by Unknown
Soak the beans overnight. Put them in a large casserole or saucepan, add the onion, garlic, pork rind, the piece of gammon, and a faggot of herbs (bay leaf, thyme, parsley). Cover with fresh water and cook either in a slow oven for 4 to 5 hours or over a direct flame on top of the stove for 1½ to 3 hours (the time of cooking varies a good deal with the quality of the beans). Add salt only in the final stages of cooking.
Meanwhile, roast the pork and the mutton in the dripping (and the duck if you are using this).
When the beans are all but cooked, cut all the meats, the rinds and the sausage into convenient pieces, put them in alternate layers with the beans in a deep earthenware pot and add enough of the liquid in which the beans have cooked to come about half-way up. Put into a fairly slow oven (Regulo 3–4) uncovered, to finish cooking. This final operation can be prolonged to suit yourself by turning the oven right down. Eventually a brown crust forms on top of the beans. Stir this gently into the whole mass, and leave for another crust to form. Again stir it in, and when a third crust has formed the cassoulet should be ready. Sometimes the top is sprinkled with a layer of breadcrumbs when the pot is put in the oven and this speeds up the crusting of the cassoulet, and if perhaps you have added too much liquid the breadcrumbs should help to absorb it. Serve on very hot plates, with plenty of young red wine, and perhaps a green salad and a good cheese to finish the meal.
FOOL or EGYPTIAN BROWN BEANS
Fool (brown beans) are the staple food of the Egyptian peasant. 1 lb of these beans and 6 tablespoons of red lentils are washed and put into an earthen or copper casserole with 3 cups of water. This is brought to the boil and then left for hours and hours – all night usually – on a low charcoal fire. If necessary more water can be added. Salt is not put in until the cooking is finished, and olive oil is poured over them in the plate, and sometimes hard-boiled eggs are served with them. The lid of the casserole should be removed as little as possible, or the beans will go black.
The way I cook Egyptian dried brown beans (to be bought nowadays in Soho shops) on a modern cooker is as follows: soak half a pound of them in cold water for about 12 hours. Put them into an earthenware pot well covered with fresh water (about ¾ to 1 pint). Put the covered pot in the lowest possible oven and leave undisturbed all day or all night, or for a minimum of 7 hours. When they are quite soft and most of the water is absorbed, decant them into a shallow serving bowl or dish, season with salt, moisten with plenty of fruity olive oil and lemon juice – or, better still, the juice of fresh limes. Serve separately a plate of hard-boiled eggs. This is a very filling, nourishing, and cheap dish. Tins of ready-cooked Egyptian brown beans are also to be bought in Oriental shops; they are time-saving but still require a good hour of extra cooking, and of course the ritual seasoning of olive oil and lemon.
RAGOÛT DE MOUTON À LA CATALANE
2 lb of leg or loin of mutton, an onion, 2 cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of concentrated tomato purée or ½ lb of fresh tomatoes, ½ lb of bacon, herbs, ½ lb of chick peas (see p. 132), white wine or port.
Cut the meat and the bacon into thick squares; brown them on each side in pork or bacon fat or oil; add the garlic and the tomato purée or the fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped, and plenty of thyme or marjoram or basil, and 2 bay leaves. Pour over a glass of sweet white wine, or port. Cover the pan and cook very gently for 2 hours, until the meat is tender.
Have ready the chick peas, soaked and cooked. When the mutton is about ready put the drained chick peas and the meat mixture together into a fireproof dish, put a layer of breadcrumbs on the top and cook in a gentle oven for an hour until a slight crust has formed on the top, and the chick peas are absolutely soft.
Tins of ready-cooked chick peas are now imported from Italy and Egypt. They save much time, but are not as good as those cooked at home. As an emergency store, however, they are useful, especially for dishes such as the above, in which the chick peas are twice cooked and highly seasoned.
Poultry and Game
N.B. – Further recipes for poultry and game will be found in the chapter on Cold Food
Alcobaca
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‘In came the Grand Priors hand in hand, all three together. “To the kitchen,” said they in perfect unison, “to the kitchen, and that immediately; you will then judge whether we have been wanting in zeal to regale you.”
