by Julia Child
Bring the fish stock to the boil. During this time melt the butter in the saucepan, blend in the flour, and cook slowly, stirring, until butter and flour foam together for 2 minutes without browning at all. Set this roux aside: it is for the sauce, next step. When stock is boiling, add the halibut (or other firm-fleshed fish); bring liquid rapidly to the simmer and simmer 5 minutes. Then add the sole, scallops, and shrimp, pressing them down into the liquid. If really necessary, add a little more liquid: ingredients should be almost covered. Bring again rapidly to the simmer for 2 minutes, then add the cooked lobster meat and optional cooked mussels. Bring again to simmer for 1 minute and remove from heat. Lift fish out and arrange in tureen; cover loosely. (Some of the fish, like sole, may have flaked apart; lift only what you easily can into the tureen.)
the sauce:
The flour-and-butter roux and cooking liquid from preceding step
More stock or cream if needed
The lobster green-matter, cream, and yolk mixture
Salt, white pepper, Cayenne pepper, and lemon juice
Reheat roux if necessary, remove from heat, and whisking it with a wire whip, gradually ladle into it by driblets 2 cups of hot cooking stock. When perfectly smooth, set over moderately high heat and rapidly beat in 4 to 5 more cups of stock. Simmer, stirring, for 2 minutes: sauce should be a little thicker than a fairly heavy cream soup. Boil down rapidly, stirring, if too thin; beat in a little more stock if too thick. Then, and again by driblets, beat 2 cups of hot sauce into the lobster green-matter mixture, heating it gradually to prevent it from curdling. Gradually beat it back into the hot sauce, and set sauce over moderate heat. Stir slowly with a wooden spoon, reaching all over bottom of pan until sauce thickens and comes almost to the simmer. If sauce seems too thick, stir in a little more cream or stock. Taste very carefully for seasoning, adding salt, pepper, drops of lemon juice, and so forth if you feel them necessary. Proceed immediately to the next step.
serving:
The optional fish decorations, such as whole shrimp, lobster shells, mussels, etc.
2 to 3 Tb minced fresh parsley and or chervil
12 to 18 canapés (triangles of crustless homemade-type white bread sautéed in clarified butter)
Warm soup plates
Gently fold the hot sauce into the warm fish in the tureen. Float optional fish decorations on top and sprinkle the herbs over all. Serve as soon as possible, ladling the stew into hot plates and adding a canapé or two to each portion. This is eaten with large soup spoon, knife, and fork.
(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: May be completed a day before, serving in the marmite instead of a tureen. When cold, cover and refrigerate; heat slowly to below the simmer before serving. Like a good New England chowder or lobster stew, it gains in flavor when made in advance.
BOURRIDE
[Provençal Fish Stew with Aïoli—Garlic Mayonnaise]
This marvelous fish dinner from Provence is for garlic lovers only, as the big chunks of fish are cooked in a broth that is then enriched with egg yolks and a mayonnaise into which at least 1 large clove of garlic per person has been puréed. Like bouillabaisse, the fish is served on a platter and the enriched broth in a tureen, but both are eaten together in soup plates. This is such a rich dish we suggest you serve it for lunch, and you will want nothing else but perhaps a bit of green salad and fresh fruit. You will need a strong, dry white wine, such as a Côtes-du-Rhône or Pinot Blanc.
For 6 to 8 people as a main course
1) Preliminaries—may be done several hours before final cooking the fish:
3 to 4 lbs. assorted lean, firm-fleshed white fish, such as those suggested here
Prepare the fish as described, cutting it into chunks or steaks about 3 inches in diameter and 1 to 1½ inches thick. Refrigerate until cooking time.
the cooking broth:
1 cup each of sliced onions, carrots, and white of leek (or additional onion)
3 to 4 Tb olive oil
A heavy-bottomed 7- to 8- quart flameproof casserole or kettle
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 to 3 quarts fish trimmings, bones, heads; or 2 to 3 cups fish; or 1 quart clam juice
3 quarts water (2 quarts if you use clam juice)
2 cups dry white wine or 1½ cups dry white French vermouth
2 imported bay leaves
¼ tsp each of thyme, fennel, and dried orange peel
2 large cloves of garlic, unpeeled, halved
2 large pinches saffron flowers
1½ Tb salt (none if you use clam juice)
Cook the vegetables in oil over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, until tender but not browned. Add the tomatoes and cook 2 minutes, then add all the rest of the ingredients. Bring to the simmer, skimming occasionally, and simmer partially covered for 40 minutes. Strain into a bowl, wash out casserole, and return the stock to it. Correct seasoning, adding salt if necessary.
