French Provincial Cooking (30 page)

Enough for four.

Except for those who grow their own (there have been increasing numbers of English artichokes on the market in recent years) these are a very expensive vegetable, but treated
à /a grecque
as an hors-d’œuvre they are comparatively economical. To prepare them for cooking in this way, and for all recipes in which the hearts only are used, proceed as follows: Have ready a bowl of water acidulated with lemon juice. Draw your sharpest knife through a lemon, and rub the artichoke also with lemon. Cut off the stalk and the hard leaves on the underside, then slice through the leaf part right down to the tip of the last but one row of leaves nearest the stalk. Holding the artichoke in your left hand rotate it while with the knife held slanting towards you in your right hand you slice off the hard outer leaves until only the little tender pale green ones remain. Scoop out the choke (
le foin,
the hay) with a little silver spoon. As each artichoke is ready throw it into the prepared bowl of water. Although it takes so long to describe, it is only really a matter of a minute, especially after a little practice.

The
fonds
or hearts are now ready to be boiled, stewed,
sauté
in butter, stuffed, etc. To cook them
à la grecque,
first prepare a mixture of
pint of water, a small coffee-cup of olive oil, a sprig of thyme and a bayleaf, about 10 coriander seeds, a little salt and pepper, and the juice of half a small lemon. Bring this to the boil in a small saucepan, tall rather than wide. Put in the prepared artichoke hearts (4 for this quantity of liquid), and let them simmer steadily for 15 minutes. Leave them to cool in the liquid. Cut them in quarters when cold and serve them in a shallow hors-d’œuvre dish with some of their liquid.

As part of quite a small mixed hors-d’œuvre this is enough for six people, and is really quite as good as the miniature whole artichokes in oil which one gets in France and Italy. I don’t recommend tinned or bottled artichokes; they are flabby, and through overcooking have lost their curious and refreshing delicacy of flavour.

The addition of a little tomato to the usual
à /a grecque
manner of preparing mushrooms makes the dish more interesting. Put 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 3 of water, 2 skinned and chopped tomatoes, 3 or 4 crushed peppercorns, half a dozen coriander seeds, a bayleaf, a sprig of thyme and a little salt into a small saucepan. Bring this to the boil, let it simmer 2 or 3 minutes, then add
lb. of very small button mushrooms washed, drained and rubbed with lemon juice. Cook gently about 5 minutes. Take out the mushrooms, put them in a small shallow oval serving dish; continue cooking the sauce a few more minutes until it is thick and somewhat reduced. Pour over the mushrooms. Serve cold. If very small button mushrooms are unobtainable, larger ones cut into quarters, stalks included, can be used, but they must be of the closed-up variety. This quantity will be enough for four if it is part of a mixed hors-d’œuvre.

One of the standard hors-d’œuvre in the north of France, these mackerel fillets can be bought there in tins as commonly as sardines; perhaps one of these days our own fish-canning industry will get around to the idea; how much better, for example, would be our Cornish pilchards prepared in a similar way rather than in a slushy tomato sauce.

For part of an hors-d’œuvre for four, 1 large mackerel or 2 little ones will be enough. Prepare a very aromatic
court-bouillon
by cooking together a large glass each of dry white wine (dry cider also serves the purpose admirably) and water, with a sliced onion, a branch of fennel, a little strip of lemon peel, 4 or 5 whole peppercorns, a bayleaf, a little salt. Let this mixture simmer for 10 minutes. Leave to cool. Strain. Poach the mackerel, which for convenience’ sake can have been boned by the fishmonger, in this liquid. They must cook very gently indeed, the liquid not even simmering but merely shuddering. They will take 10 to 15 minutes. When the fish are no longer pink in the centre they are done. Leave to cool a little; lift them out and gently ease off every trace of skin. When quite cold, divide into fillets and remove all bones. Mix about half the cooking liquid, again strained, with a little french mustard and chopped parsley, and pour over the fillets.

If you happen to have obtained mackerel with soft roes, which are very good, poach the roes separately after the mackerel have cooked, for a minute or two only.

Pound the contents of a 2 oz. tin of anchovy fillets in oil; to the resulting paste add a little pepper, olive oil and vinegar. Serve in a bowl accompanied by celery hearts cut into short lengths and left to get crisp in iced water for an hour.

Mussels, cooked and shelled, are dressed with a straightforward oil and vinegar or lemon dressing, or with any of the cold oil-based sauces described in the chapter on sauces. They can also be mixed with rice cooked and seasoned as for the rice and tomato salad on page 151.

Serve plain cooked prawns with the same sauce as the one described for lobster on page 325, pounding a couple of prawns into the sauce instead of the lobster coral.

