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

A RAPID SAUTE—Ortolans

Château Grand-Mayne, 1955

SALAD

CHEESES

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, 1947

Tepid Apple Charlotte

Château d’Yquem, 1950

The meal was a success.

Madeleine Decure (who is, alas, no longer) shared with Garin the distinction of having the other most intelligent and analytic palate I have known. She was one of the two founders, in 1947, of the monthly gastronomic review Cuisine et Vins de France. The other was Curnonsky (born Maurice Sailland in Anjou), the remarkable personality who was acclaimed Prince élu des Gastronomes by a jury of professional chefs and gastronomic journalists. His eightieth birthday was celebrated by a now famous meal organized by his eighty preferred Paris restaurants, each of which then reserved with a bronze plaque his preferred table in the restaurant—in perpetuity!

I met Madeleine Decure in 1961 (but not Curnonsky, regrettably; he had died five years earlier) at the same time that I met Odette Kahn, then associate director of the magazine, and the gastronomic journalists Michel Lemonnier and Simon Arbellot. Our meals together, exchanged and re-exchanged, individually and as a group, were punctuated by wine-tasting excursions to all corners of France. Garin, tied to his kitchens, established an annual tradition of inviting us as a group to dinners, at the composition of whose menus I delightedly assisted. Among the preparations—all memorable—were: partridge consommé garnished with tiny partridge mousseline quenelles, whole braised calf’s liver with a truffled cèpe purée, fresh salmon braised in champagne, gratin of crayfish tails, fresh foie gras, roast saddle of venison, and that rarity, a perfect coq au vin, not to mention a repertory of astonishing soufflés—lobster, pike, woodcock, fresh asparagus, wild strawberry, etc.

The last seriously organized meal that I served in Clamart was in the autumn of 1964. The champagne, a Clos des Goisses, dated from nine years earlier. Madeleine and Odette had asked me to present a menu as a regular monthly feature in Cuisine et Vins de France, the recipes for each preparation to be explained in simple and nonprofessional language. The first of my menus to be published in the magazine was the one I served that evening:

Raw Baby Artichokes, Poivrade

Pike Mousseline, Turban of Sole and Salmon Fillets, Nantua Sauce (garnished with a sauté of truffles and crayfish tails and crayfish shells stuffed with pike mousseline)Mercurey blanc, 1962

Boned Stuffed Chicken, Glazed in its Jelly

Pernand-Vergelesses, 1960

Composed Salad

Cheeses

Clos de la Roche, 1955

Pineapple Frangipane Fritters

Château Rieussec, 1947

My menu series in Cuisine et Vins de France was entitled (to my dismay) Un Américain (gourmand) à Paris. The rubric continues.

In the south, my patterns are different from those of Clamart. Friends are not invited to dinner—they come for a few days or a few weeks. Menus tend to be simpler. Living mostly out of doors for well over half the year, one becomes acutely aware of the swift seasonal cycle, and the table follows suit. The shortest days of the year—the gloom of winter and a dormant garden—are soon brightened by banks of yellow mimosa, and narcissus perfumes the air. Truffles turn blackest and richest from this moment, olives are ripe, and the glorious thick, murky, newly pressed olive oil, unsettled and unfiltered, appears. The first simple country wines of the year, slightly green, a tiny edge of fermentation remaining to tickle the tongue, fresh and fruity, are the perfect accompaniment to rough and robust nourishing winter dishes. In no more than a few weeks the almond trees are already in blossom, the first young fava, or broad beans, too delicate to be eaten other than raw, appear on the market, rapidly followed by violet artichokes, sweet white onions and tiny peas. By the end of March the hillsides are scattered with the tender shoots of wild asparagus, the exquisite morel will soon make its brief appearance, wild thyme is in flower, green beans, cherries, strawberries, peaches, follow in rapid succession, the rich, sweet tomato crowns the summer season, oregano must be gathered, and, with tree-ripe figs, wild mushrooms, game birds, green olives, and the reappearance of young artichokes and sea urchins, the plunge is taken into autumn and the shortest days are again in sight. Fish is fresh the year round, and often can be bought alive; snails are gathered, starved, and sacrificed to the courtbouillon, fresh goats’-milk and sheeps’-milk cheeses enrich the cheese platter, and the olives, prepared without chemicals each autumn, garnish the luncheon hors d’oeuvre.

