French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [133]
Francis Amunatégui, a distinguished French gastronome and journalist, writes of this Lyonnais sausage in deeply emotional terms: ‘The appearance,’ he says, ‘of a hot sausage with its salad of potatoes in oil can leave nobody indifferent . . . it is pure, it precludes all sentimentality, it is the Truth.’
SAUCISSON CHAUD À L’ALSACIENNE
POACHED SAUSAGE WITH HORSERADISH SAUCE
Again, a large poached sausage served plain as a first course and accompanied only by a mild and creamy horseradish sauce. To make this, you need either freshly grated horseradish or one of the good brands packed without vinegar or any other ingredient such as stabilisers, emulsifiers and preservatives. Bottled horseradish sauce will not do.
About 1 tablespoon of this horseradish is stirred into pint of thick cream; season with salt and squeeze in a little lemon juice. You then add a few drops of olive oil; this stabilises the sauce, which should be thick and quite smooth.
It may well be asked, what is to be served after these sausage dishes? Almost anything, except pork, beef with Yorkshire pudding, or any other dish containing dough or pastry after the brioche, and, of course, no horseradish sauce with beef after the Alsace dish, and no dish requiring potatoes after the Lyonnais one.
A fine salmon trout, either hot or cold, is what I usually choose in the summer season, or sometimes a cold lobster with the sauce described on page 325, and then a vegetable dish or salad. This sounds odd after a meat dish, but in France they seem to have fewer inhibitions about planning the menu than we have here, and on at least three occasions I remember being served with fish, not specially ordered but on the menu of the day, after sausage dishes: after the brioche sausage, it was sole meunière; after sausage in flaky pastry, fish quenelles; and skate with black butter followed the sausage with hot potato salad. In Alsace, the hot sausage with horseradish sauce was followed by an open, creamy, onion tart. But a roast or grilled chicken with salad, a cold chicken in a cream sauce, a veal roast, escalopes, a duckling, pheasant or partridge, according to what suits the occasion, would all make a lovely meal. For a simple lunch, one of the sausage dishes followed by a hot vegetable, cheese, and some little creamy sweet or fruit in wine would be perfect.
SAUCISSES EN CHEMISE
This is a charming, light-hearted dish but shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It involves rather lengthy preparation for such trifles as miniature chipolata sausages, but it is a dish which always has a great success, especially with young people, so it’s worth it if you have the time and the aptitude for this sort of entertainment.
Having bought a pound of the miniature chipolata sausages sold as cocktail sausages (about twenty-five to the pound), poach them very gently in stock for a few minutes only. Prepare a choux paste as follows: put a full teacupful of water into a thick pan with 4 oz. of butter and bring to a fast boil. When the butter has fused with the water and is foaming, pour in, all at one go, 4 oz. of sieved flour. Stir, lifting the batter up and round, until you have a smooth mass which comes away from the sides of the pan. This takes only a minute or two. Now add, away from the fire, and one at a time, 4 whole eggs. Each egg must be thoroughly incorporated into the paste before the next is added. The paste should have something of the appearance of a very thick custard but with a slightly elastic spring in it. Spread it on a flat dish and, with a palette knife, coat each little sausage, well drained, so that it is completely encased. This is finicky work, but no worse than icing a cake. It can be done in advance.
Finally, the prepared sausages are plunged into a large, wide pan of very hot oil, a few at a time so as to leave room for them to swell. When they are golden and beautifully