Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
Page 8
Add the cabbage and all the other ingredients. Simmer partially covered for 1½ to 2 hours or until the meat is tender. Discard parsley bundle. Remove the meat, slice it into serving pieces, and return it to the kettle. Correct seasoning. Skim off accumulated fat. (*) If not to be served immediately, set aside uncovered. Reheat to simmer before serving.
Rounds of hard-toasted French bread
Serve in a tureen or soup plates, accompanied by the bread.
TWO MEDITERRANEAN FISH SOUPS
How to make a real Mediterranean fish soup is always a subject of lively and utterly dogmatic discussion among French experts; and if you do not happen to live on the Mediterranean, you cannot obtain the particular rockfish, gurnards, mullets, weavers, sea eels, wrasses, and breams which they consider absolutely essential. But you can make an extremely good fish soup even if you have only frozen fish and canned clam juice to work with because the other essential flavorings of tomatoes, onions or leeks, garlic, herbs, and olive oil are always available.
FISH TO USE
Fish soups are usually made from lean fish. The flavor of the soup is more interesting if as many varieties of fish are included as possible, and the soup has more body if a proportion of gelatinous fish such as halibut, eel, and some of the firmer-fleshed flounder types are used. Here are some suggestions:
Rock, Calico, or Sea Bass
Cod or Lingcod
Conger or Sea Eel
Flounder
Grouper
Grunt
Haddock
Hake or Whiting
Halibut
Lemon Sole
Perch
Pollock or Boston Bluefish
Porgy or Scup
Redfish or Red Drum
Rockfish or Sculpin
Scrod
Red or Gray Snapper
Spot
Fresh-water Trout; Sea Trout or Weakfish
Shellfish—Clams, Scallops, Mussels, Crab, Lobster
To prepare the fish for cooking, have them cleaned and scaled. Discard the gills. Save heads and trimmings for fish stock. Cut large fish into crosswise slices 2 inches wide. Scrub clams. Scrub and soak the mussels. Wash scallops. If using live crab or lobster, split them just before cooking. Remove the sand sack and intestinal tube from lobsters.
SOUPE DE POISSON
[Strained Fish Soup]
Soupe de poisson has the same taste as bouillabaisse, but the soup is strained and pasta is cooked in it to give a light liaison. If you are making the soup on the Mediterranean, you will come home with dozens of tiny, freshly caught fish all colors of the rainbow. Elsewhere, use whole fish, fish heads, bones, and trimmings, shellfish carcasses, or just bottled clam juice.
For 6 to 8 people
A soup kettle
1 cup minced onions
¾ cup of minced leek, or ½ cup more onions
½ cup olive oil
Cook the onions and leeks slowly in olive oil for 5 minutes or until almost tender but not browned.
4 cloves mashed garlic
1 lb. of ripe, red tomatoes roughly chopped, or 1½ cups drained canned tomatoes, or ¼ cup tomato paste
Stir in the garlic and tomatoes. Raise heat to moderate and cook 5 minutes more.
2½ quarts water
6 parsley sprigs
1 bay leaf
½ tsp thyme or basil
⅛ tsp fennel
2 big pinches of saffron
A 2-inch piece or ½ tsp dried orange peel
⅛ tsp pepper
1 Tb salt (none if clam juice is used)
3 to 4 lbs. lean fish, fish heads, bones, and trimmings, shellfish remains, or frozen fish from the list, this page. Or, 1 quart clam juice, 1½ quarts of water, and no salt
Add the water, herbs, seasonings, and fish to the kettle and cook uncovered at a moderate boil for 30 to 40 minutes.
½ cup to ⅔ cup spaghetti or vermicelli broken into 2-inch pieces
A 3-quart saucepan
Strain the soup into the saucepan, pressing juices out of ingredients. Correct seasoning, adding a bit more saffron if you feel it necessary. Stir in the pasta and boil for 10 to 12 minutes or until tender. Correct seasoning again.
