French Provincial Cooking (35 page)

Remove the pork and strain off the vegetables. The liquid, with bread soaked in it, plus a small quantity of the vegetables, chopped, and if you like fried a minute or two in lard, is served as a soup. The pork and the rest of the vegetables are kept warm for the second course.

A boiling sausage and a piece of knuckle or belly of fresh pork can also be added to the
potée
to supplement the salt pork, and in the winter when there are no fresh green vegetables,
lb. of dried white haricot beans, previously soaked and partly boiled, are added at the same time as the potatoes and carrots.

The meats and sausage will also be good cold, with the vegetables made into a salad. If you decide to serve it in this way, keep your cabbage rather undercooked and cut it into fine strips as for a raw cabbage salad; mix it with the potatoes and carrots and to an oil and vinegar dressing add 4 or 5 crushed juniper berries, a teaspoon of sugar, and 4 or 5 tablespoons of cream.

The onion soup generally regarded as ‘French,’ with sodden bread, strings of cheese and half-cooked onion floating about in it seems to me a good deal overrated, and rather indigestible. But certainly onions make warming and comforting soups for cold nights, and are admirable when one is suffering from fatigue or a bad cold. This country recipe makes a soup which is very acceptable under such circumstances. It requires no stock, but is enriched with egg yolks.

Slice 3 large mild onions into the thinnest possible rounds. In a heavy saucepan heat 2 large tablespoons of pure pork dripping, and cook the onions in this, stirring until they begin to soften. Then season with salt, cover the pan and leave to cook very gently for about 30 minutes. The onions should be reduced almost to pulp, but should still be of a creamy yellow colour. Pour over 2 pints of cold water, bring slowly to the boil, simmer 10 minutes. Beat 2 egg yolks in a bowl with a few drops of vinegar and some of the hot soup, return this mixture to the pan and stir until very hot, but on no account boiling. Slices of French bread baked in the oven should be put into each soup plate and the soup poured over.

Chick peas, the pale corn-coloured round peas which look rather like nasturtium seeds, are the
garbanzos
and the
ceci
of Spanish and Italian cooking respectively. They are also (although less so now than a few years ago) grown a good deal in Provence. They are very hard and need lengthy soaking and cooking, but the following method, indicated by Austin de Croze in
Les Plats Régionaux de France
, although it sounds rather a performance, does shorten the cooking time from about 4 or 5 hours to rather less than 2
, and results in them being very well cooked and tender. One thing about chick peas which is encouraging to the forgetful cook is that it is virtually impossible to
overcook
them.

Suppose you are going to cook 1 lb. of chick peas (half of which can be made into soup, the other half into a salad or vegetable dish). Put them to soak overnight in tepid water into which you have put a handful of coarse salt and 2 tablespoons of flour. Next day, boil the water in which they have soaked, adding a good pinch of bicarbonate of soda; the water having boiled, leave it to get cold; put in the rinsed chick peas, bring to the boil, then leave them to simmer gently for an hour. Strain, discard the original liquid and throw the peas into a large saucepan containing about 6 pints of boiling, lightly salted water, and cook until they are quite tender and the skins begin to loosen. Now remove about half the peas and while they are still warm season them, add olive oil, and set them aside for a salad or other dish.

Strain the remainder, reserving the liquid. Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan and in this melt a sliced onion and the chopped white parts of 2 leeks. Add a large skinned and chopped tomato; put in the chick peas and cover with the reserved liquid. Add salt if necessary and a little pepper. Simmer until the peas are soft enough to sieve. Heat up the resulting purée, adding more water, or stock, if it is too thick. Serve with croûtons of bread fried in olive oil. Enough for six good helpings.

This makes an interesting soup, although I suppose that the curious flavour of chick peas would not be to everybody’s taste.

A famous Niçois soup of which there are many versions, the essential ingredient being the basil with which the soup is flavoured, and which, pounded to a paste with olive oil, cheese and pine nuts makes the sauce called
pesto
so beloved of the Genoese. The Niçois have borrowed this sauce from their neighbours, adapted it to suit their own tastes, and called it, in the local dialect,
pistou.
It is the addition of this sauce to the soup which gives it its name and its individuality. Without it, the soup would simply be a variation of
minestrone
.