A big dish of assorted shellfish, some cooked, some raw, all arranged on a bed of cracked ice and seaweed with halves of lemons is one of the best of all hors-d’œuvre, but comes very much into the luxury class nowadays. But if we cannot afford oysters and cannot obtain the various kinds of exquisite little clams, the
praires,
the
palourdes
and the
clovisses
which one gets in France and Italy, there is nothing much wrong with a dish of freshly boiled shrimps, a few Dublin Bay prawns, a few cockles or winkles, and mussels cooked as for
moules marinière,
with the addition of a little oil. The giant Pacific prawns now available at a very reasonable price retain more of their flavour after freezing than the Dublin Bays or ordinary prawns; if bought uncooked, simmered in an aromatic
court-bouillon
for a few minutes and served piled up, still in their shells, with a mayonnaise separately, they make a very good hors-d’œuvre. They are very filling, and 2 to 4 per person should be enough, although it depends rather on what is to follow.

It may seem superfluous to give a recipe for so basic a dish as egg mayonnaise, but sometimes, in the search for originality, the most obvious dishes are forgotten. No one need ever be ashamed to offer their guests a well-made dish of egg mayonnaise, for it is always appreciated.

Having prepared a generous amount of really good thick mayonnaise according to the recipe on page 120, arrange it spoonful by spoonful on a flat oval or round dish. On top go the shelled hard-boiled eggs, cut in half lengthways and placed cut side down. Then the smallest possible sprinkling of very finely chopped parsley and absolutely nothing else whatever.

This is a filling dish, and 3 eggs for every two people should be more than enough.

An interesting Provençal hors-d’œuvre.

To make the
tapénade,
called after the capers
(tapéno
in Provençal) which go into it, the ingredients are 24 stoned black olives, 8 anchovy fillets, 2 heaped tablespoons of capers, 2 oz. of tunny fish, olive oil, lemon. juice.

Pound all the solid ingredients together into a thick purée. Add the olive oil (about a coffee-cupful, after-dinner size) gradually, as for a mayonnaise, then squeeze in a little lemon juice. It is an improvement also to add a few drops of cognac or other spirit, and sometimes a little mustard is included in the seasoning. No salt, of course.

Spread the prepared sauce in a little flat hors-d’œuvre dish, and put 6 to 7 hard-boiled eggs, sliced in half lengthways, on the top. The curious thing about this sauce is that it has a kind of ancient, powerful flavour about it, as if it were something which might perhaps have been eaten by the Romans. Well, it was invented less than a hundred years ago by the chef at the Maison Dorée in Marseille, although it must certainly have been based on some already existing sauce. The original method was to stuff the eggs with the
tapénade,
plus the pounded yolks. At la Mère Germaine’s beautiful restaurant
¹⁰
at Châteauneuf du Pape the
tapénade
is served pressed down into little deep yellow earthenware pots, like a pâté, and comes as part of the mixed hors-d’œuvre.

A decorative little hors-d’œuvre, very easy to prepare, which I first came across in Lyon.

Rather large ripe tomatoes are essential, and for each tomato you need 1 hard-boiled egg. Slice the tomatoes from the rounded top down towards the stalk end, cutting slightly on the bias, but not right through, so that the tomato can be opened out like a miniature concertina. Between each tomato slice slip a slice of hard-boiled egg, cut crossways. On top put a spoonful or two of very thick mayonnaise, and sprinkle with a little parsley.

This is not at all so easy a dish to get right as might be supposed. It is not common to find it well done even in a good restaurant. But when perfect, the egg yolk just soft enough to run when you break into it, the jelly firm and clear and delicately flavoured, it is an exquisite dish. Making the jelly for the sole purpose of preparing these eggs would be considered rather a performance in most households, but although during the time of rationing, when there were no meat or calves’ feet to make aspic, it was understandable that the jelly had to be made with gelatine, it is not really a satisfactory solution, gelatine aspic being too sticky and gluey, and lacking of course the delicate flavour of jelly made from beef and veal. So I suggest that when there happens to be home-made aspic jelly in the larder, prepared for jellied consommé, jellied chicken or beef or from boiled pigs’ trotters as described on page 224, a little can be saved to make jellied eggs. It should be clarified, as described on page 72, and when this is done, allowing a coffee-cupful, after-dinner size, of the liquefied jelly for each egg, heat it up gently and add a teaspoon of Madeira per
pint; add also 4 or 5 fresh tarragon leaves and let them infuse in the warmed jelly for a time.

The eggs can be either poached or
mollet,
which is to say cooked 5 or 6 minutes in boiling water, according to size. For each egg have a thin slice of mild, tender, cooked ham. Trim off all the fat; cut each slice to the size and shape of your little oval or round china egg ramekins. Place the ham at the bottom. Put your shelled egg on the top. (To shell
mollet
eggs easily see page 183). When your jelly is quite cold but before it begins to set, pour it gently over the egg, which should be quite covered. Decorate with a couple of tarragon leaves dipped in the liquid jelly. Serve very cold, preferably in their own little dishes, and with a spoon.