The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season

4, Quai de la Mégisserie

Paris, 1

Vilmorin will furnish a catalogue on request. Many seeds that are difficult to obtain in America are listed. Among those particularly useful in a kitchen garden are:

FIELD SALADS

HERBS

Basil (basilic)—the large-leafed variety is less “peppery” and more delicate in flavor

Chervil (cerfeuil)

Common or Italian parsley (persil commun), finer of flavor than the curly variety

Burnet (pimprenelle)

Angelica (angélique)

Hyssop (hysope)

Oregano (marjolaine)

Savory (sarriette)—annual and perennial are both listed; the latter is finer

MISCELLANEOUS

Sorrel (oseille)—3 varieties

Leeks (poireaux)—11 varieties

Broad beans (fèves)—3 varieties

Gray shallots (échalotes ordinaires)—bulbs

Wild strawberries (fraisiers de quatre-saisons)

To import broad-bean seeds or shallot bulbs, one must fill out a form (furnished either by Vilmorin-Andrieux or by the United States Department of Agriculture at the address given below) to be sent to the following address (requesting, at the same time, special mailing labels to be enclosed, along with the permit number, in the order):

Permit Section, Plant Importation Branch

Plant Quarantine Division

209 River Street

Hoboken, New Jersey

None of the other seeds listed above require a formal importation permit.

TURNSPITS AND ACCESSORIES

Ets. Giraudon

144, Avenue Paul Vaillant Couturier

Sainte-Geneviève des Bois 91

France

This old-fashioned firm deals only in turnspits, grills and related material. Although they specialize in made-to-order installations, they also stock a number of standard articles. They willingly ship to the United States and will furnish complete documentation on request.

The type of small portable turnspit likely to interest most readers exists in 3 electric models: one capable of turning to approximately 8 pounds (about $50); one up to 16 pounds (about $54); one up to 30 pounds—strong enough to turn a suckling pig or milk lamb (about $72). A single clockwork model exists (10-pound strength, at about $76). Each includes a single standard spit. A number of others are available. The broche-filet (a cagelike spit that avoids piercing) comes to about $10. An asbestos construction (parefeu) designed to protect the mechanism from the direct flame costs about $4.

Their standard dripping pans are constructed of thin tinned sheet metal and are totally impractical. In my kitchen I have substituted a huge skillet, which I prop at a slight tilt, permitting the juices to collect at the far side from the fire. Giraudon manufactures stainless steel dripping pans, but no prices are quoted.

The prices quoted above do not include packing and shipping charges.

GENERAL SHOPPING

Italian neighborhoods are particularly useful for shopping. Elsewhere it is difficult to find such items as bouquets of dried oregano, dried cèpes (wild mushrooms), salted anchovies, fresh basil, field salads (lamb’s lettuce, arugula), fines herbes, broad beans, celeriac, decent bread, and good-quality olive oil. I have had no success trying to persuade small producers in the south of France of the virtue of exporting their exquisite products, but decent olive oils may be bought in tins on the American market—a good Italian brand is Filippo Berio and a good French oil, from Marseilles, “fruitier” than most Italian oils, is James Plagniol.

The fancy-food sections in large department stores often furnish such rarities as good butter and quality charcuterie.

Search out the best butcher in your neighborhood and make friends with him. Ask questions and discuss cuts and qualities of meat. It is natural to give one’s best service to those clients who are knowledgeable, interested—and faithful. Each time one buys an indifferent cut of prepackaged meat in a supermarket, one misses an opportunity of solidifying relations with one’s butcher and ensuring good service when something special is needed. In any case, even his hamburger, chopped to order, fat removed, will also be of superior quality.

Basic Preparations (#ulink_d21dea0c-aacf-5d57-b954-92b95c2d7865)

Any French cooking manual contains a comprehensive chapter on basic preparations. Only those recurrent in this book are presented here. Those that occur only once are relegated to specific recipes.

VEAL STOCK

(Fonds de Veau, Fonds Blanc, Blond de Veau)

A pure veal stock, properly executed, is the only impeccable, all-round basic stock. Ideally, a braising liquid or a sauce base should be an essence of the basic element in the preparation (woodcock glaze for woodcocks, venison stock for venison, etc.), but this leads us into theoretical cooking, for only past royalty was able to permit itself such luxury. A Beef Stock (pot-au-feu) remains the best braising stock for beef, and its full-bodied flavor, less marked in personality than that of furred game, renders it satisfactory as a braising liquid for the latter. By the same token, chicken stock may be used in certain preparations of feathered game. Only veal stock, by virtue of the essentially anonymous character of the meat, can lend body and support to all other flavors without altering their basic personalities. It is a solid vehicle and catalyst that is never self-assertive. It serves also as a base for other stocks for, although one may not be able to sacrifice several pheasants to the preparation of an essence for one pheasant salmis, one may very easily enrich a veal stock by the addi-tion of leftover carcasses (or heads, necks, giblets) from roast birds. The many recipes for braised vegetables may be properly made only with veal stock. Covered, it may be kept indefinitely in the refrigerator if one is careful to boil it every few days and transfer it to a clean container. I have never tried freezing it but see no reason why it should suffer from this treatment.

The specific quantities of ingredients, although given, are of no importance. The important thing is that the result be as concentrated in aromatic essence as possible. For this reason, anything that takes up room in the stock pot without lending flavor should be eliminated—bones, in particular, with the exception of veal hock, which gives readily of its gelatin. For bones to be serviceable, one must make, first, a stock of bones which is allowed to cook for a good eight to ten hours, then use this liquid for moistening the veal.

A veal stock that is moistened with another veal stock rather than water is, naturally, that much finer. A veal half-glaze (demi-glace de veau) is clear veal stock reduced to a light syrupy consistency. A veal glaze (glace de veau) is the half-glaze reduced (with regular changes to smaller saucepans) to its ultimate intensity. Although valuable, even essential, for certain preparations, these refinements, because of the time and expense involved, do not occur in the recipes in this book.

Veal Stock

about 4 pounds inexpensive gelatinous cuts of veal (rib tips, shank, neck, trimmings)

1 veal hock (knuckle), broken into pieces

about 1 pound carrots

2 large onions, one stuck with 2 cloves