(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: If prepared in advance, cover when cool and refrigerate.
the aïoli mayonnaise:
⅓ cup stale crumbs from homemade-type unsweetened white bread
Wine vinegar
A heavy 2½-quart mixing bowl or a mortar
A wooden pestle, masher, or heavy ladle (for pounding)
6 to 8 cloves garlic and garlic press
½ tsp salt
6 egg yolks (2 now, the rest later)
1½ to 2 cups olive oil
A large wire whip
White or Cayenne pepper
Moisten crumbs with a tablespoon or two of vinegar and pound to a paste in the bowl. Purée garlic through press into the paste and continue pounding several minutes until absolutely smooth. Add salt and 2 of the egg yolks and pound until mixture is very thick and sticky. Then begin pounding and stirring in oil by droplets until sauce is thick and heavy. Thin out with drops of vinegar and begin beating in teaspoons of oil with whip. Sauce should be heavy enough to hold its shape in a spoon. Season to taste. (Note that a more detailed recipe on aïoli and on mayonnaise in general is in Volume I, page 92.)
A 2-cup serving bowl
Plastic wrap
A covered jar if needed
Scrape half the sauce into serving bowl, cover airtight, and set aside for dining room. Beat the 4 remaining egg yolks into the rest of the sauce; cover airtight. (If doing in advance, transfer to a smaller container and cover.) This second half is to be combined with the stew just before serving.
2) Cooking and serving cooking the fish:
The cooking broth
The prepared fish
A large perforated skimmer
A serving platter set over a pan of almost simmering water, and a cover
2 to 3 Tb coarsely chopped parsley
About 15 minutes before serving, bring cooking broth to a rolling boil and add the fish, pushing it down into the broth, which should barely cover it. (Add a little boiling water if necessary.) Boil slowly, uncovered, for 6 to 10 minutes, depending on thickness of fish (2 to 3 minutes only for scallops); it is done when springy rather than squashy to the touch—do not overcook. As soon as fish is done, arrange on platter, moisten with a little of the cooking broth, decorate with parsley, and cover to keep it warm.
combining cooking broth and aïoli:
The egg-yolk enriched aïoli in a 3-quart bowl
A large wire whip, a ladle, and a wooden spoon
A 3-cup serving bowl
Salt and white pepper
A warm soup tureen
Whisking aïoli with wire whip, gradually dribble in several ladlesful of hot cooking broth until 2 to 3 cups have gone in. (Ladle a cup or so of broth also into serving bowl and keep warm.) Pour aïoli mixture back into casserole with rest of cooking stock and set over moderate heat. Stir continually and rather slowly with wooden spoon until broth slowly thickens enough to coat the spoon—4 to 5 minutes—being careful that liquid does not come to simmer and scramble the egg yolks. Carefully correct seasoning; broth will be a beautiful, smooth, richly aromatic yellow
-ivory color. Pour it into the tureen and serve immediately.
serving:
12 or more slices of hot French bread, ¾ inch thick
Wide soup plates
The reserved plain broth
The hot fish on its platter, and the tureen
The reserved aïoli mayonnaise
For each serving, place 2 slices of bread in a soup plate and moisten with a spoonful of plain broth. Arrange chunks of fish over the bread and ladle over it the aïoli broth from the tureen. Each guest adds a spoonful of aïoli mayonnaise, and eats the bourride with soup spoon and fork.
* * *
CHAPTER TWO
Baking: Breads, Brioches, Croissants, and Pastries
YEAST DOUGHS
Les Pâtes Levées
THE AVERAGE FRENCH HOUSEHOLD does no yeast baking at all except for babas, savarins, and an occasional brioche. It certainly does no bread making, and there is no need to because every neighborhood has its own boulangerie serving freshly baked bread every day of the week but one, usually Monday, when the boulanger takes his day off. Thus you cannot even find a bread pan in a French household supply store, and there are no French recipes for homemade bread. All of the recipes here, therefore, are those used by professionals whose techniques we have worked out for the home baker, using standard ingredients and household equipment.
Whether you are a home or a professional baker, you will find that time is really the key to successful bread making. Just as it takes time for cheese to ripen and wine to age, it takes time for yeast to do its full work in a dough. The function of yeast is not only to push the dough up but, equally important, to develop its flavor and its texture. Yeast feeds and multiplies on the starch in the flour. Flour also contains gluten, and it is the gluten that allows the dough to rise and stay risen in the oven because gluten molecules become gluey when moistened and join together in an elastic web throughout the dough. Then, while the yeast cells are feeding and multiplying on the starch, their voracious activity forms tiny pockets of gas that push up the surrounding mesh of gluten, making the dough rise. At the same time the gluten itself, if given time, goes through a slow ripening process that gives the dough flavor, cohesion, and elasticity. These important developments in the gluten must take place if a very simple dough, such as that for plain French bread, is to turn into something splendidly satisfying to eat. Thus, rather than trying to speed things up by using lots of yeast and a warm rising temperature, you want to provide time for ripening by slowing everything down with a minimum of yeast, a tepid temperature, and several risings.
Many reasons are given for the doleful state of much contemporary bread both here and in France: it is not baked in wood-fired ovens; both the flour and water are full of chemicals; it is machine-kneaded; and so forth. The villain in the bread basket is speed: the yeast has not been given the time it needs to accomplish its triple function of developing flavor and texture as well as volume.
