by Unknown
Lemon chicken should be served cold, and the sauce, if made correctly and not too thick, should be very slightly gelatinous and have a translucent appearance. Small chunks of pineapple and a few blanched almonds can be added to this dish.
Note: The vegetables to be boiled with the chicken should be put in whole, otherwise they will be overdone and tasteless.
COLD STUFFED DUCK
If you don’t know how to bone a duck probably the butcher or poulterer will do it for you. You must also have ready an aspic jelly made from calf’s foot and veal bones, flavoured with garlic and port wine. Stuff the boned duck with a mixture of pâté de foie, plenty of chopped mushrooms and a truffle or two. Sew up the skin, wrap the duck in fat bacon, and roast it for about 25 minutes. Now remove the bacon fat, put the duck into a large shallow terrine, pour the melted jelly all round and place the covered terrine in a larger receptacle containing water, and steam in the oven for about 45 minutes.
Squeeze the juice of an orange over the duck and don’t forget to remove the thread; serve cold in its jelly.
PTÉ OF CHICKEN LIVERS
Take about 1 lb of chicken livers or mixed chicken, duck, pigeon or any game liver. Clean well and sauté in butter for 3 or 4 minutes. Remove the livers and to the butter in the pan add a small glass of sherry and a small glass of brandy. Mash the livers to a fine paste (they should be pink inside) with plenty of salt, black pepper, a clove of garlic, 2 oz of butter, a pinch of mixed spice, and a pinch of powdered herbs – thyme, basil, and marjoram. Add the liquid from the pan, put the mixture into a small earthenware terrine and place on the ice.
Serve with hot toast.
PTÉ DE LIÈVRE
Mince together 2 lb of the raw flesh of a hare with 2 lb of pork and 2 lb of fat bacon, 2 onions, and a little parsley and thyme; add 3 liqueur glasses of brandy, salt and black pepper, and knead them all together until they are well amalgamated. Take one large or several small earthenware terrines, fill them with the mixture, place on top a bay leaf, some bacon rashers cut into thin strips, and a piece of waxed paper. Cover the dishes. Put them in a bain-marie into a slow oven and cook 1 hour for the small terrines, 2 hours for the large. If covered with a thick layer of melted lard, and a piece of wax paper and stored in a cool place, they will keep for months.
This pâté can also be made with rabbit.
TERRINE DE CAMPAGNE
1 lb of belly of pork, 1 lb of lean veal, ¾ lb of bacon, a teacupful of white wine, 2 tablespoons of brandy, a few juniper berries, mace, 2 large cloves of garlic, thyme and marjoram, salt and black pepper, bay leaves.
Remove the rind and any bones from the pork, and cut it, together with the veal (the meat from a knuckle does very well for a terrine) and ½ lb of the bacon, into small squares; if you really have to save time, have the pork and veal coarsely minced by the butcher. Chop the garlic, juniper berries (about 8) and herbs and add to the meat. Season with the ground mace or nutmeg and salt and pepper. Not too much salt, as a good deal is already supplied by the bacon. Put all the meat into a bowl, pour over the white wine and brandy, mix thoroughly, and leave to stand for 2 hours.
Cut the remaining ¼ lb bacon into small strips the length of a match and about ¼ inch wide and thick. Arrange these strips criss cross fashion at the bottom of the terrine or terrines, and pack in the meat, fairly firmly. Fill almost to the top. Put a bay leaf on the top, and then more strips of the bacon, in the same criss-cross fashion. Stand the terrines in a baking tin half full of water and cook in a slow oven (Regulo 3 or 4) for 1½ hours for small terrines, 2 hours for larger ones. It is the depth of the terrines which is the point to consider. When the terrines have cooled a little, put a piece of greaseproof paper over them and a 2-lb weight on the top and leave several hours. If to be stored, seal with pure pork lard. Should you have the end of a ham to be used up, 1 lb can be used instead of the ½ lb of bacon, but be very sparing with salt.
JAMBON PERSILLÉ DE BOURGOGNE
This is the traditional Easter dish of Burgundy. The recipe comes from the famous Restaurant des Trois Faisans at Dijon.
Soak a ham for 24 hours, in order to desalt it. Half cook the ham in a large pan of unsalted water reckoning 10 minutes to the lb instead of the usual 20. Drain it, remove the rind, and bone and divide it into large pieces.