‘Such a summons, so conveyed, was irresistible; the three prelates led the way to, I verily believe, the most distinguished temple of gluttony in all Europe. What Glastonbury may have been in its palmy state, I cannot answer; but my eyes never beheld in any modern convent of France, Italy, or Germany, such an enormous space dedicated to culinary purposes. Through the centre of the immense and nobly-groined hall, not less than sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, flowing through pierced wooden reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the finest river-fish. On one side, loads of game and venison were heaped up; on the other, vegetables and fruit in endless variety. Beyond a long line of stoves extended a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe of lay brothers and their attendants were rolling out and puffing up into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks in a corn-field.
‘My servants, and those of their reverend excellencies the two Priors, were standing by in the full glee of witnessing these hospitable preparations, as well pleased, and as much flushed, as if they had been just returned from assisting at the marriage at Cana in Galilee. “There,” said the Lord Abbot, “we shall not starve: God’s bounties are great, it is fit we should enjoy them.” ’
The Travel-Diaries of William Beckford of Fonthill
ALEPPO CHICKEN
1 boiling chicken, 1 lemon, carrots, onions, celery, garlic, ½ lb mushrooms, ¼ lb blanched almonds, half a glass of sherry, 4 egg yolks, 1 glass cream.
Rub the chicken over with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, insert a piece of lemon peel in the inside of the bird. Boil with the vegetables in the usual way and when cooked take the pan off the fire, and with a ladle pour out about a pint of the stock into another pan. Add to this the juice of half a lemon, the sherry, the almonds, and the previously sautéd mushrooms, and when hot pour it spoon by spoon on to the eggs beaten up with the cream. Heat gently and when it has thickened put the chicken on a hot dish, and pour the sauce all over and around it.
SHERKASIYA (Circassian Chicken)
1 chicken, 3 oz each of shelled walnuts, almonds and hazel nuts, rice, paprika and cayenne to taste, salt, 2 onions, butter.
Boil the chicken in the usual way, cut it into 4 pieces and arrange it in the centre of a dish of boiled rice.
The following sauce is served with it. Pound the walnuts, almonds, and hazel nuts in a mortar with the paprika and cayenne and salt. Fry the chopped onion in butter and add the pounded nuts and a little of the chicken stock, and when it is thick pour it over the rice.
POLLO IN PADELLA CON PEPERONI
Cut a chicken into 6 pieces. Brown them in a braising pan with olive oil, 2 or 3 onions sliced, 3 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, marjoram, and thyme; cover the pan and cook slowly for about 1 hour, taking care that the chicken does not burn.
In the meantime put 4 or 5 large red or green pimentos into the oven or under the grill until they are soft and the outer skin can be peeled off; remove the seeds, cut them in strips and add them to the pan with ½ lb of tomatoes roughly chopped and a pinch of basil. When the tomatoes are cooked the dish is ready.
A few slices of orange, peeled and cut in rounds and added at the last moment, are a pleasant addition.
POULET ANTIBOISE
Slice 2 lb of onions and put them into a deep casserole with a half-tumbler of olive oil, a little salt, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
On top of the onions place a cleaned chicken seasoned with salt and pepper. Cover the casserole a
nd cook very gently in the oven for about an hour and a half. The onions must not brown, but melt gradually almost to a purée, as in pissaladina (see p. 39). Add a little more oil during cooking if necessary.
When the chicken is tender carve it into pieces and serve on a dish with the onions all round, garnished with a few stoned black olives and squares of bread, fried in oil.
If the chicken is of the elderly, boiling variety, it can be cut into joints before cooking, so that it will not take so long to cook, although whenever possible I think that chickens should always be cooked whole to preserve the flavour and juices, and carved into joints for serving.
A Delicate Stuffing for Roast Chicken
1 cup cooked rice, a handful raisins, ½ cup blanched and pounded almonds, ¼ cup finely chopped raw onion, ½ cup chopped parsley, liver of chicken, 2 oz butter, a sprig of basil, 1 egg.
Mash the liver and mix all the ingredients together, working the butter well into the mixture, adding the beaten egg last.