The pages of this book are a loyal reflection of my life in the kitchen and at table over the last twenty years. The seasonal form into which it has been cast emphasizes my intense conviction that, despite midwinter tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus and green beans, and the plethora of “fresh” frozen products on the market, one can only eat marvelously by respecting the seasons; each is sufficiently rich to afford a perfect table the year round, and the excitement of eating a freshly picked fruit or vegetable at the peak of its seasonal richness is forever deadened by the dull and listless year-round ab-sorption of its shadow.

No recipes are given which involve products unavailable in America. Certain American products for which I have a particular affection and which may advantageously be incorporated into French menus (sweet corn, avocados, wild rice, for instance) are not treated, simply because, although the book is essentially a personal gastronomic manifesto, I have preferred that it not stray from traditional French cooking. Some favorite and typically French preparations have been eliminated, victims of the menu formula—for they are nearly all first courses and the presentation of each would have necessitated an accompanying menu, which space did not permit.

Classical appellations have not been tampered with (it would be a pity to deprive Melba of her peaches and ice cream), but, when possible, I have stuck to simple, descriptive titles and have avoided the fanciful.

Emphasis throughout the book has been placed on the importance of “tactile” sense, which I consider to be a sort of convergence of all the senses—the awareness through touching, and also through smelling, hearing, seeing, and tasting that something is “just right”—to know by seeing the progression from the light, swelling foam of an initial boil to a flat surface punctuated by tiny bubbles, by hearing the same progression from a soft, cottony, slurring sound to a series of sharp, staccato explosions, by judging from the degree of syrupiness or the smooth, enveloping consistency on a wooden spoon when a reduction has arrived at the point, a few seconds before which it is too thin, a few seconds after which it will collapse into grease or burn; to know by pinching and judging the resilience of a lamb chop or a roast leg of lamb when to remove it from the heat; to recognize the perfect amber of a caramel the second before it turns burnt and bitter; to feel the right fresh-heavy-cream consistency of a crêpe batter and the point of light but consistent airiness in a mousseline forcemeat that, having absorbed a maximum of cream to be perfect, would risk collapsing through any further addition….

Happily, cooking of quality is, in addition to everything else, an expression of the personality of the cook, and a recipe followed to the letter by two individuals, in each of whom may be a finely developed tactile sense, will produce, thanks to individual sensibilities, two different dishes, both of which may be excellent.

French Food and Menu Composition (#ulink_b2001112-fa89-54f2-8277-2f2ad44e04e9)

Good and honest cooking and good and honest French cooking are the same thing. Details differ, although climate is probably a greater factor than nationality (the molasses in a New England winter beanpot seems as bizarre to a French palate as do the tropical excesses of red-hot pepper to French and American alike). Certainly there are national dishes, just as there are regional dishes—sage-and-onion stuffing and apple pie will remain forever English and American (although there is nothing unique about the former except for the choice of herb, and the latter is nothing but a tarte aux pommes with a lid), as will beurre blanc remain French—but it is comforting to realize that the principles of good cooking do not change as one crosses frontiers or oceans, and that the success of a preparation depends on nothing more than a knowledge of those principles plus personal sensibility.

A meat stew, for instance, is a preparation of pieces of meat seared in fat, enough flour added to bind the sauce, one or several aromatic elements, and liquid, all gently cooked until done. It may, in France, depending on the meat, the fat, the liquid, the aromatic elements, and finally—which has nothing at all to do with its preparation—on specific garnishing elements, assume anyone of dozens of names. Color some onions in lard, remove them and fry floured pieces of chuck in their place, return the onions and moisten with water—in short, reduce each element to its simplest (and most economical) possible version, and you have old-fashioned American beef stew (probably English, Dutch, German and Swedish, also). The steps in its preparation are identical to those for boeuf bourguignon, carbonade, sauté de veau Marengo or coq au vin. American scalloped potatoes have much in common with gratin dauphinois, creamed eggs with oeufs à la tripe, pot roast is really boeuf à la mode. And, of course, corned beef and cabbage, boiled dinners, and the endless soups that our grandmothers prepared are to be found in the French cuisine as potées and garbures.

