French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [177]
Charles Gay, whose sumptuously produced book Vieux Pots, Saulces et Rosts Mémorables, contains many Angevin recipes, says that it is only after making it fifteen times that the great chefs allow that you can produce a really perfect beurre blanc. But Curnonsky was more encouraging, for he considered it as essentially a dish, not of chefs, but of that cuisine de femme which he always praised so highly. Charles Gay, incidentally, adds a little thick cream to his sauce au beurre blanc, which is delicious but considered by purists to be a grave heresy.
The wine to go with this dish is a Muscadet from the Côteaux de la Loire or from the Sèvre-et-Maine district, situated respectively on the left and right banks of the river below Nantes. These attractive dry wines, which go so admirably with fish and shellfish dishes, and with hors-d’œuvre of all kinds, are made from a Burgundian vine, the Melon, transplanted to the Nantes district. They acquire their special qualities from the pebbly soil of the region. A good Muscadet has quite a strong bouquet, and as the catalogues say, ‘a delicate fragrance.’
TERRINE D’ANGUILLE À LA MARTÉGALE
EEL BAKED WITH LEEKS AND BLACK OLIVES
‘This was the traditional dish served at Martigues for the gros souper on Christmas Eve. This excellent recipe is worth recording—and cooking.
‘Cover the bottom of a gratin dish with finely sliced leeks, so that they make a thick bed. Strew with chopped parsley and garlic. Add a good handful of black olives (stoned) and moisten with a good glass of dry white wine. On this bed lay a large skinned eel. Cover with breadcrumbs and cook in the oven for about 1 hours, the precise time depending on the size of the eel.’
ESCUDIER: La Véritable Cuisine Provençale et Niçoise
ÉCREVISSES À LA NAGE
FRESH-WATER CRAYFISH IN COURT-BOUILLON
Fresh-water crayfish rarely come our way in England; they do exist in our rivers but nobody bothers to catch them. In France, a number of restaurateurs who specialise in crayfish dishes keep a tank or vivier for these little creatures, whose flavour is so remarkably much finer than that of the large sea-crayfish and the lobster; they were evidently well-known to our ancestors, for many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery books give recipes for them. La Chapelle (1773) has one for pigeons or chickens with a coulis of crayfish, which must have been very similar to the dish still made by accomplished French chefs.
The basic way of cooking and serving crayfish is à la nage, in other words simply simmered in a court-bouillon. One way of making this is as follows: slice a carrot in a dozen very thin rounds; cut 4 small onions and 2 shallots also in fine slices; shred an ounce of the white part of a celery heart and put all these ingredients into a saucepan with pint of white wine half that quantity of water, 3 tablespoons of cognac, some parsley stalks, a scrap of dried thyme and bayleaf, oz. of salt. Simmer this mixture until the carrot and the onion are quite tender.
The crayfish, which are always cooked live, must also have the intestinal gut removed, particularly at the spawning period, for it is liable to make the crayfish bitter. The end of this little black gut is at the opening under the central flange of the tail; it is pulled out with the aid of a little knife, gently, so as not to break the fish.
The crayfish, 2 or 3 per person, are put into the hot court-bouillon and boiled steadily for about 12 minutes. To serve them hot, remove them to a bowl or deep serving dish; reduce the court-bouillon to half its original quantity; add a dash of cayenne pepper and somewhat under 1 oz. of butter; pour this mixture, vegetables and all, over the crayfish and strew with a little cut parsley. To