The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season. Richard Olney
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GENERAL SHOPPING
Italian neighborhoods are particularly useful for shopping. Elsewhere it is difficult to find such items as bouquets of dried oregano, dried cèpes (wild mushrooms), salted anchovies, fresh basil, field salads (lamb’s lettuce, arugula), fines herbes, broad beans, celeriac, decent bread, and good-quality olive oil. I have had no success trying to persuade small producers in the south of France of the virtue of exporting their exquisite products, but decent olive oils may be bought in tins on the American market—a good Italian brand is Filippo Berio and a good French oil, from Marseilles, “fruitier” than most Italian oils, is James Plagniol.
The fancy-food sections in large department stores often furnish such rarities as good butter and quality charcuterie.
Search out the best butcher in your neighborhood and make friends with him. Ask questions and discuss cuts and qualities of meat. It is natural to give one’s best service to those clients who are knowledgeable, interested—and faithful. Each time one buys an indifferent cut of prepackaged meat in a supermarket, one misses an opportunity of solidifying relations with one’s butcher and ensuring good service when something special is needed. In any case, even his hamburger, chopped to order, fat removed, will also be of superior quality.
Any French cooking manual contains a comprehensive chapter on basic preparations. Only those recurrent in this book are presented here. Those that occur only once are relegated to specific recipes.
VEAL STOCK
(Fonds de Veau, Fonds Blanc, Blond de Veau)
A pure veal stock, properly executed, is the only impeccable, all-round basic stock. Ideally, a braising liquid or a sauce base should be an essence of the basic element in the preparation (woodcock glaze for woodcocks, venison stock for venison, etc.), but this leads us into theoretical cooking, for only past royalty was able to permit itself such luxury. A Beef Stock (pot-au-feu) remains the best braising stock for beef, and its full-bodied flavor, less marked in personality than that of furred game, renders it satisfactory as a braising liquid for the latter. By the same token, chicken stock may be used in certain preparations of feathered game. Only veal stock, by virtue of the essentially anonymous character of the meat, can lend body and support to all other flavors without altering their basic personalities. It is a solid vehicle and catalyst that is never self-assertive. It serves also as a base for other stocks for, although one may not be able to sacrifice several pheasants to the preparation of an essence for one pheasant salmis, one may very easily enrich a veal stock by the addi-tion of leftover carcasses (or heads, necks, giblets) from roast birds. The many recipes for braised vegetables may be properly made only with veal stock. Covered, it may be kept indefinitely in the refrigerator if one is careful to boil it every few days and transfer it to a clean container. I have never tried freezing it but see no reason why it should suffer from this treatment.
The specific quantities of ingredients, although given, are of no importance. The important thing is that the result be as concentrated in aromatic essence as possible. For this reason, anything that takes up room in the stock pot without lending flavor should be eliminated—bones, in particular, with the exception of veal hock, which gives readily of its gelatin. For bones to be serviceable, one must make, first, a stock of bones which is allowed to cook for a good eight to ten hours, then use this liquid for moistening the veal.
A veal stock that is moistened with another veal stock rather than water is, naturally, that much finer. A veal half-glaze (demi-glace de veau) is clear veal stock reduced to a light syrupy consistency. A veal glaze (glace de veau) is the half-glaze reduced (with regular changes to smaller saucepans) to its ultimate intensity. Although valuable, even essential, for certain preparations, these refinements, because of the time and expense involved, do not occur in the recipes in this book.
Veal Stock
about 4 pounds inexpensive gelatinous cuts of veal (rib tips, shank, neck, trimmings)
1 veal hock (knuckle), broken into pieces
about 1 pound carrots
2 large onions, one stuck with 2 cloves
1 leek (or 3 or 4 small—if not available, do without)
1 large sprig fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves)
1 branch celery
1 bay leaf
1 large bouquet parsley (including roots, if possible)
1 small handful coarse salt (salt lightly because of the eventual reduction)
3–4 quarts water, depending on the form of the stock pot
Ask your butcher to break up the veal hock with a cleaver. Keep the meat in fairly large pieces. Peel the carrots and the onions, leaving them whole (if the carrots are very large, cut them across in two). Stick one onion with the cloves. Slice off the roots of the leek, remove the tough, dark-green sections of the leaves and, with a small, sharply pointed knife, pierce the flesh halfway down, slitting upward through the tips of the leaves. Repeat this procedure two or three times so that the upper half of the leek is coarsely shredded but well intact. Wash well, swishing it around in a basin of water. Wash the celery branch and the parsley (scraping the roots, if there are any). Tie the leek, doubled in two, the branch of celery, the bay leaf and the parsley (plus the thyme, if it is in branches) into a bundle.
Put the bones into the stock pot (preferably one of heavy enameled ironware or earthenware). Place the pieces of veal on top, and add enough cold water to cover generously (about l½ inches above the meat). Place over a medium flame (if using earthenware, protect it with an asbestos mat and place over a high flame) and when just below boiling point, begin to skim. The scum will continue to rise to the surface. You may help it along from time to time by displacing slightly the pieces of meat and bones with a wooden spoon, but without stirring. Continue to skim as it rises. When a full boil is reached and no more scum rises, pour in a small glassful (about ¼ cup) of cold water. Scum will begin to rise again. Continue to skim until the boil is reached again and pour in more cold water. Repeat the process twice more, or until no more scum rises after the addition of cold water. Add all the other ingredients, making certain that everything is submerged. Continue skimming until the boil is reached again, and regulate the heat so that, with the lid slightly ajar, the tiniest suggestion of a simmer is constantly maintained. (Even if you are on intimate terms with your stove, unless you are accustomed to this kind of preparation and know the precise intensity of flame necessary, this regulation will require 15 minutes to ½ hour of turning the fire slightly up or down and rechecking a few minutes later.) Leave to cook for a good 4 hours. Skim off the surface fat 3 or 4 times during this period, but never stir the contents or otherwise disturb them in any way.
Gently pour the contents of the stock pot into a sieve lined with a couple of layers of cheesecloth, which has been placed over a large mixing bowl. Do not press or mash the debris in the sieve, but allow to drain well so that all the clear liquid passes through. Leave the broth to cool, and skim off all traces of fat from the surface.
BEEF STOCK
Because the pot-au-feu produces a stock that is one of the basic elements in other culinary preparations and is also a meal in itself, the recipe is given in the main body of the book. If it is prepared essentially for use as beef stock, cabbage and the refinement of adding tender spring vegetables will find no place in its preparation, nor need it undergo the double preparation