Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (67 page)

4 Tb butter

5 Tb flour

A wooden spoon and a wire whip

½ to ⅔ cup heavy cream

Remove sweetbreads to a plate, and strain cooking stock into a bowl. Return stock to braising dish. Trim mushrooms, wash rapidly in cold water, and quarter if necessary. Add mushrooms to liquid in braising dish and simmer 5 minutes. Dip or strain them out, and add to sweetbreads. In the heavy saucepan, melt the butter, blend in the flour, and stir over moderate heat with wooden spoon until flour and butter foam together for 2 minutes without browning. Remove from heat, and as soon as this
roux
stops bubbling, pour in all the hot braising liquid at once, blending vigorously with wire whip until perfectly smooth.

Return over moderately high heat, and stir with wire whip as sauce thickens and comes to the boil. It will be quite thick. Thin out, still simmering, with spoonfuls of cream; sauce should coat spoon fairly heavily.

Salt and white pepper to taste

If needed: More white wine, Sercial Madeira, more stock, a pinch more thyme or bay leaf

Taste sauce very carefully for seasoning and strength. It may need simmering with more wine, or strengthening with Madeira, veal stock, a little beef stock, or herbs. If so, simmer it, stirring, and tasting until you are satisfied. The egg yolks, butter, and the other ingredients will give it more interest, but it should be delicious at this point. (You will need about equal quantities of sauce and garniture.)

2)
The rest of the garniture, and final flavorings and enrichment

1 or more truffles and the juices from the can

Veal or chicken
quenelles
, poached, and cut into ½-inch pieces, Volume I, page 189 (or canned imported
quenelles
of veal or chicken), 1 to 1½ cups, depending on how much you have or need

⅔ cup small green pitted olives simmered 5 minutes in 1 quart of water

Salt and white pepper to taste

Drops of lemon juice

2 egg yolks blended with ¼ cup heavy cream in a small bowl

2 to 4 Tb soft butter

Hot
bouchées
or
vol-au-vent

Optional: truffle slices or a fluted cooked mushroom cap (Volume I, pages 510–11) for each serving

Cut the braised sweetbreads into ½-inch slices or into ½-inch dice, and set aside. Fold the mushrooms into the sauce. If you have several truffles, slice one and use for decoration later; dice the rest into small pieces and add to the sauce along with their juices. Fold in the diced
quenelles
and the olives. Bring to the simmer for 3 to 4 minutes to blend flavors, and taste very carefully for seasoning, adding salt, pepper, and lemon as needed. Remove from heat, beat several spoonfuls of hot sauce gradually into the cream and egg yolks, then fold the egg-yolk mixture back into the saucepan along with the sweetbreads. Reheat, folding slowly, to below the simmer. Remove from heat and fold in the butter, a spoonful at a time. Spoon into the hot
bouchées
or
vol-au-vent
, and serve immediately, topped, if you wish, with truffle slices or fluted mushrooms.

VARIATIONS

Garniture Dieppoise—Garniture aux Fruits de Mer

[Creamed Seafood Filling]

Adapt the
marmite dieppoise
, with its sole, halibut, shrimp, scallops, mussels, and lobsters, to the preceding recipe. Follow the
marmite
recipe
, Steps 1 and 2, then boil the cooking liquid down to 2½ to 3 cups, and proceed with the sauce in the preceding recipe, Steps 1 and 2. Use sliced truffles or fluted mushrooms to garnish each serving.

Garniture de Volaille, Financière

[Diced Chicken in White-wine Sauce with
Quenelles
, Truffles, Mushrooms, and Olives]

Poach chicken pieces in white wine and aromatic vegetables, following the recipe for
poulet poché au vin blanc
, Steps 1 and 2. Peel and dice the chicken, and then proceed as for the sweetbreads, simply substituting chicken and chicken stock for fish and fish stock.

CHAPTER THREE
Meats: From Country Kitchen to Haute Cuisine

BRAISED BEEF

Boeuf Braisé, Paupiettes, and Daubes

W
HETHER IT IS ONE LARGE PIECE
or a dozen small ones, whether you use red wine or white, whether or not you marinate it, lard it, flour it, thicken its juices at the beginning or at the end, all beef that is braised undergoes much the same process, and if you have done one you can do all. This is comforting to remember when you run into a new pot roast or stew: it is only the small differences in method, garnishing, or flavor that distinguish one recipe from another. For example, the fine
boeuf en daube à la provençale
sounds as though it were quite a different dish from the
boeuf à la mode
in Volume I on page 309, but you will see they are very much related: while the beef for the
daube
is larded with ham, and is put into a thickened sauce from the beginning of its braise, the sauce for the
boeuf à la mode
is thickened at the end of the cooking. Again, in a comparison of beef stews you find the
boeuf bourguignon
in Volume I braising in a flour-thickened sauce, while the
boeuf aux oignons
follows the simpler pattern of having its sauce thickened at the end with
beurre manié
(flour-butter paste). The methods are actually interchangeable, and you can conduct any braise exactly as you wish; the more techniques you have absorbed, the more you are master of
la cuisine
.

MARINATING THE BEEF BEFORE COOKING

An aromatic wine marinade adds its own special flavor to beef, and is always an effective tenderizer for the tougher cuts. Marinate or not, as you wish, for any of the following recipes, using the formula for
the
daube
,
and dry white wine rather than red, if you wish. For the marinade to be effective, stew meat or meat for
paupiettes
needs at least 6 hours, and a roast, 12 hours. Several days of marination in the refrigerator will be even more penetrating, and the marinade will also preserve the meat a little longer. In other words, rather than freezing it, if you are a once-a-week shopper, marinate it. Drain and dry the beef thoroughly before proceeding with any recipe. Substitute the marinade vegetables and wine for whatever is called for in the recipe, and if carrots are not one of the ingredients listed, for instance, add the marinade carrots anyway, since such details are of small importance.

LARDONS, PORK FAT, BACON, AND SUET

Lardons
, those stick-shaped bits of fat-and-lean pork 1½ inches long and ¼ inch thick, are typical of French stews. Their rendered fat browns the beef, and their flavor adds a subtle touch to its sauce. Fresh, unsalted, and unsmoked pork belly is the cut to use if you can find it, otherwise substitute chunk bacon, cut, and blanched (simmered) 10 minutes in a quart of water to remove its salty, smoky taste. (Fat-and-lean salt pork, if very fresh and fine, is another alternative, but it must also be blanched.) Pork fat for larding and for draping over the meat is discussed in the
charcuterie
chapter
. If you prefer suet, although it tends to shrink up, use fat from the outside of a rib or a loin of beef.

BEEF CUTS FOR STEWS

Most markets have ready-cut stew meat all packaged by the pound, and there is no telling what it is. If you want to order your own, the following are some recommended cuts.