Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (175 page)

1½ cups sliced onions

3 Tb olive oil or cooking oil

An 8-inch frying pan with cover

1½ cups sliced green bell peppers

3 to 4 ripe, red tomatoes peeled, seeded, juiced, and sliced (1½ cups)

2 to 3 large cloves of garlic, mashed

Salt and pepper to taste

2 Tb fresh minced parsley, plus 1 Tb fresh minced basil or ½ tsp of dried oregano

Cook the onions in the oil for 8 to 10 minutes, or until tender and translucent. Add the peppers and cook another 3 to 4 minutes to soften slightly. Then add the sliced tomato pulp and garlic; cover pan for several minutes until tomatoes have rendered their juice. Uncover, raise heat, and boil for several minutes, tossing pan by handle to blend ingredients, until liquid has almost completely evaporated. Season carefully to taste, and toss with the herbs.

3)
Cooking the crêpes

(You may prefer several 8-inch
crêpes
cut into wedges; the following is for 4-inch
crêpes
cooked 3 at a time in a 10-inch pan.)

5 ounces Swiss cheese cut into ⅜-inch dice (about ¾ cup)

The
pipérade
turned into a 2-quart bowl

A rubber spatula

½ cup or more of the
crêpe
batter

Cooking oil

A heavy 10-inch frying pan (no-stick recommended)

A ¼-cup measure

1 or 2 oiled baking sheets

A pancake turner

Blend the cheese into the
pipérade
along with ½ cup of the batter. Brush frying pan with oil and set over moderately high heat. When hot but not quite smoking,
ladle in ¼ cup of the
crêpe
mixture as a test. Cook about 2 minutes on one side, until little holes appear through the surface, at which time bottom should be nicely browned. Turn and cook about 1 minute on other side, then remove to a baking sheet.
Crêpe
should just hold together, with only enough batter in the mixture to enrobe the ingredients. Add a little more batter to bowl if you feel it necessary, but too much makes for doughy
crêpes.
Cook the rest of the
crêpes
and arrange on baking sheets.

Just before serving, reheat for 5 minutes or so in a preheated 425-degree oven.

Including leftovers

For the same amount of batter, use:

1 cup each sliced onions, peppers, and tomatoes for the
pipérade

⅓ cup diced cheese

1 cup diced cooked poultry, veal, pork, ham, sausages, or fish

THREE COLD VEGETABLES

PETITS OIGNONS AIGRE-DOUX

[Sweet and Sour Onions Braised with Raisins—Hot or Cold]

Serve these hot with roast pork, duck, goose, game, or cold along with hors d’oeuvre, and cold meat and poultry. They should be considered more as a garnish, relish, or condiment than a vegetable, and if you are using tiny pearl onions, 6 per serving should be sufficient.

For about 2 cups, serving 6 to 8

3 cups (10 ounces; 40 to 50) small, white pearl onions

A saucepan of boiling water

A heavy-bottomed 2-quart saucepan with cover

½ cup beef or chicken bouillon

½ cup water

1 tsp dry mustard blended with 1¼ Tb wine vinegar

2 Tb olive oil

1½ Tb sugar

¼ tsp salt

1 medium tomato, peeled, seeded, juiced, and chopped

⅓ cup currants (small, black, seedless raisins)

1 large clove garlic, mashed

¼ tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

⅛ tsp pepper

A serving dish

Drop the onions into the boiling water and boil 1 minute to loosen skins. Drain. Shave off 2 ends, peel, and pierce a cross in the root end of each to help onions retain their shape while cooking. Place onions in a saucepan with all the ingredients listed except for the herbs and pepper. Bring to the simmer, skim for several minutes, then add the thyme, bay leaf, and pepper; cover and simmer slowly about 1 hour, or until the onions are tender but still hold their shape. Add a little more water if necessary during cooking; however, liquid should be reduced to a syrup when onions are done; if not, boil down at end of cooking. Transfer to dish and serve hot or cold, decorated, if you wish, with parsley.

SALADE DE POIVRONS, PROVENÇALE

[Peeled and Sliced Sweet Peppers in Garlic and Oil]

A typical informal first course in Provence might include the local black olives, sliced hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, capers, and slices of green or red sweet peppers turned in olive oil, salt, and garlic. The only trick to this recipe is that you will have to peel the peppers, which is quite a different matter from
peeling eggs. A number of pepper-peeling systems are on the books, including spearing them on a long fork and turning then one-by-one over a gas flame, baking in a hot oven, baking in a slow oven, boiling them, steaming them in a covered dish, dropping in hot oil, broiling them until the skin puffs and blackens. We like broiling because it is the quickest, the surest, and it cooks the flesh just enough so that the pepper is ready to cut and serve as soon as you have peeled it.

A NOTE ON SWEET PEPPERS

All sweet peppers both here and in France belong to the same species,
Capsicum annuum,
native to the tropics and including a large number of shapes and sizes. Most of those found in American markets are 2½ to 4 inches in diameter, 4 to 5 inches long, and a deep green color. (When peppers are fully mature they are yellow or red, and perishable to ship long distances; probably the only red peppers you will see are those grown locally.) Pick peppers that are brightly colored, glossy, firm, and thick-fleshed, with no pockmarks, brown patches, or soft spots anywhere on their surface. Like their distant cousin, the eggplant, raw peppers prefer a temperature of 45 to 50 degrees and a humidity of 90 per cent. Unless you can reproduce these conditions, buy only what you will use within a day or two because they will deteriorate rapidly when stored where they are either too hot or too cold.

For 4 medium-sized peppers