Rounds of hard-toasted French bread
1 to 2 cups grated Swiss or Parmesan cheese and rouille (following recipe)
Pour the soup into a tureen or soup plates over the bread rounds, and pass the cheese and rouille separately.
VARIATION
Substitute 3 or 4 cups of diced “boiling” potatoes for the pasta, or poach eggs in the soup as for the garlic soup.
Rouille
[Garlic, Pimiento, and Chili Pepper Sauce]
The following strong sauce is passed separately with fish soup or bouillabaisse; each guest helps himself and stirs it into the soup.
For about 1 cup
¼ cup chopped red bell pepper simmered for several minutes in salted water and drained, or canned pimiento
A small chili pepper boiled until tender, or drops of Tabasco sauce
1 medium potato cooked in the soup
4 cloves mashed garlic
1 tsp basil, thyme, or savory
Pound all ingredients in a bowl or mortar for several minutes to form a very smooth, sticky paste.
4 to 6 Tb fruity olive oil Salt and pepper
Drop by drop, pound or beat in the olive oil as for making a mayonnaise. Season to taste.
2 or 3 Tb hot soup
Just before serving, beat in the hot soup by driblets. Pour into a sauceboat.
BOUILLABAISSE
[Bouillabaisse]
You can make as dramatic a production as you want out of a bouillabaisse, but remember it originated as a simple, Mediterranean fisherman’s soup, made from the day’s catch or its unsalable leftovers, and flavored with the typical condiments of the region—olive oil, garlic, leeks or onions, tomatoes, and herbs. The fish are rapidly boiled in an aromatic broth and are removed to a platter; the broth is served in a tureen. Each guest helps himself to both and eats them together in a big soup plate. If you wish to serve wine, choose a rosé, or a light, strong, young red such as a Côtes de Provence or Beaujolais, or a strong, dry, white wine from the Côtes de Provence, or a Riesling.
Ideally you should pick six or more varieties of fresh fish, which is why a bouillabaisse is at its best when made for at least six people. Some of the fish should be firm-fleshed and gelatinous like halibut, eel, and winter flounder, and some tender and flaky like hake, baby cod, small pollock, and lemon sole. Shellfish are neither necessary nor particularly typical, but they always add glamor and color if you wish to include them.
The fish, except for live lobsters and crabs, may be cleaned, sliced, and refrigerated several hours before the final cooking. The soup base may be boiled and strained. The actual cooking of the fish in the soup will take only about 20 minutes, and then the dish should be served immediately.
For 6 to 8 people
Ingredients for the preceding soupe de poisson, minus the pasta. Use fish heads, bones, and trimmings, and if you have not enough of them, strengthen the soup base with bottled clam juice
Boil the soup ingredients for 30 to 40 minutes as described in the fish soup recipe. Strain, pressing juices out of ingredients. Taste carefully for seasoning and strength. It should be delicious at this point, so it will need no further fussing with later. You should have about 2½ quarts in a high, rather narrow kettle.
6 to 8 pounds assorted lean fish, and shellfish if you wish, selected and prepared from the suggestions
Bring the soup to a rapid boil 20 minutes before serving. Add lobsters, crabs, and firm-fleshed fish. Bring quickly back to the boil and boil rapidly for 5 minutes. Add the tender-fleshed fish, the clams, mussels, and scallops. Bring rapidly to the boil again and boil 5 minutes more or until the fish are just tender when pierced with a fork. Do not overcook.
A hot platter
A soup tureen
Rounds of hard-toasted French bread
<
br /> ⅓ cup roughly chopped fresh parsley
Optional: A bowl of rouille
Immediately lift out the fish and arrange on the platter. Correct seasoning, and pour the soup into the tureen over rounds of French bread. Spoon a ladleful of soup over the fish, and sprinkle parsley over both fish and soup. Serve immediately accompanied by the optional rouille.
