the initial mixing it is really too soft to handle, it may be because you have added a little too much milk to the yeast, or because the eggs were unusually large, or because you are using a soft flour. A little more flour sprinkled in will put matters right.

(2) The sausage is to be put into the dough while it is still warm, because if it is left to get quite cold it will separate from the brioche when it is cut; but if it is too hot the fat running from it will make your dough liquid and difficult to handle.

(3) Be sure to join the edges of the dough well together round the sausage without drawing it too tightly or the sausage will burst through during the baking. This does not detract from the taste of the dish, but rather spoils its appearance.

(4) It is essential that the sausage be cooked right through to start with; once inside its casing of brioche, it will heat but will scarcely cook any more.

This is an exceedingly simple, almost primitive, dish which is very popular in Lyon and in many country districts of central France. It consists of a large pork sausage, the seasoning and exact composition of which varies according to local tradition, simply poached very slowly (a 12 to 16 oz. sausage takes about 1 hour) in plenty of water to cover, and served on a long dish surrounded by a hot potato salad.

This is made by slicing boiled waxy potatoes into thick rounds while they are still hot, and seasoning them with a little oil, vinegar, salt and pepper dressing. The dish is usually served as a first course, or hot hors-d’œuvre, although it can well make a main luncheon dish. Given a good sausage and well-seasoned potatoes, it is a most delicious dish, which will not be despised by the most fastidious.

Francis Amunatégui, a distinguished French gastronome and journalist, writes of this Lyonnais sausage in deeply emotional terms: ‘The appearance,’ he says, ‘of a hot sausage with its salad of potatoes in oil can leave nobody indifferent . . . it is pure, it precludes all sentimentality, it is the Truth.’

Again, a large poached sausage served plain as a first course and accompanied only by a mild and creamy horseradish sauce. To make this, you need either freshly grated horseradish or one of the good brands packed without vinegar or any other ingredient such as stabilisers, emulsifiers and preservatives. Bottled horseradish sauce will
not
do.

About 1 tablespoon of this horseradish is stirred into
pint of thick cream; season with salt and squeeze in a little lemon juice. You then add a few drops of olive oil; this stabilises the sauce, which should be thick and quite smooth.

 

It may well be asked, what is to be served after these sausage dishes? Almost anything, except pork, beef with Yorkshire pudding, or any other dish containing dough or pastry after the brioche, and, of course, no horseradish sauce with beef after the Alsace dish, and no dish requiring potatoes after the Lyonnais one.