French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [153]
GLAZED TURNIPS
There are two or three ways of cooking this dish, of which the simplest is the same method as that used for carottes glacées, page 247. The turnips should be very young and tender ones, peeled and cut into quarters or eighths, according to their size. If they are large and beginning to get tough and strong in flavour, they should, when peeled and quartered, be given a preliminary blanching for 10 minutes in boiling salted water.
Glazed turnips make an excellent garnish for mutton and lamb dishes and for duck.
OIGNONS GLACÉS
GLAZED ONIONS
To make glazed onions use the small silverskin pickling onions when they are available, or new white onions, or the French ones called grelots. They should be all the same size. Peel them; sauté them gently in butter until they acquire a very pale golden colour. Sprinkle them with sugar, cover with stock or water and simmer until the liquid has almost evaporated and the onions are beginning to be caramelised.
OIGNONS A L’ÉTUVÉE
ONIONS STEWED IN WINE
This is a dish to make when you have a glass of wine, red, white, rosé, sweet, dry or aromatic (i.e. some sort of Vermouth) to spare and also, perhaps, when you have been bullied or cajoled by one of the Breton onion boys into buying far more onions than you know what to do with. You peel 6 to 8 rather large onions, all the same size. You put them with a tablespoon of olive oil in a thick pan in which they just fit comfortably. You start them off over a moderate flame and, when the oil is beginning to sizzle, you pour in a small glass of your wine. Let it boil fiercely a few seconds. Add water to come half-way up the onions. Transfer to a low oven and cook uncovered for about 1 hours. Put back on top of the stove over a fast flame for 2 or 3 minutes, until the wine sauce is thick and syrupy. Season. Serve as a separate vegetable, or round a roast.
OIGNONS RÔTIS AU FOUR
ROAST ONIONS
Medium-sized whole onions, unpeeled, are cooked in a baking tin in a slow oven, Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., for 1 to 2 hours. Serve them hot with salt and butter, or cold with a vinaigrette dressing.
This is one of the best possible ways of cooking onions in the winter when the oven is, in any case, turned on for the cooking of a stew or some other long-cooked dish. The onions can be served as a first course, or as a separate vegetable after the meat. Red Spanish onions will take a good deal longer to cook than the mild white kind.
L’OSEILLE
SORREL
In principle, sorrel is cleaned and cooked in exactly the same way as spinach but, as it is of a rather different consistency, melting and softening much more quickly, it can be cooked simply in butter without any water at all, and then chopped or sieved to make a purée. Or if there is only a small quantity, it can be cut into the thinnest of ribbons (chiffonnade) before cooking.
Most people prefer the acid flavour softened with cream or eggs (it makes a delicious filling for an omelette) and a small proportion of sorrel added to a lentil or potato or haricot bean soup makes an admirable mixture. In fact sorrel enters into a very large number of refreshing French country soups, giving a flavour for which there is no quite satisfactory substitute, although watercress can very successfully be used as an alternative in many soups and sauces in which sorrel appears.
A purée of sorrel is also the old-fashioned accompaniment of a fricandeau and other veal dishes, and of one or two fishes, notably shad (alose) and hake (colin). Allow lb. sorrel per person.
PURÉE D’OSEILLE À LA CRÈME
CREAMED SORREL
For 1 lb. of sorrel, washed and drained, melt 1 oz. of butter in a thick saucepan; cook the sorrel in this with a little salt until it is soft. Sieve it or chop it finely. Return it to the saucepan and let it dry out a little over very gentle heat. Stir in 3 or 4 tablespoons of creamy béchamel, or sauce à la crème (page 115).
Fresh thick cream can be used instead of the cream sauce, but the acid in the sorrel tends to curdle the cream so it is wisest to stir a teaspoon