Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  SELLE DE VEAU MAINTENON

  (Saddle of Veal with Onion Purée)

  Tie up a saddle of veal securely with string and put it in a roasting pan on a bed of sliced onions and carrots. Season it with salt and spread with 2 tablespoons butter. Add some veal bones and a bouquet garni of 4 sprigs of parsley, 3 stalks of celery, a little thyme, and a piece of bay leaf. Put the pan, uncovered, in a moderately hot oven (400°F) and roast the veal, basting frequently, until the onions and carrots are brown. Add 2 cups water, cover the meat with buttered paper cut to fit the inside of the pan, and cover the pan. Reduce the oven temperature to 375°F and continue to cook the veal for 3 to 3½ hours, or until the meat detaches easily from the bones, adding more water or veal stock if needed. Remove the meat, add enough water or veal stock to the drippings in the pan to make 3 or 4 cups light veal gravy, thickening it with a little arrowroot or cornstarch, and set aside.

  Meanwhile, prepare a thick purée Soubise, or onion purée. Cut 30 to 40 slices each of truffles and canned natural foie gras, cutting each slice about ⅛ inch thick, and mix the leftover trimmings from the truffles and foie gras with the purée Soubise.

  With a very sharp knife cut down both sides of the center bone of the saddle of veal, leaving ½ inch of meat uncut at each end. Remove the filets from both sides, leaving intact the meat at the ends, and cut the filets into slices ¼ inch thick. Spread a little purée Soubise on the uncut ends of the saddle and lay on the purée a piece of truffle and foie gras and a slice of the filet. Continue to reconstruct the saddle in this manner, using about 15 to 20 slices each of truffle and foie gras on each side. Spread the re-formed saddle with purée Soubise, then with alternate slices of the goose liver and truffles, and finally with another coating of the purée. Cover with Mornay sauce and sprinkle with grated Parmesan.

  Set the platter on a pan that contains a little warm water and reheat the veal in a moderate oven (350°F) until the sauce is golden-brown. Garnish with small glazed carrots, artichoke bottoms stuffed with tiny peas, hearts of braised celery, small potatoes rissolées, asparagus tips, green beans, or other vegetables in season and serve the dish with the veal gravy.

  CANETON EN CHEMISE

  (Duck with Rouennaise)

  Bone a 5-to 6-pound duck and stuff it with rouennaise to which 1 egg has been added. Roll up the duck securely in a napkin, tying both ends with soft string. (In France we tied them in a vessie, made from the bladder of a hog.) Add the duck to a kettle of boiling stock, return the stock to the boil, and simmer for about 1 hour, or until tender.

  Remove the duck from the kettle, discarding the napkin, and put it on a heatproof platter with a little of the stock. Brush with butter and brown in a hot oven or under the broiler flame. Arrange the duck over a clean napkin on a serving platter and garnish with slices of orange on top and with slices of lemon around the platter. Present the platter to the guests, slice through the duck and stuffing, and serve the slices with sauce rouennaise.

  ROUENNAISE

  (Liver Paste)

  Heat thoroughly 4 tablespoons salt pork fat. Add 2 cups duck or chicken livers, a little thyme, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon salt, and a little freshly ground pepper. Cook, stirring, for about 3 minutes over a hot fire and stir in 4 tablespoons Cognac or sherry. Pound the mixture in a mortar and rub it through a fine sieve.

  SAUCE ROUENNAISE

  (Duck Liver Sauce)

  Put 1 cup red wine, 10 peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, ½ teaspoon thyme, and 4 shallots, chopped, in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until the liquid is reduced to ⅓ its original quantity. Add 4 tablespoons brown sauce and 5 or 6 duck or chicken livers, finely chopped. Bring again to a boil, correct the seasoning, and rub the sauce through a fine sieve. Finish by stirring in 4 tablespoons Cognac.

  SOLE SOUFFLÉE TANTE MARIE

  (Sole Stuffed with Fish Mousse)

  Clean and skin 2 soles, each weighing about 2 pounds. Make a pocket in each fish as follows:

  Cut off the fins with sharp scissors. Starting from the head, slip a very sharp, thin knife closely along each side of the backbone, cutting down to detach the flesh but leaving uncut the underedge and the part near the tail. Sever the backbone at the head and tail with the scissors and lift the bones out.