YEAST
Yeast is a living organism, but it is inactive or dormant when you buy it, either as a fresh cake wrapped in silver paper or as dry yeast in a sealed envelope. Fresh cake yeast must be a uniformly creamy gray with no spots of discoloration, and is perishable; it will keep only about a week under refrigeration but for several weeks when wrapped airtight and frozen. Dry-active yeast should be stored in a cool, dry place, or in the refrigerator or freezer; use it before the expiration date stamped on the envelope. Either type of yeast may be used, but both must be completely liquefied before the yeast is ready to become active. Although you can mix it, as is, into the dry ingredients and blend in warm water, we prefer the almost as rapid but visually positive method of liquefying it separately.
Proving yeast
When you know your yeast is fresh, you need have no doubts about its capacities. If you think it may be stale do not hesitate to make it prove itself by dissolving it in the warm water called for in your recipe; stir in also a tablespoon of flour and a pinch of sugar. It is active and ready to use if it begins to foam and to increase in volume in about 8 minutes: the yeast cells, spurred on by the sugar, are feeding on the flour.
DOUGH TEXTURE, VOLUME OF RISE, TEMPERATURE
Anyone used to American bread making will be surprised to find that the doughs for all of the following recipes are light, soft, and sticky when first made because the dough is to triple rather than double in volume during its first and usually its second rise: this is the period during which it develops its flavor and texture. Rather than rising in a warm place of around 85 degrees, which would cause it to ferment and acquire an unpleasant yeasty-sour taste, it must rise in the low 70’s if you can possibly manage it, or at an even lower temperature if you wish to delay the process.
THE WEATHER
We therefore suggest that you do not attempt your first bread-making spree in a hot kitchen. When you are used to doughs and know how they should look, smell, and feel, you can adjust your procedures to the weather, letting the dough rise part of the time in the refrigerator, for instance, or deflating it when partially risen and letting it push itself up several times. Rainy or humid weather and steamy rooms also have their adverse affect, making dough unduly sticky, even sweaty; pick a dry day and a dry room, then, for your first venture. In other words, make everything as easy as possible for yourself.
TIMING AND DELAYED ACTION
Although it will take you a minimum of 7 hours from start to finish for most of these recipes, that does not mean that you are hovering over your dough for 7 straight hours. During almost all of this time the dough is sitting quietly by itself, rising in one form or another. Because you can slow down the rise by lowering the temperature, you may set it in the refrigerator or the freezer when you have to go out, and continue when you return. Thus, although you cannot successfully speed things up, you can otherwise fit bread making into almost any pattern that suits your schedule. Each of the recipes indicates various stopping points, and there is a delayed-action chart at the end of the French bread recipe.
MACHINE VERSUS HAND MIXING
A heavy-duty table-model electric beater with a dough hook works very well for mixing and kneading dough, and can be adapted nicely to the French processes. Notes are at the end of each Master Recipe.
PLAIN FRENCH BREAD
Pain Français
A fine loaf of plain French bread, the long crackly kind a Frenchman tucks under his arm as he hurries home to the family lunch, has a very special quality. Its inside is patterned with holes almost like Swiss cheese, and when you tear off a piece it wants to come sideways; it has body, chewability, and tastes and smells of the grain. Plain French bread contains only flour, water, salt, and yeast, because that is the law in France. The method, however, is up to each individual baker. Until the 1800’s and before commercial yeast was known, all bread was made with a levain, meaning dough left over from the previous batch; the procedure involved numerous risings and mixings to develop sufficient yeast cells for the day’s quota of bread. Later a brewer’s-yeast-and-flour batter was developed that simplified the process, but it was not until the 1870’s that the kind of yeast we use today was manufactured in France. Since then the making of French bread has undergone many changes, some of which, notably the accelerated mechanical kneading and fast rising systems used by some bakers, have had a disastrous affect on quality. Again, this is a question of trying to save time at the expense of taste and texture, because excellent bread may be made using modern ingredients, equipment, and methods.
We have had the great good fortune of being able to work with Professor R. Calvel, of the École Professionelle de Meunerie, a trade school established in Paris to teach the profession of milling and baking to students and bakers from all over France. The science of bread making and the teaching of its art are the life work of Professor Calvel, and thanks to his enthusiastic help, which set us on the right track, we think we have developed as professional a system for the home baker as anyone could hope for. You will be amazed at how very differen
t the process is from anything you have done before, from the mixing and rising to the very special method of forming the dough into loaves.
FLOUR
French bakers make plain French bread out of unbleached flour that has a gluten strength of 8 to 9 per cent. Most American all-purpose flour is bleached and has a slightly higher gluten content as well as being slightly finer in texture. It is easier to make bread with French flour than with American all-purpose flour, and the taste and texture of the bread are naturally more authentic. (The so-called bread flour available in some mail-order houses usually has an even higher gluten content than all-purpose flour, so do not use it for plain French bread.) You will undoubtedly wish to experiment with flours if you become a serious bread maker, but because we find that any of the familiar brands of all-purpose flour works very well, we shall not complicate the recipe by suggesting an obscure or special brand. If you do experiment, however, simply substitute your other flour for the amount called for in the recipe; you may need a little bit more water or a little bit less, but the other ingredients and the method will not change.
BAKERS’ OVENS VERSUS HOME OVENS