French Provincial Cooking (59 page)

This amount is enough for four if served as an accompanying vegetable, and can very well be prepared a day in advance, as it improves, if anything, with reheating. This goes well with roast hare and with sausages, goose and pork.

These are very small marrows, grown from varieties of which the fruit can be picked while immature. Courgettes vary in size from about 2 inches to 8 inches long. Their initial preparation is much the same as that of aubergines; they are left unpeeled, or if they are rather large the rough ridge parts are pared off, leaving the courgettes with a striped appearance. They are sliced, salted and left to drain, then dried and
sauté
in oil or butter. When properly treated courgettes are most delicate and make one of the best soufflés in existence, for which the recipe is on page 202.

Courgettes, however, are versatile as well as delicate. They can be stewed in oil with tomatoes and/or onions and served hot or cold; they can be fried in butter; or cut into long thin slices, dipped in batter and deep-fried to make delicious fritters; they can be cut into miniature chips and deep-fried as the Italians like them; they can be stuffed with rice, or puréed and mixed with cheese to make a
gratin
; they can be plainly boiled, sliced and mixed with oil and lemon for a salad; halved lengthways, the flesh scooped out and the shells fried; the larger ones can even be stuffed with a Lobster Mornay mixture to make a charming and original dish like the one John Stais serves at the White Tower Restaurant in Charlotte Street.

Wash but do not peel the little courgettes. Slice them into thin bias-cut rounds. Sprinkle with salt; leave in a colander with a plate and a weight on top for an hour so that excess moisture drains off. Put them in a saucepan with a ladle of water and cook gently for 10 minutes. Drain. For 1 lb. of courgettes heat 1 oz. of butter in a frying-pan and let the courgettes finish cooking in this quite gently. Turn them over once or twice and shake the pan so that they do not stick. When they are tender, stir in a tablespoon of finely-chopped parsley, chervil or chives and a squeeze of lemon juice. Enough for two or three.

Good with veal, chicken, steak and lamb, and as a separate vegetable dish.

1 lb. small courgettes,
lb. tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper.

If the courgettes are very small, simply wash them and leave them unpeeled. If they are the larger, coarser variety, pare off the rough ridge parts of the skin, so that the courgettes present a striped appearance. It is a pity to peel them entirely, for there is flavour in the skins. Slice them across on the bias, about
inch thick. Sprinkle with salt, put in a colander and leave for an hour or two until the excess moisture has drained out. Shake them in a cloth to dry them. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy frying-pan or sauté pan and put in the courgettes. Add a crushed clove of garlic. Let them cook, not too fast, until they have softened, turning them over with a palette knife and shaking the pan from time to time so that they do not stick. Now add the skinned and roughly chopped tomatoes and, when these have softened and turned almost to a sauce, season with a little freshly-milled pepper and turn on to a serving dish. Enough for two or three.

Nice as a separate vegetable, as an accompaniment to veal or lamb, or cold as an hors-d’œuvre.

Cook the courgettes exactly as in the above recipe, and when they are ready add about half a dozen stoned and halved black olives and a sprinkling of parsley.

For this recipe the courgettes are peeled and butter only is used in the dish, which is an unusually delicate one. Its disadvantages are the time it takes to prepare and the fact that, if it is served as a first course, two people can quite easily consume the whole lot. But it also makes a very good accompaniment to lamb, in which case it should be enough for four people.

3 oz. butter, 2 lb. courgettes, 1 lb. tomatoes, parsley, 1 small clove of garlic; salt and pepper. Breadcrumbs.

Pare the courgettes very thinly, leaving just a few strips of the green skin; slice them into even rounds about
inch thick. This can be done on the mandoline or Universal Slicer. Put the courgettes in a colander, salt them lightly and leave them to drain. Skin the tomatoes; chop them roughly. Chop about 2 tablespoons of parsley with the garlic.

Shake the courgettes as dry as possible in a thick tea cloth. Heat 1 oz. of the butter in a frying-pan and put in half the courgettes (unless you have a very large frying-pan they won’t all go in at once). Do not let the butter burn or even turn brown. Let the courgettes cook gently until they are soft and transparent looking; transfer them to a gratin dish and cook the rest in the same way in another ounce of butter. Having transferred these also to the gratin dish, melt another half-ounce of butter in the pan and in this cook the tomatoes and the parsley and garlic mixture with a seasoning of salt and pepper until the tomatoes have lost the greater part, but not all, of their moisture; they should be in a thickish purée but not too dry. Amalgamate this mixture with the courgettes. It should completely fill the dish. Smooth down the top; strew with a light layer of pale golden breadcrumbs. Divide the remaining half-ounce of butter into little pieces and put them on the top. Put the dish on the top shelf of a hot oven, Gas No. 7, 425 deg. F., for 25 to 30 minutes, and serve sizzling hot when the top surface is deep golden and bubbling.

Simple though this dish appears it is not easy to get it quite right at the first attempt; it is mainly a question of getting the tomatoes to the right consistency so that the finished dish is neither too liquid nor too dry, and this provides a useful demonstration of the treatment of tomatoes to go into any
gratin
or other oven dish. If they are put in raw they will give out so much moisture in the cooking that the result will be a thin and watery dish with a sadly amateurish air about it, whereas the preliminary cooking gets rid of excess moisture and also concentrates the flavour.

Belgian endives, chicory or
witloof
make first-class winter vegetable dishes as well as salads. It is a mistake to wash them or to give them a preliminary cooking in boiling water; all that is necessary is to cut off the tough part of the root end, to remove any outside leaves which are wilted and brown and to wipe the endives with a soft cloth. Use a silver or stainless knife for cutting them.

Allowing 2 whole endives, prepared as above, for each person, put them in a thickly buttered fireproof dish in which they will just about fit. Arrange the endives in one or two layers, interspersing them with a plentiful amount of butter cut into little knobs, with more on the top, altogether about 2 oz. of butter for 2 lb. of endives. Cover the dish with buttered paper or foil and, if possible, a lid as well. Cook them in a low oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., for about 1
hours. By the time they are ready they will be golden brown and, of course, very much shrunk, so for appearance’ sake transfer them to another serving dish, with all their buttery juices. Now, and not before, sprinkle them with salt and lemon juice.

Allow 1
to 2 endives per person. Peel off any brown outside leaves; wipe the endives with a cloth. With a stainless knife cut each into half-inch lengths. Melt a good lump of butter in a frying-pan. Put in the vegetables; let them cook a few seconds, turning them about with a wooden spoon, before adding salt, turning down the heat and covering the pan. By this method they will be sufficiently cooked in about 10 minutes (as opposed to over an hour when they are cooked whole) but uncover them and shake the pan from time to time to make sure the endives are not sticking. Before serving add a squeeze of lemon juice.

A variation is to add a few little cubes of bacon or ham. Leeks are excellent prepared and cooked in the same way.

Prepare and cook the endives exactly as for
endives au beurre
(1) and, 15 minutes before they are to be served, add 2 oz. of mild bacon previously fried a minute or two, or cooked salt pork or ham cut into little strips. Add a squeeze of lemon juice before serving, but no salt.

To prepare spinach for cooking, first swirl it round in a big basin of cold water, then pick out all the weeds, discard any badly wilted leaves and break off the coarse ends of the stalks. Remove all the spinach to a colander, rinse out the basin, refill it with cold water and plunge the spinach back into it, again swirling it round. This operation usually has to be repeated three or four times, especially with English spinach, which comes to market in a much muddier condition than French spinach, which is consequently worth its slightly higher price.