  Stuff the pocket with fish mousse and close it so that the sides meet along the back. Wrap each fish in cheesecloth and tie the ends with string. Put 4 tablespoons butter and 2 teaspoons chopped shallots in a shallow saucepan, lay the fish on this bed, and sprinkle with 1 cup white wine. Put the bones on top of the fish to give the sauce a better flavor. Bring the wine to a boil, cover the pan, and simmer on top of the range or in a moderate oven (350°F) for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the stuffing is set and the fish is cooked. Remove the soles to a serving dish, discarding the cloth.

  Reduce the liquor in the pan to about 6 tablespoons and add 1 cup cream sauce. Thicken the sauce with 5 or 6 tablespoons hollandaise or with 2 egg yolks mixed with a little cream and swirl in 2 tablespoons butter, taking the pan from the fire as soon as the butter is melted. Fold in 4 tablespoons whipped cream, pour the sauce over the fish, and glaze in a very hot oven or under the broiler flame.

  FISH MOUSSE

  Put 1 pound of boned sole, cod, or other white fish in a mortar and pound it to a fine paste, adding ½ teaspoon salt, a little pepper, and 2 egg whites. Rub the purée through a fine sieve into a saucepan. Set the saucepan in a bowl containing cracked ice and continue to work the mixture with a wooden spoon, adding gradually about 2 cups heavy cream. The mixture has the right consistency when a rounded spoonful of it can be slipped off the spoon into a pan of hot water and will hold its shape when poached. When the mousse reaches this consistency, add ¼ cup sauce américaine and ½ cup mushroom duxelles.

  SAUCE AMÉRICAINE

  Cook 4 cups stewed tomatoes until most of the liquid has cooked away and strain through a fine sieve.

  Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan and add 2 shallots, finely chopped, 1 clove of garlic, and 1 tablespoon each chopped parsley and chervil. Add the tomato purée and simmer until the shallots are soft. Remove the clove of garlic, add 2 tablespoons brandy, and cook for a few minutes without letting the sauce boil.

  MUSHROOM DUXELLES

  Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a saucepan, add ¼ pound mushrooms, finely chopped, and 1 shallot, chopped, and cook until the moisture is evaporated. Stir in 1 teaspoon chopped parsley and salt to taste.

  FAISAN SOUVAROV

  (Pheasant Souvaroff)

  Sauté in butter large pieces of fresh goose liver or canned natural foie gras. Add an equal quantity of whole small truffles or larger ones cut into pieces and combine with 2 tablespoons beef extract mixed with 4 tablespoons Madeira or sherry.

  Clean a pheasant and stuff it with the above mixture. Truss the legs and wings close to the body and sew up the opening. Lard the breast with thin strips of fat salt pork and cover with more salt pork, securing the slices with string. Put the pheasant in a roasting pan, season with salt, and spread with good fat. Roast it in a moderately hot oven (425°F) for 15 minutes, turn, and roast it for 15 minutes on the other side, basting frequently. Remove the pheasant and put it on its back in a casserole.

  Remove the excess fat from the roasting pan and to the drippings in the pan add 3 ounces Madeira or sherry, 2 or 3 tablespoons truffle juice, 2 truffles, diced, and ½ cup good gravy or brown sauce. Cook the sauce for a few minutes and pour it around the pheasant in the casserole. Put 1 tablespoon of butter on the breast, cover the casserole, and seal with a roll of dough made of flour, water, and a little fat. Bake in a moderately hot oven (425°F) for about 30 minutes, unseal, and serve.

  This recipe may also be used for partridge or for any poultry.

  VOL-AU-VENT EUGÉNIE

  Prepare a puff-paste shell as follows: Roll out puff paste about ⅜ inch thick and from it cut a circle about 7 inches in diameter. Moisten a pastry sheet with water and on it lay the circle, turning this over so that the top
side is underneath. Cut another 7-inch circle from puff paste rolled to the same thickness and cut out and reserve the center to leave a rim 1 inch wide. Moisten a 1-inch border around the first circle and on this lay the cut-out rim, reversing it so that the top side is underneath. Press the two borders firmly together and cut small scallops about ½ inch apart to make a decorative edging. Lay the reserved circle lightly inside the rim and chill the shell in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.

  Brush the top with 1 egg beaten with a little milk and bake in a hot oven (450°F) for about 10 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden-brown. Reduce the oven temperature to 375°F and bake for 25 to 30 minutes longer. Remove the vol-au-vent from the oven and with a sharp knife gently lift out and reserve the center circle.