A menu composed of preparations that are not in themselves French may remain totally French in spirit, for it is the degree to which it is based on a sensuous and aesthetic concept that differentiates a French meal from all others. It may be served under the simplest and most intimate of circumstances, but its formal aspect is respected and its composition—the interrelationships and the progression of courses and wines—is of the greatest importance.

There exists a bastard cuisine that is too often assumed to be real French cooking. It patterns itself superficially on the classical grande cuisine, but, leaning heavily on the effects of spectacular presentation, it ignores the essential sobriety and integrity of the classic cuisine which becomes its victim. It is not grande cuisine but “Grand Palace” –or international hotel cooking. It has, however, many enthusiasts. Perhaps, having never encountered the genuine, they are nonetheless impressed by the presentation and complication of the false. Tragically, it is responsible for the attitude of those who, confusing Grand Palace with grande cuisine, innocently become detractors of the latter.

Grand Palace, typically, fails to respect the qualities basic to a product or a preparation. All dishes, for example, are tainted by the same basic sauce (generally a false espagnole made up of bones, carcasses and leftovers, overly thickened with flour or cornstarch, and improperly reduced). Crêpes are presented with flames reaching to the ceiling and served floating pathetically in dark pools of half-burned, indifferent brandy. Calves’ kidneys are brought, half-cooked, to table and toughened in a blaze of that same alcohol. And roasts (which in order to be perfect must be subjected to a continued cooking process, precisely controlled) are half-cooked, cooled, rolled in pastry and rebaked.

It is interesting—and instructive—to note that in Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire, out of forty-five recipes for roast fillet of beef, not one is served in pastry. The only lamb recipe suffering this treatment is a leg of baby lamb. Because the flesh of baby animals, cooked rare, is indigestible and must be well done, baby lamb is, therefore, not treated in the same manner as a roast of “grass” (older) lamb, mutton, or beef, which should be kept rose or rare throughout, at the same time that it is heated through. Out of fifteen recipes for calves’ kidneys and thirteen for lambs’ kidneys, not one is “flamed.” (One, foreign in origin, requires the addition of a bit of juniper-flavored alcohol which is flamed to rid it of its alcohol before being added to the preparation.) Again, none of Escoffier’s recipes for crêpes are flamed, including crêpes Suzette—whose distinguishing characteristic, after all, is the presence, not of flames, but of tangerine juice. (In the English edition, which has been edited and “arranged by other hands” for another public, crêpes Suzette do receive the flaming treatment.)

Classical French cooking—that which, from the beginning (not so long ago), made France’s reputation abroad—is naturally eclectic. It was, and is, created by men—professional chefs. It is refined and, in execution, often involved. In the hands of a good, honest chef it can be very good indeed; in the hands of a great chef, it can be sublime.

The entire concept—of the cooking itself, and of a menu, as we know it today—was formed by Carême (1784-1833), genius, egomaniac and scholar. His life seems like a fantastic parody of the success story. Born into a poor family of twenty-five children, he was, as a child, put into the streets with nothing but his father’s blessing and told to seek his fortune. He never again saw his family. Aide de cuisine at fifteen, head pastry chef for Paris’s leading pastry caterer at seventeen, he spent the rest of his life in the service of “the great.” He was chef to Talleyrand, to England’s Prince Regent, to Czar Alexander I, to the Rothschilds, and during this time he produced the body of technical literature, brilliantly illustrated by himself, which became the basis of all professional training of chefs throughout the nineteenth century. Until Carême, all dishes were placed on the table at the same time; a menu was nothing but a collection of unrelated dishes, more or less elegantly or fantastically dressed, the most sumptuous being placed close to the guests of highest rank. Carême borrowed from the Russians the practice of serving courses separately, so that each, finding its place in a logical sequence, could at the same time be served at its correct temperature.