ROAST DUCK
The flavour of roast duck is much improved if the cleaned bird is first put into a pan over a hot fire until most of the fat has been extracted. (Watch to see that it does not burn.) Strain the fat off and repeat the process. When all possible fat has been removed put 3 tablespoons of butter into the pan and place it in a hot oven. Baste and turn frequendy for 1¼ hours.
OIE RÔTIE À LA BORDELAISE
Another recipe from the same French cookery book as the gigot de mouton à la provençale.
Prepare a goose as for roasting; fill the interior with the following stuffing. About 20 fine mushrooms, chopped very finely with the liver of the goose, a pinch of parsley, and a clove of garlic; to this add ½ lb of fresh butter, and ¼ lb of anchovy butter.
Knead all very well together before stuffing the bird; sew up the opening and roast the goose on the spit, exactly as for an unstuffed bird.
Even if the goose is not an excessively fat one, it will still render an abundance of jus while it is roasting, owing to the butter in the interior. The bird should be basted almost continuously while it is roasting with this butter, in order that it may be completely penetrated with the savour of the anchovy butter allied to the garlic. The taste of the goose prepared in this manner is highly esteemed by the gastronomes of the Midi, but apart from the southern départements, it is not particularly popular with the majority of gourmets.
LES PERDREAUX AUX RAISINS
In a medium-sized cocotte or braising pan melt a little bacon fat, put in some slices of bacon, a bouquet garni, and two partridges, cleaned and trussed as for roasting. Fill up the pan to the height of the partridges with peeled, somewhat unripe, white grapes. Season with salt and pepper, cover with greaseproof paper and the lid and simmer very gently 1 hour.
Serve very hot with the pieces of bacon and the grapes arranged round the partridges.
AN ITALIAN STUFFING FOR PARTRIDGES
For 4 partridges prepare 4 oz of bacon or ham, ½ lb of mushrooms, and 8 juniper berries, all chopped together with the livers of the birds; wrap the stuffed partridges in bacon and roast, basting with butter.
LES PERDREAUX À LA PROVENÇALE
Another recipe for those who are very fond of garlic.
Into a thick braising pan put a small piece of butter, 2 oz of fat ham or bacon, and 2 cleaned partridges. Fry gently until the partridges are golden, and then add 20 or 30 cloves of garlic chopped with parsley, and fry another 2 or 3 minutes.
Pour over a glass of strong white wine and a glass of thick freshly made tomato purée or a tablespoon of concentrated tomato paste diluted with stock or water. Cover the pan and cook gently for 1½ hours.
Put the sauce through a fine sieve, squeeze in the juice of a lemon and cook another 30 minutes. Use stewing partridges for this dish.
PARTRIDGES COOKED KLEPHTI FASHION
Klephtis (from the word meaning ‘to steal’) was the name given to the original Greek brigands, who had their headquarters in the mountains of Thessaly and harried the Turks (and anyone else who seemed suitable prey) during their 200 years’ occupation of Greece – the original Resistance Movement in fact.
Their method of cooking birds and meat wrapped up in paper in a primitively constructed oven has come to be known all over Greece as ‘Klephti cooking’.
The partridges, seasoned with mountain herbs, are wrapped up in paper with a little fat and any vegetables which may be available (in Greece partridges are not treated with the reverence accorded them in England) and placed in an earthen pot, narrowing at the top, called a stamna. This pot is then laid on its side in a hollow dug at the edge of a bank of earth, and buried. Underneath the pot the earth is scooped out to make room for a fire of resinous pinewood or charcoal, and this is left slowly burning for 2 or 3 hours.
At any rate, partridges with a piece of fat bacon, wrapped in buttered paper, and cooked in a very slow oven are worth trying. ‘Klephti cooking’ is always a good way of getting the best flavour out of meat or a bird.
PIGEONS À LA ROMANAISE
Prepare the pigeons as for roasting. Tie each one in a rasher of bacon and a slice of lemon peel. Put them in a shallow pan with 2 oz of butter and sauté them for 10 minutes. Then add a large glass of white wine and the juice of half a lemon and continue cooking slowly until the pigeons are done – about 25 minutes. If the pigeons are of the stewing variety, or the kind sold as rock pigeons, they will need cooking for a good hour, sometimes more. Remove the pigeons from the pan and keep them hot. Strain the liquor from the pan into a double saucepan and stir in 1 oz of butter and the yolks of 2 eggs. Stir continuously as for a sauce béarnaise. When it has thickened pour the sauce over the pigeons and serve them with a simplified pilaff of rice (p. 98) containing fried onions and raisins or currants.