Put it to cook again with a knuckle of veal of about 1 lb in weight cut in pieces; 2 calf’s feet, boned; a bouquet garni of chervil and tarragon; 10 white peppercorns tied in a muslin, a little salt, and cover it with a white Burgundy. Bring it to the boil, and then continue cooking gently, on a steady heat, so as to preserve the limpidity of the stock, which is to become the jelly; skim off the fat which rises to the surface from time to time.
When the ham is cooked, and very cooked, mash it a little with a fork, and turn it into a large bowl, pressing it down with a fork. Strain the liquid through a muslin, add a little tarragon vinegar. When the liquid has started to jelly, stir in 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley. Pour this jelly over the ham, and keep it in a cold place until the next day.
OIE EN DAUBE
Put the goose into a thick fireproof casserole with diced bacon, parsley, shallots, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, basil, 2 glasses of water, 2 of red wine, ½ glass of cognac, salt and pepper. Hermetically seal the pan and cook very slowly for 5 hours. Strain the sauce and when it is cool remove the fat, pour back over the goose and serve cold. Chicken can be cooked the same way, either whole or cut into joints.
BOEUF À LA MODE À LA PROVENÇALE
3 or 4 lb of round or topside of beef. Lard the meat with small pieces of bacon and cloves of garlic. Tie round with string, season with salt and pepper and brown on all sides in bacon fat. Put into a deep casserole, cover with a quantity of well-fried onions, 5 or 6 carrots, a piece of celery, a piece of orange or lemon peel, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, and a calf’s foot cut up, cover with half water and half red wine. Cook extremely slowly either on top of the stove or in the oven (Regulo 1 or 2) for 7 or 8 hours.
Remove the meat, which should be so soft it can be cut with a spoon, take off the string and put it into the serving dish. Strain the sauce over, and, when it is cold, remove the fat. The meat should be entirely covered with a soft clear jelly.
Serve with potatoes baked in their jackets and a plain salad, but no other vegetables.
FILET DE PORC FRAIS TRUFFÉ FROID
This beautiful recipe is given by Paul Poiret in his 107 Recettes et Curiosités Culinaires.
‘You need a fine fillet of pork, cut from a young animal; cut some uncooked truffes in pieces about the size of a pigeon’s egg. With the point of a knife make a number of deep incisions, a few centimetres apart, in the inside of the filet. Into each incision introduce a piece of truffe, pushing it well in towards the centre of the fillet, to produce a marbled effect. When the fillet is thus piquéd with the truffes, season it with salt and pepper, roll it up into a good shape, tie it with string, and roast it.
‘Leave it to cool in its own fat, and serve it cold the next day.’
PICTÍ
Pictí is the Greek brawn.
A pig’s head is boiled for hours in water strongly flavoured with bay leaves and peppercorns.
When cooked it is cut up into chunks, the juice of 3 or 4 lemons is added to the strained stock, which is poured over the brawn, arranged in large earthenware basins, and left to set.
Not very elegant, but usually very good.
CHANFAÏNA OF LIVER (a Spanish dish)
1 lb pig’s liver, 3 tablespoons olive oil, 4 onions, a few mint leaves, 2 or 3 parsley stalks (finely chopped), 2 red pimentos, 3 doves, a pinch of cumin, a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of saffron, black pepper, breadcrumbs.
Blanch the liver, cut in pieces, in salted water. In the oil put all the other ingredients, except the breadcrumbs.
Cook them a minute or two, and add the strained liver, and a little of the water it has been cooked in, let it simmer a few minutes, then stir in the breadcrumbs.
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nbsp; Pour the whole mixture into a dish and serve cold.
PIMENTOS TO SERVE WITH COLD MEAT
(Escoffier’s recipe.)
Warm half a wineglass of olive oil in a thick pan. Put in 1 lb of finely chopped white onions and 2¼ lb of pimentos, from which you have removed the core and the seeds; cut in rounds. Cover the pan and let them simmer 15 minutes, when you add 2 lb of very ripe peeled tomatoes, a dove of garlic, a teaspoon of powdered ginger, 1 lb of sugar, ½ lb of sultanas, and a teaspoon of mixed spice. Pour over a pint of good vinegar and continue cooking very slowly for 3 hours.