The concept of a great meal in France has been tremendously altered since the nineteenth century, when menus sometimes counted twenty or thirty courses and a dozen wines. Around the turn of this century a refining and a simplifying force worked hand in hand. Escoffier was no doubt influential, and his great manual, Le Guide Culinaire, first published in 1902, remains the professional’s standard reference book today. Later, simplification took another leap (though this time, the refining element was less in evidence) when people slowly pulled themselves together again after World War II, not to take up life where it had been left off in 1939, but to plunge into a nervous, active world that occasionally bordered on hysteria. After the war the elaborate leisurely luncheon disappeared, and a simple dinner became the important meal of the day. Today, a meal organized at a great Paris restaurant by the Club des Cent or the Académie des Gastronomes may begin with an hors d’oeuvre or directly with a fish course, followed by meat, cheese and dessert, and accompanied by three wines. Thirty years ago this would have been unthinkable.

In contrast to grande cuisine are the traditions in regional cooking–as various as the provinces are numerous, but all related in character in the sense that each is the direct outgrowth of the combined wealth or poverty and the specialties of the immediate countryside and the limitations of the kitchens. It is essentially peasant cooking, elaborated by generations of women who were never far from the kitchen and whose imaginations were forced into flower through necessity and limited means.

Nearly all French country cooking traditions are based on the unique use of the fireplace. Quantities of utensils were designed to be embedded in hot ashes, recipes en papillote were originally conceived to be cooked under hot ashes, and those preparations which, one reads, should cook very slowly and regularly over a period of from eight to ten hours are dishes which at one time were simply embedded in hot ashes in the fireplace the night before and forgotten until it was time to serve them (more often than not, the lid of the utensil was hermetically sealed with a strip of flour-and-water paste). As the fire never went out from autumn until spring, a bed of coals was always ready if there were meats or vegetables to be grilled, and it was merely a question of adding a couple of logs to the fire to produce the heat necessary to turn a roast on a spit before the flames. Rapid gratins and glazes were produced by heating a shovel in the hot coals and then holding it directly over the surface of the dish for a few moments (the ancestor of the “salamander”). Crème brulée, in certain provinces, is still known as crème à la pelle–shovel custard. Slow gratins were made in special dishes designed to be placed on tripods or grills over the coals, their high-sided lids, concave at the top, to be filled with hot coals.

The only ovens were bread ovens, built behind great fireplaces, the door to the oven opening from the back wall of the fireplace. Enormous, igloo-shaped, lined entirely with refractory bricks, they were heated by beds of coals, constantly renewed inside the ovens over a period of several hours. When the bricks were sufficiently heated, the ovens were then swept clean; they retained sufficient heat for many hours of baking. One generally profited from a bread-baking day to prepare other dishes. Each farm had its own oven, but many small villages had a community oven that was heated once a week, to which the entire village brought their risen bread dough and other preparations to be baked.

Today regional recipes have, in large part, passed into the hands of professional cooks, for the provincial housewife, like her American counterpart, now cooks with gas, and her aspirations on the whole separate her from the kitchen. Those few “backward” areas that still cling to old traditions—parts of Auvergne and Brittany, for instance—have, unhappily, never been rich in gastronomic tradition.

The term cuisine bourgeoise nowadays is used to describe a certain kind of preparation. As a rigidly defined element of a way of life it no longer exists as a category apart. It is richer than regional cooking in the sense that it uses more expensive products, yet it is also less imaginative. It is based on stock; hence the kitchens were always full of boiled meats, and it was accepted tradition, even for elegant receptions, to place an enormous platter of boiled meats on the table at the same time as the soup and leave it throughout the entire service. (In restaurants it was the kitchen help who were obliged to nourish themselves daily on boiled meats.) Braised dishes like boeuf à la mode are typical. “Vulgar” ingredients such as variety meats were eschewed. Veal liver and sweetbreads were, however, considered elegant, and, curiously, a stew of calves’ eyes was acceptable. It is, like regional cooking, also a “woman’s cooking” (though it was not the mistress of the house but women cooks. who executed it), and the elaborations were to some extent influenced by la grande cuisine.