PIMENTS FARÇIS DE CAILLES
Bone the quails, 1 for each person. Stuff them with foie gras. Have ready 4 cups of rice cooked as for a pilaff (p. 98). Remove the core and seeds from as many large red pimentos as you have quails. Roll each quail in the rice until it has a coating all round, insert it into the pimento. Put the pimentos into a deep dish with 2 or 3 oz of butter and some tomato sauce to which you have added some brown stock. Cover the dish and braise them on top of the stove for about 30 minutes. They can also be cooked in the oven.
BECFIGUES EN BROCHETTES
The little figpeckers are threaded on skewers, head and all, with the insides left in, about 6 to the skewer, seasoned with pepper and salt and herbs, and grilled.
SNIPE AND MUSHROOMS
In northern Italy this dish is made with little figpeckers and the beautiful wild red mushrooms called fungbi ovali. In England any small bird, woodcock, snipe, or plover, can be cooked in this way with very excellent results. For each bird you need one very large mushroom; remove the stalks, and lay the mushrooms, stalk side up, in a baking dish. Pour a little oil over them, and place your small bird on the top, seasoned with salt and ground black pepper, put a sprig of fresh thyme or marjoram on top of each bird, and pour over a little more oil. Cover with a greaseproof paper, and cook in a slow oven for about 30 minutes. The mushrooms take the place of the usual croûtons under the bird, and soak up the juices, but the cooking must be gentle, or the mushrooms will shrivel up. For the last 5 minutes of cooking, remove the paper to let the birds brown.
Hare and Rabbit
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A Farmhouse Dinner
‘Come to Montpazier any time of the year and you will eat well. The thick stone walls are cool in summer and warm in winter, for the wind can whip cruelly about this upland. Then, the low lights of the wood fires seem good after the brilliant grey-green hill-frosts of early winter.
‘The food is prepared over a fire in a vast open hearth. The cauldrons, pots and saucepans hang black upon the ratchet. Wood-pigeon and partridge turn on the spits. The dry vine-shoots crisply crackle as the place fills with their blue aromatic smoke and tingling odour.
‘This is, indeed
, no place to get fussy dishes à la Cambacérés,* but go when the game is on and you will eat food for outdoor men and it must be, one likes to think, very like the rustic cooking of the Romans.
‘The kitchen is in the hall and you can eat with an eye upon the spits and sizzling pots. That’s the way to enjoy a meal, but, luckily, I have run across nowhere in France that peculiarly Iberian combination that used not to be rare in Spain: stable, kitchen, bedroom and dining-room all in one – that’s very Low Latin indeed.
‘Maybe the main dish will be lièvre à la royale. There are plenty of thyme and herbs and long runs hereabouts. The hare are tasty.
‘Now hare done in Royal Style is a real piece into which go not only your hare and a belly of pork but white wine and meat juice, pears and prunes, garlic, herbs, onions, chestnuts, mushrooms, truffles, red wine, and ham. It’s not a city dish. Like all game (and even that glutinous horror, rabbit), the Royal Style is better experienced in the country.
‘But before the main dish you will get a fine, thick soup in a deep bowl. Real soup and nothing like the plash of skilly offered us here. None of your timid soup-plates for this juice of the civet. If you like a substantial opening to your meal you will, if wise, pour into the soup a quarter of a litre of red wine and drink the whole from the bowl without any newfangled soup-spoons. This fashion of lapping it up is called by the men of the South-West faire Chabrol. No one seems to know why. Perhaps some member of that ancient southern family was a noted gourmet.
‘Then, depending upon the days, there may be some fish, but we’re a good way inland for anything but trout or crayfish. Écrevisses can be good enough served in a heaped scarlet buisson, a veritable Burning Bush of Crayfish. But such things are, as they say, pour amuser la gueule – to amuse the muzzle. We get right down to the civet à la royale…