Note on Hors d’OEuvre
As I have not given a separate chapter for hors d’oeuvre I have included a few in this section on cold food. In Spain, the south of France, and Italy an hors d’oeuvre is a very simple affair, consisting usually of olives, salame sausage, a tomato or pimento salad, and a few anchovies in oil, or alternatively a plate of fresh shell fish, prawns, or oursins (those spiny sea-urchins cut in half from which you scoop out the coral with a piece of bread). The Genoese are fond of an antipasto of sardo (a hard ewe’s milk cheese imported from Sardinia), young raw broad beans, and the local, rather highly flavoured salame. In Greece your mézé (the equivalent of our hors d’oeuvre) is eaten while you drink your apéritif and not as part of the main meal. You can sit at a table on the sand with your feet almost in the Aegean as you drink your oúzo; boys with baskets of little clams or kidónia (sea quinces) pass up and down the beach and open them for you at your table; or the waiter will bring you large trays of olives, of which there are dozens of different kinds and colours in Greece, the most delicious being the purple Calamata olives in oil, dishes of atherinous (tiny fried fish rather like our whitebait), slices of fresh crumbly cheese called mysíthra, or graviera (the Cretan Gruyère), small pieces of grilled octopus, minute kephtédés (little rissoles made of crushed haricot beans and fried in oil), quarters of fresh raw turnip (this sounds doubtful but is in fact delicious for there is no vegetable more vegetable-tasting than these little turnips freshly dug up from the garden), slices of fresh cucumber cooled in ice water; all this accompanied by limes or lemons and a mound of bread. There are also many kinds of smoked or cured fish – lakerda (a kind of smoked tunny fish), red caviar or brique, botargue (pressed tunny fish eggs made into a kind of sausage and eaten in slices with oil and lemon), and taramá for which I have given a recipe.
In Turkey and Egypt there is a kind of ham called bastourma, of Armenian origin, heavily spiced with garlic and red pepper, and in the Greek islands the peasants make a small fillet of ham called louza strongly flavoured with herbs, which is excellent. The Cypriots have little sausages heavily spiced with coriander seeds, and the Italians dozens of different local salame and country hams, best of which are the prosciutto di San Daniele and prosciutto di Parma (raw Parma ham) which, eaten with fresh figs, or melon, or simply with butter, must be the most perfect hors d’oeuvre ever invented.
BLACK OLIVES
‘The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers – all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.’*
GREEN OLIVES
Olives to serve with cocktails or as hors d’oeuvre are better bought by the pound, not in bottles; prepare them in this way, as they do in Marseille.
Choose the small, oblong French or Greek olives. In each olive make an incision with a knife, and put them in layers in a jar with some pieces of cut garlic and 2 or 3 stalks of thyme, and a small piece of chilli pepper, fill the jars up with olive oil, and cover them. In this way they can be stored for months.
Black olives can be treated in the same way, or simply put straight into olive oil without the garlic or thyme. Cyprus green olives are cracked and spiced with coriander.
AMBELOPOÙLIA
These are the tiny birds called beccafica or figpeckers. In Cyprus they are preserved in vinegar and eaten whole, bones and all.
Pluck a dozen beccafica, cut off the feet, and, if they are to be preserved, the heads as well, but do not clean them out.
Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, add a teaspoon of salt and boil the little birds in this for 5 or 6 minutes. Take them out of the water, drain them well, and allow them to cool. They can then be eaten cold as they are, or preserved for as long as a year by being put into a glass or earthenware jar and covered with wine vinegar, to which a tablespoon of salt is added or not, as you please.
DOLMÁDES
Dolmádes, little rolls of savoury rice in vine leaves, are a favourite first course in Greece, Turkey, and the Near East. Sometimes meat, pine nuts, and even currants are mixed with the rice. Here is the basic version:
For 3 dozen vine leaves you need about 2 teacups of cooked rice mixed with enough olive oil to make it moist, a little chopped fried onion, and a flavouring of allspice and dried mint. Blanch the vine leaves in boiling salted water. Drain them. Lay them flat on a board, outer side downwards. On the inside of each leaf lay a teaspoon of the rice, and then roll the leaf tucking in the ends as for a little parcel and squeeze this roll in the palm of your hand; in this manner the dolmádes will stay rolled up and need not be tied. When they are all ready put them carefully in a shallow pan, squeeze over plenty of lemon juice and add about a cup (enough to come half-way up the pile of dolmádes) of tomato juice or good stock. Cover with a small plate or saucer resting on top of the dolmádes and fitting inside the pan. The plate prevents the dolmádes moving during the cooking. Keep them just simmering for about 30 minutes. They are best eaten cold.