CHAPTER TWO
SAUCES
Sauces
SAUCES ARE the splendor and glory of French cooking, yet there is nothing secret or mysterious about making them. While their roster is stupendous to look at, it is not mind-boggling when you begin to realize that their multitude divides itself into a half-dozen very definite groups, and that each sauce in a particular group is made in the same general way. For instance, every sauce in the white sauce group of béchamels and veloutés calls for an identical technique, but any change in ingredients or trimmings gives the sauce a new name: béchamel with grated cheese is a mornay, with minced herbs, a chivry; while a white-wine fish velouté with dollops of cream, egg yolk, and butter becomes an elegant sauce parisienne. The same is true of the egg yolk and butter group. When flavored with tarragon, pepper, and vinegar it’s a béarnaise, but lemon makes it a hollandaise—yet hollandaise with a folding-in of whipped cream becomes a mousseline. Thus as soon as you have put into practice the basic formulas for the few mother sauces, you are equipped to command the whole towering edifice. Here are the mother groups in the sauce family:
THE WHITE SAUCES These stem from those two cousins, béchamel and velouté. Both use a flour and butter roux as a thickening agent but béchamel is a milk-based sauce while the velouté has a fish, meat, or poultry base. These are fundamental to the great tradition of French cooking, as well as being indispensable to the home cook. Their most useful function, these easy white sauces, is to make an appetizing and interesting dish out of such simple ingredients as hard-boiled eggs and diced mushrooms—gratiner them with a sauce mornay. Or flake left-over poached fish, mix it with cooked onions, and fold it with a cream sauce before browning it with buttered bread crumbs in the oven. A boiled hen becomes a poule à l’ivoire when napped with a creamy chicken velouté and accompanied with little braised onions and steamed rice. It would be hard for the everyday cook to get along without these good simple sauces.
THE BROWN SAUCES Long simmered daubes and pot roasts, stews and ragouts, these need brown sauces, as do sautés, brown fricassees, and roasts. More complicated to make than the white sauces, they have gone through some changes since the grande cuisine of Escoffier, as you will see in their discussion.
TOMATO SAUCE, EGG YOLK AND BUTTER SAUCES (Hollandaise family), and THE OIL AND VINEGAR (French dressing) GROUP These need no introduction.
FLAVORED BUTTERS Butters creamed with various herbs, seasonings, or purées are included in the sauce roster. But the most important here is the hot butter sauce beurre blanc, a signature of the nouvelle cuisine which emerged in the early 1970s. Originally it was a specialty sauce reserved usually for boiled fish and vegetables, but, easy to make (once you know how!), it has become the ubiquitous restaurant sauce for all manner of fish, meat, and fowl.
Rich sauces, especially the butter sauces and white sauces with cream and butter, should be used sparingly, never more than one to a meal. A sauce should not be considered a disguise or a mask; its role is to point up, to prolong, or to complement the taste of the food it accompanies, or to contrast with it, or to give variety to its mode of presentation.
WHITE SAUCES
Sauces Blanches
White sauces are rapidly made with a white roux (butter and flour cooked together) plus milk, or white stock. They go with eggs, fish, chicken, veal, and vegetables. They are also the base for cream soups, soufflés, and many of the hot hors d’oeuvres.
Sauce béchamel in the time of Louis XIV was a more elaborate sauce than it is today. Then it was a simmering of milk, veal, and seasonings with an enrichment of cream. In modern French cooking, a béchamel is a quickly made milk-based foundation requiring only the addition of butter, cream, herbs, or other flavorings to turn it into a proper sauce.
Sauce velouté is made in exactly the same way, but its roux is moistened with chicken, veal, or fish stock, often with a wine flavoring. Milk or cream are included if you wish.
The roux
In French cooking, the flour and butter, which act as a thickening agent for the sauce, are always cooked slowly together for several minutes before any liquid is added. This is called a roux. The cooking eliminates that raw, pasty taste uncooked flour will give to a sauce, and also prepares the flour particles to absorb the liquid. The thickness of a sauce is in direct relation to the proportion of flour you use per cup of liquid. The following table is based on American all-purpose hard-wheat flour. All flour measurements are for level tablespoons or fractions.