Here is the recipe given in
Mets de Provence
by Eugène Blancard (1926), a most interesting little collection of old Provençal recipes.

In a little olive oil, let a sliced onion take colour; add 2 skinned and chopped tomatoes. When they have melted pour in 1
pints of water. Season. When the water boils throw in
lb. of green French beans cut into inch lengths, 4 oz. of white haricot beans (these should be fresh, but in England dried ones must do, previously soaked, and cooked apart, but left slightly underdone), a medium-sized courgette unpeeled and cut in dice, 2 or 5 potatoes, peeled and diced. When available, add also a few chopped celery leaves, and a chopped leek or two. After 10 minutes add 2 oz. of large vermicelli in short lengths.

In the meantime prepare the following mixture: in a mortar pound 3 cloves of garlic with the leaves of about 10 sprigs of very fresh basil. When they are in a paste, start adding 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil, drop by drop. Add this mixture to the soup at the last minute, off the fire. Serve grated Parmesan or Gruyère with it. Enough for four.

This soup, and the one which follows, come from the little book called
Les
Secrets de la Bonne Table,
about which I have already written in the introduction to this book. Both have the detailed instructions and that carefully studied quality of the cookery of an age when attention to detail was not considered a waste of time. It is worth following the recipes exactly; both produce very delicious soups.

‘I collected this recipe at Mondoubleau in Loir-et-Cher. Not everyone likes turnips, so before preparing it, make sure that it is to the taste of the guests. The variety of turnips known as
Vertus
(the long carrot-shaped ones) are preferable to any others, but in any case do not use hard or hollow turnips or those kept for the winter which usually have a strong taste; with new turnips, and a little care, the rather special taste of this vegetable will not be accentuated.

‘Put a large saucepan of water on to boil. Peel a dozen new turnips, cut them in rounds, and throw them into the boiling water. Cover the saucepan and remove it from the fire; it must not boil again. After five minutes, strain the turnips, rinse them in abundant cold water, and drain them in a teacloth. Put 2 oz. of butter in a saucepan and heat the turnips in this without allowing them to turn golden, then add about 2 pints of milk, salt, a pinch of mixed spice and a pinch of white pepper. Cover the pan.

‘When the turnips are cooked press them through a fine sieve with a wooden pestle.

‘If the purée is too thick, thin it with milk, and then stir in 2 oz. of butter. From this moment the soup should be kept very hot, but without boiling. Cut some bread into slices as thin as possible, arrange them in the soup tureen and pour the soup over them.’ Plenty for four.

‘When I was young,’ says M. Renaudet, ‘we gave this name to a soup which was the triumph of the great-aunt of one of my friends. She rarely omitted to tell us on these occasions how her own mother, an intimate friend of Madame Récamier and Monsieur de Châteaubriand, served it to them when they came to sit at her table, and that they complained whenever this soup was replaced by another. It does not, however, call for any complicated ingredients, nor for any difficult process in its preparation.

‘For six people you need a cauliflower, 1
pints of
bouillon,
a glass of milk, 4 oz. of butter, 4 yolks of eggs, salt, no pepper.

‘Take off the outside leaves of the cauliflower, separate it into branches, wash it, and cook in very lightly salted water. When it is absolutely soft, drain it, pound it to a purée with a wooden pestle, and pass it through a fine sieve.

‘Add this purée to the
bouillon
and bring it to the boil very gradually over a low fire. Let it simmer a quarter of an hour. Draw the saucepan to the side of the stove and add a glass (about
pint) of milk. Taste to see if the soup is neither too much nor too little salted; if too much, add a little more milk. Add the butter, stirring as it melts. To finish, beat the yolks with half a glass of water, and add them to the soup, heating it gently but without letting it boil, so that the yolks thicken the soup into a cream.’