  Prepare the filling as follows: Cut into large pieces the white meat and the second-joint meat from a poached chicken. Cut into pieces 3 sweetbreads poached until tender in salted water acidulated with lemon juice. Flute the edges of 1 dozen mushrooms and cook them for a few minutes over a hot fire in 3 to 4 tablespoons water mixed with 1 teaspoon each lemon juice and butter. Drain the mushrooms, reserving the liquor, and combine them with the chicken and sweetbreads. Add 12 small quenelles of chicken and ½ cup Madeira or sherry and heat all together.

  Prepare 3 cups chicken velouté and add to it the reserved mushroom liquor. Stir in 2 egg yolks mixed with 1 cup heavy cream and bring the sauce to the boiling point. Add all but about 1 cup of this sauce to the chicken mixture and fill the vol-au-vent. Pour the reserved sauce on just before serving, garnish with a border of sliced truffles, and top with the baked pastry cover.

  CHICKEN QUENELLES

  Grind finely 1 pound raw chicken flesh, place it in a mortar with 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper, and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, and pound it to a paste. Add gradually the whites of 2 eggs, working the paste vigorously with a wooden spoon. Rub the forcemeat through a fine sieve, place it in a saucepan over cracked ice, and gradually work in about 2 cups heavy cream.

  Form the forcemeat into small balls and poach them in chicken broth or salted water. Do not let the liquid boil or the quenelles will split.

  July 1951

  PARIS ONE STEP AT A TIME

  Joseph Wechsberg

  This seems to be my nostalgic day. Paris is losing one of its great delights, well expressed by the French verb flâner, “to stroll, to saunter,” to which the Larousse adds, “s’arrêtant souvent pour regarder.” Where in Paris is it possible now to stroll, “stopping often to look” perhaps at a few flowers, at the sun falling through the leaves of the trees (as Monet and Renoir magically painted them), or at a pretty woman? The women are still there, but they don’t walk; they ride in their cars. The truth is that the automobile has ruined one of the joys of Paris—the joy of walking. Even the sacred domain of the Paris flâneur, the Bois de Boulogne, was recently declared off limits to the stroller after dark. The police warned innocent people not to walk in the Bois at night because quite a few not-so-innocent people pursue their dubious activities there. There have been holdups by characters who are convinced that crime does pay.

  In recent months I made a survey of my own, asking people in Paris, “Do you still walk in the city for the pleasure of walking?” Many of them didn’t know what I was talking about, so I couldn’t even ask them “Where?” The young ones of course never learned to enjoy walking as we did when we were young. We had no cars, no motorcycles; we walked because we thought it was nice to walk. But even older Parisians no longer walk. They remember that they loved to explore the hidden corners of their beautiful city, and they often discovered something they hadn’t noticed before. Paris was truly made for the observant stroller.

  Now the voiture has taken over the city. There is no place to walk aimlessly. Of course people still walk; many streets are crowded with people, but most of the walkers are going somewhere, and many are in a hurry. The classical flâneur never walked because he wanted to go somewhere, and he was never in a hurry. But now even the Champs-Élysées, once the rendezvous of flâneurs and boulevardiers, has become noisy and dirty. The air is full of exhaust fumes, people bump into one another, and there are construction sites and parked cars. And, and, and … It’s all very sad.

  Some people still walk on the Grands Boulevards, especially in the poorer districts, from the Opéra toward the Place de la République and the Bastille, and sometimes they sit on benches, enjoying the sunshine and watching life go by. But they are not flâneurs. They just cannot afford a glass of beer or a coffee in a sidewalk café. Some amusement is provided, free of charge, by street vendors and the sellers of lottery tickets. But people agree that it’s not what it used to be. They look at you sadly and you understand. American tourists rarely venture into these quartiers. Those who do will be rewarded by a short glance into the past.

  A few years ago it was nice to walk along the Seine. On the Right Bank, one passed the Jardin des Tuileries and the noble façade of the Louvre. Soon one would cross over to the Left Bank, to walk past the stalls along the Seine that offered forgotten thirdhand books, prints, magazines that are no longer published, art nouveau posters, and cheerful absurdities. But now the roads along the river have become one-way express highways noisy with automobiles.