THIN SAUCE OR SOUP 1 Tb flour per cup of liquid
MEDIUM, GENERAL-PURPOSE SAUCE 1½ Tb flour per cup of liquid
THICK SAUCE 2 Tb flour per cup of liquid
SOUFFLÉ BASE 3 Tb flour per cup of liquid
Cooking time
Many of the old cookbooks recommend that a white sauce, especially a velouté, be simmered for several hours, the object being to rid the sauce of its floury taste, and to concentrate flavor. However, if the flour and butter roux is properly cooked to begin with, and a concentrated, well-flavored stock is used, both of these problems have been solved at the start. After a long simmering, a perfectly executed velouté will acquire a certain added finesse; and if you have the time to simmer, by all means do so. But for the practical purposes of this book, we shall seldom consider it necessary.
Saucepan note
White sauces should always be made in a heavy-bottomed enameled, stainless steel, pyrex, porcelain, or tin-lined copper saucepan. If a thin-bottomed pan is used, it is a poor heat conductor and the sauce may scorch in the bottom of the pan. Aluminum tends to discolor a white sauce, particularly one containing wine or egg yolks.
A NOTE ON STOCKS FOR VELOUTÉ SAUCES
The recipe for homemade white stock is here; for white chicken stock is here; for fish stock is here; and for clam-juice fish stock is here. Canned chicken broth may be substituted for homemade white stock if you give it the following preliminary treatment:
Canned chicken broth
2 cups canned chicken broth or strained clear chicken and vegetable soup
3 Tb each: sliced onions, carrots, and celery
½ cup dry white wine or ⅓ cup dry white vermouth
2 parsley sprigs, ⅓ bay leaf, and a pinch of thyme
Simmer the chicken broth or soup with the vegetables, wine, and herbs for 30 minutes. Season to taste, strain, and it is ready to use.
SAUCE BÉCHAMEL
SAUCE VELOUTÉ
[White Sauce]
This basic sauce takes about 5 minutes to make, and is then ready for the addition of flavors or enrichments. Suggestions for these are at the end of the master recipe.
For 2 cups (medium thickness)
A heavy-bottomed, 6-cup enameled, stainless steel, lined copper, porcelain, or pyrex saucepan
2 Tb butter
3 Tb flour
A wooden spatula or spoon
In the saucepan melt the butter over low heat. Blend in the flour, and cook slowly, stirring, until the butter and flour froth together for 2 minutes without coloring. This is now a white roux.
2 cups of milk and ¼ tsp salt heated to the boil in a small saucepan
OR 2 cups boiling white stock (see notes in preceding paragraph)
A wire whip
Remove roux from heat. As soon as roux has stopped bubbling, pour in all the hot liquid at once. Immediately beat vigorously with a wire whip to blend liquid and roux, gathering in all bits of roux from the inside edges of the pan.
Set saucepan over moderately high heat and stir with the wire whip until the sauce comes to the boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring.
Salt and white pepper
Remove from heat, and beat in salt and pepper to taste. Sauce is now ready for final flavorings or additions.
(*) If not used immediately, clean sauce off inside edges of pan with a rubber scraper. To prevent a skin from forming on its surface, float a thin film of milk, stock, or melted butter on top. Set aside uncovered, keep it hot over simmering water, refrigerate, or freeze it.
Remarks
If you follow the preceding directions, you will always obtain a smooth sauce of the correct consistency. But here are some remedial measures in case you need them:
If sauce is lumpy
If your roux is hot, and your liquid near the boil, you should never have a lumpy sauce. But if there are lumps, force the sauce through a very fine sieve or whirl it in an electric blender. Then simmer it for 5 minutes.
If sauce is too thick
Bring the sauce to the simmer. Thin it out with milk, cream, or stock, beaten in a tablespoon at a time.
If sauce is too thin
Either boil it down over moderately high heat, stirring continually with a wooden spoon, until it has reduced to the correct consistency;
Or blend half a tablespoon of butter into a paste with half a tablespoon of flour (beurre manié). Off heat, beat the paste into the sauce with a wire whip. Boil for 1 minute, stirring.