French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [142]
Leave them to cool in the oil, and serve them cold next day, with most of the oil poured off, and make the rest of the meal light and plain.
BEIGNETS D’AUBERGINES
AUBERGINE FRITTERS
Cut unpeeled aubergines into long, thin slices. Salt and leave them to drain. Dip them in frying batter (see below) and cook them 2 or 3 minutes, until they are crisp and golden, in a deep pan of very hot oil. Drain them on kitchen paper and serve them piled up on a hot dish with lemon.
PÂTE À FRIRE
FRYING BATTER
Sieve lb. of flour; stir in 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt; gradually add approximately pint of tepid water. Stir to a smooth cream. Leave to stand 2 hours.
Before using, fold in the stiffly whipped white of 1 small egg.
This is the frying batter I have always used in preference to any other. It is one which is light and crisp and makes only a thin coating for the food to be fried, rather than a heavy greasy blanket.
LES BETTERAVES
BEETROOT
During the summer, young beetroots, simply scrubbed, boiled 20 to 40 minutes according to size, then peeled, sliced and served with parsley butter, make a delicious vegetable dish.
In the winter, much more use could be made of the large cooked beetroots to be bought at the greengrocers. Of course, they must be chosen from a greengrocer who cooks them carefully, which is none too common. Sliced and dressed with oil and vinegar and a touch of garlic, or garlic vinegar, with chopped parsley and strips of raw celery mixed in at the last moment, they make a good salad. Or sliced and heated very gently with a little butter, a peeled chopped tomato or two and a little parsley, they make a nice hot vegetable to go with pork chops or a steak, especially useful for people in a hurry.
On page 427 is an excellent recipe for hare served with beetroot.
BETTERAVES EN ROBE DES CHAMPS
BEETROOTS BAKED IN THEIR SKINS
Medium to large beetroots are scrubbed but not peeled, and cooked in a baking tin in the oven in much the same way as baked potatoes. They take a good deal longer, about 3 hours in a slow oven for medium-sized beets, so this is a vegetable to cook when the oven is already in use for some other long and slow-cooked dish.
Peel them and serve them hot with salt and butter, or slice them and season them while still warm for salad. Baked in this manner, the flavour is infinitely superior to that of boiled beets.
BLETTES À LA CRÈME
CHARD WITH CREAM SAUCE
The large fleshy-stalked green leaves called blettes are occasionally to be found in England and are known as Swiss chard. They have not a great deal of flavour and the best way to serve them is in a creamy sauce.
Wash the leaves, remove the hardest part of the stalks and leaf centres, and cook them in a little water in the same way as spinach. Drain them, press them as dry as possible and chop them.
Prepare, for 1 lb. of chard, a béchamel as described on page 114, and enrich it with pint of cream. Cover the bottom of a wide gratin dish with a thin layer of the sauce, put the chopped chard on the top and cover it completely with the rest of the sauce. Put a few little knobs of butter on the top and cook in a moderate oven—Gas No. 3 or 4, 330 to 355 deg. F.—for 20 to 25 minutes, until the surface is barely beginning to turn pale gold. Enough for two, as a separate course.
This is also an excellent way of serving coarse-leaved spinach and beet spinach.
CAROTTES VICHY
This is one of the best known vegetable dishes of French cookery. It is exceedingly simple, and makes a particularly welcome dish in the spring before the new peas and beans have arrived.
New carrots are scraped, and sliced into bias-cut rounds about inch thick. Put them into a heavy pan with 1oz of butter, a pinch of salt, 2 lumps of sugar, and pint of water per pound of carrots. Cook uncovered