  The steady flow of traffic never stops along the quais. Gradually, the owners or tenants of the bookstalls have drifted away, and the stalls remain locked. I talked to one of the few people whose stalls were open. He was a policier en retraite, and his name was Monsieur Dupont. He had taken over the stall from an old friend because he loved the company of books. M. Dupont is a Paris phenomenon, a retired literary policeman. He loves the Seine and wishes there were more strollers coming to look at his books. Once in a while somebody may buy one, but it doesn’t happen often. Business is so bad that he couldn’t make ends meet if he didn’t have his pension. Having been on both sides of the fence, as a traffic cop and as a flâneur, M. Dupont approaches the issue with Gallic logic.

  “Who would want to stand here and leisurely browse, immersing himself in the labyrinths of French literature?” he asked rhetorically, pointing at the cars going by at high speed with much noise. “After a while even the loyal clients can’t stand it anymore and go away. In summer the exhaust fumes make it impossible to breathe. Ah, Monsieur, c’est la barbe.”

  Some limited walking can be done in the Jardin des Tuileries, which we owe to André Lenôtre, the great seventeenth-century designer of parks and gardens. There one sees bonnes (maids) with richly dressed infants. The onetime pleasure of walking under the arcades of the rue de Rivoli is spoiled by traffic noises and hordes of tourists trying to find bargains in the cheap souvenir stores. There are inexpensive things for sale but no bargains. The green Michelin guide, Paris et sa banlieue, has a section on promenades, meaning promenades en voiture. The pleasure of such a promenade is doubtful. “The Paris of Baron Haussmann had about 100,000 horse-driven coaches. Today there are over 910,000 motorcars in Paris…. When only 140,000 of them circulate at the same time, the 1200 kilometers of streets in Paris are jammed.”

  For the sturdy few who still walk because it is the best way to see Paris, the guide proposes a four-day promenade. For the afternoon of the third day the guide suggests a and so on. Personally, I suggest walking around the Île de la Cité, where some of the city’s former charm and tranquillity has been magically preserved. I also like the quiet side streets of the Butte Montmartre, which Picasso and Utrillo discovered long before I did. Most of the old flâneurs were residents of this picturesque quartier, but they have disappeared. Some sit in front of their old houses or hide in the gardens behind them. The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is still popular, as is the Parc du Champ de Mars. The Service des Monuments Historiques organizes daily lecture tours in Paris, mostly in French. I recently joined a tour that took a small group of bizarre spinsters, precocious children, and bored Sunday-afternoon husbands through the Hôtel Sully. Many ex-flâneurs seem to have escaped into the museums of Paris,
especially the less well known ones.

  … tour of the Quartier Latin. The calm of the small streets surrounding the church of St. Séverin contrasts with the liveliness of the Boulevard St. Michel, which we follow as far as the Place Edmond-Rostand. After visiting the Panthéon we return to the Luxembourg gardens …

  When all is said about strolling in Paris, the fact emerges that almost everybody has a car or knows someone who has a car, which is even better. People try to get out of the city as often as possible. In some of the quiet suburbs it is still possible to stroll. A wise French gentleman who lives in an elegant western suburb walks for an hour in the morning in the nearby woods—he is eighty-seven—before he is driven to his office on the avenue Foch. In the old days he loved to walk there. But he has read that every twenty-four hours over 200,000 foolhardy drivers join the vicious circle around the Arc de Triomphe, praying to the Lord to get them out of it somehow. That bothers the old gentleman. Yes, strolling in Paris is fast becoming a memory. Soon it may be a forgotten memory.

  July 1975

  CITY OF LIGHT

  THE OLDFLOWER MARKET

  Joseph Wechsberg

  The Marché aux Fleurs, the old flower market on the Île de la Cité, is much loved by the Parisians, who go there all year long to buy their flowers—from small violets and modest anemones to large plants and imposing trees for terraces and balconies. La Cité, one of the islands in the Seine, is the oldest part of Paris. Two centuries before the Christian era, fishermen from the Parisii tribe founded the Celtic settlement of Lutèce on the two islands now known as La Cité and the Île Saint-Louis. The Roman legions came there in 52 B.C.and built a small Gallo-Roman town. In A.D.360, Julian the Apostate, a Roman prefect with great ambitions, had himself crowned emperor by the legions. About that time Lutèce changed its name and became Paris.