French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [134]
Large peeled prawns are highly successful cooked en chemise in this fashion, and should be accompanied by halves of lemon.
SAUCISSES À LA NAVARRAISE
SAUSAGES WITH SWEET PEPPERS AND WINE
Gently fry 1 lb. of chorizo or other coarse-cut, spiced, pork sausages in goose or pork fat or olive oil. When they have turned colour, transfer them to a fireproof dish with a little stock or water and finish cooking them in the oven, while in the same fat in which they have browned you cook a mixture similar to the one described for the wild duck recipe on page 422, but minus the carrot, i.e. 2 or 3 finely chopped shallots, a slice of ham or gammon, half a sweet red or green pepper cut in small pieces. When the shallots start to take colour, add a glass of medium sweet white wine, or dry white wine with the addition of a little Madeira. Let this bubble and reduce, then simmer very gently until the sausages are ready. Fry some triangles of bread in oil, or goose or pork fat. Put the sauce in the serving dish, the sausages on the top and the fried bread all round.
The best chorizo sausages, which are highly spiced with red pepper, are to be bought in the Spanish shops of Soho, and are the nearest equivalent we can obtain here to the Basque spiced sausages. Passable imitations are sold in most of the more enterprising delicatessens. This recipe also offers a good way of dressing up our own ordinary pork sausages.
SAUCISSES DE TOULOUSE
TOULOUSE SAUSAGES
These are fresh, pure pork sausages, coarsely cut and with a fairly large proportion of fat. Apart from their use in cassoulets and other such substantial dishes, they are often fried or grilled and served with a purée of potatoes, with stewed haricot beans or with apples. If the sausages are to be fried or grilled, it is advisable first to stiffen them by dipping them for a few moments in boiling water. Fried gently in butter, then transferred to an oven dish and baked at moderate heat for about 20 minutes, while half a dozen sweet dessert apples, peeled, cored and sliced are fried in the same butter, they make an attractive first-course dish, or they can equally well be served with a hot potato salad, as for the Lyonnais recipe on page 228. If for a first course, one sausage per person will usually be enough, for they are very rich and fat.
BOUDIN GRILLÉ AUX POMMES
GRILLED BLACK PUDDING WITH APPLES
Boudin, black pudding, or blood pudding which, in France, is nearly always heavily flavoured with onion and so much less insipid than the kind usually to be found in England, is cut into lengths of about 5 inches, painted with olive oil or pork fat and grilled about 5 minutes on each side. Serve it on a bed of peeled, cored and sliced sweet apples, six to a pound of sausage, gently fried in pork fat.
An old-fashioned way of serving these blood sausages was on a bed of onions similarly fried in pork fat, with the addition of little pieces of pig’s liver and heart; the onions were then removed and kept warm while the sausage was fried in the same fat. This makes good rough food for those who like such things, but it is not exactly easy on the digestion.
LE SAUPIQUET DES AMOGNES
HAM WITH PIQUANT CREAM SAUCE
Saupiquet consists of a sauce piquante à la crème served with slices of ham fried in butter. It is a modernised version of a famous and very old speciality of the Nivernais and the Morvan districts of Burgundy.
To make the sauce, which is one well worth knowing, a clear well-flavoured meat stock, preferably made from veal and beef, is a necessity. To 1 teacups (about 8 fl. oz.) of this stock the other ingredients are 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour, about 4 shallots, 6 tablespoons of wine vinegar, 2 or 3 crushed juniper berries, 6 tablespoons