Excellent stuffed vine leaves imported in tins from Greece are now available in many supermarkets and delicatessen shops. Simply turn them out of the tin, rinse them in a colander, arrange them in a pyramid on a flat dish, and squeeze lemon over them.
SALAD OF AUBERGINES
A good dish from Greece and the Near East, where it is often served as a mézé. You dip slices of bread into the salad and eat it while drinking your apéritif.
Grill 3 or 4 large aubergines in their skins. When they are soft, peel them and pound the flesh in a mortar with 2 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. Add, drop by drop, a little olive oil, as for a mayonnaise. When it is a thick purée, add the juice of half a lemon and a handful of chopped parsley.
The grilling of the aubergines gives the finished dish a characteristic slightly smoky flavour. If preferred they can be boiled or baked instead of grilled.
AUBERGINES IN A MARINADE
Cut the aubergines in half, lengthways, without peeling them. Sprinkle them with salt and leave them for 2 hours. Drain off the water which has come out of them, and fry them lightly in oil.
Then put them in jars, and pour over them a marinade consisting of 2 parts oil to 1 part white wine, or wine vinegar.
They will keep like this for some days, and are served as hors d’oeuvre, or can be stuffed or used in a stew.
TARAMÁ AND TARAMÁSALATA
Taramá is the name given to dried, salted, pressed, and slightly smoked cod’s roe, sold out of a barrel – a favourite mézé in Greece and Turkey. Genuine Greek taramá can be bought from King Bomba’s Italian Produce Stores, 37 Old Compton Street, London W1.
Take about ¼ lb of taramá and pound it in a mortar with a clove or two of garlic, lemon juice, and about 4 tablespoons each of olive oil and cold water, added alternately and very slowly, until the preparation has the consistency of a thick and smooth purée. Taramásalata is served with bread or hot toast.
The taste of Greek taramá is not unlike that of the more heavily smoked but less salt English cod’s roe, which can be treated in the same way, the skin having first been removed (or one can use cod’s roe paste from a jar). Sometimes a slice or two of white bread, crusts removed, softened in cold water and squeezed dry, is added to the cod’s roe during the mixing
process. It helps to diminish the saltiness of the fish, gives a milder taste and thicker consistency.
SARDINES MARINÉES À LA NIÇOISE
Fresh sardines are grilled and then put to marinate for a few days in olive oil, with a drop of vinegar, a bay leaf, peppercorns and herbs, and served as hors d’oeuvre.
HUMMUS BI TAHINA
An Egyptian version of an Arab dish. Tahina is a sesame paste (to be found in Oriental stores* in London), which is mixed with oil and garlic and thinned with water to make a sauce which in Arab countries is eaten as a salad, with bread dipped into it.
For this hors d’oeuvre the ingredients are ½ lb of chick peas, a teacupful each of tahina and water; a little lemon juice, mint, garlic, and two tablespoons of olive oil.
Cook the previously soaked chick peas† in plenty of water, slowly, for 3 to 4 hours. They should be very soft for this dish. Strain them, pound them to a fine paste, or if you prefer, put them through the food mill. Pound two or three cloves of garlic into the purée, stir in the tabina, the olive oil, the lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Add water until the mixture is about the consistency of a thick mayonnaise. Stir in about 2 tablespoons of dried or fresh mint. The mixture is poured either into a large shallow dish, or on to saucers, one for each person, and sets fairly firmly when cold.
TAHINA SALAD
Pound a clove of garlic in a mortar; stir in a cupful of the tahina paste, salt, pepper, half a cupful of olive oil, half a cupful of water, lemon juice, and coarsely chopped parsley. The tahina should be of the consistency of cream. In Egypt and Syria a bowl of tabina is served either with pre-lunch drinks or as an hors d’oeuvre, with pickled cucumbers, pickled turnips, and the flat round bread (Esh Baladi) of the country. The tahina is eaten by dipping the bread into the bowl.