MENU COMPOSITION

A perfect meal can be many things—a plate of lentils with a boiled sausage, a green salad, a piece of cheese and a bottle of cool young Beaujolais—or nothing but a composed salad and any light, young wine.

A dinner that begins with a soup and runs through a fish course, an entrée, a sherbet, a roast, salad, cheese and dessert, and that may be accompanied by from three to six wines, presents a special problem of orchestration. The desired result is often difficult to achieve. Each course must provide a happy contrast to the one preceding it; at the same time, the movement through the various courses should be an ascending one from light, delicate and more complex flavors through progressively richer, more full-bodied and simpler flavors. The wines, too, should be flattered by—and should flatter—each accompanying course ‘while relating to each other, as well in a similar kind of progression.

A semiliquid sherbet, more tart than sweet, usually with a champagne base, refreshes the palate halfway through this progression, and a green salad serves the same purpose before relaxing into the cheese course, which will be accompanied by the fullest-bodied of the red wines—and finally the dessert, neither heavy nor cloying and oversweet, but light and delicate, slightly less sweet than the intricate and voluptuous Sauternes that may accompany it.

This is obviously not the only way to conceive a menu. Essentially the only thing to remember is that the palate should be kept fresh, teased, surprised, excited all through a meal. The moment there is danger of fatigue, it must be astonished, or soothed into greater anticipation, until the sublime moment of release when one moves away from the table to relax with coffee and an alcool.

In the past it was de rigueur to begin a luncheon with hors d’oeuvre and a dinner with soup. Today the evening meal of a simple peasant or working-class family habitually consists of soup, with a piece of cheese often the only other element—and a very elegant dinner party, conceived in terms of the old precepts, always begins with a soup. Between these two poles lies most of French eating, and in this realm few rules are left. This may, in a sense, be a liberating force although with it come such misfortunes as the sandwich eaten standing up and cigarettes smoked throughout the meal. But despite the precepts of tradition there should be no fast rules. A meal need not always include a salad or cheeses (although Brillat-Savarin’s famous and foolish maxim, “A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman who is missing one eye,” reminds us of the contrary)—or fish or a roast. Certain white wines are splendid with certain cheeses. In that part of the Loire Valley that produces Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, the hard, nutty-flavored little goat cheeses known as crottins de Chavignol are always accompanied by the dry, slightly metallic white wines of the region. In Alsace, Traminer is drunk with Munster cheese, and the Sauternais drink Château d’Yquem with Roquefort—and with foie gras!

In organizing a menu, one must consider its presentation—it is nearly as important to flatter the eye as the palate. Don’t serve tomato sauces in red plates or spinach on a green platter. Never serve a roast’s garnish on the same platter—a good roast is sufficiently handsome to be presented alone, and, should it slip while being carved, artichoke bottoms and stuffed mushrooms should not be there to fly in all directions. Don’t sprinkle large handfuls of parsley indiscriminately over everything. Don’t follow one white-colored sauce by another, or a gratin of fish by a gratin of meat, even though the underlying sauces may be very different in character. Rustic preparations are generally best, and look best, served in the earthenware pots they are cooked in. Elegant preparations should be elegantly presented—on condition that the quality in no way suffers as a result.

A menu must be conceived also in terms of one’s time and work. Never try to serve a meal in which every course requires endless lastminute preparations. When a dish requires the addition of a number of ingredients at different times, combine in advance all those elements that are to be added at the same time. In this way you have only one article to think of rather than five or six, a couple of which might otherwise be forgotten in last-minute confusion. Many dishes are at least as good reheated—prepare these the preceding day. Others can be cooked ahead of time except for finishing the sauce. Think everything out ahead of time. When preparing something that is new to you, don’t read over the instructions once; memorize them in advance before attacking.