French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [212]
Loin chops also offer good value; they are not very satisfactory for grilling, but once seized on each side and some sort of moistening in the way of stock or wine added, they can be transferred to the oven and thereafter more or less look after themselves.
Veal roasts such as the joints known to French butchers as the noix, the sous-noix, the noix-patissière (which are those which provide escalopes), the above-mentioned fillet, the longe or rognonnade, which is the equivalent of a saddle including the kidneys, but in the case of veal usually boned out, the filet proper which comes from the middle and back loin, the carré, which is the row of best end of neck cutlets on the bone, are all luxury cuts which contain plenty of good tender meat but which need sauces to enhance the somewhat insipid flavour, although the loin and the best end of neck or carré are much less dry than the leg cuts. Quasi de veau, rump end of loin, is a favourite French cut for a slow roast or a daube, and boned and rolled shoulder is another good slow-cooked oven dish.
Reasonable bargains for anyone not deterred by the necessity for lengthy cooking are shin (to my mind one of the best of all veal cuts), rolled and stuffed breast, and the strips of cartilaginous meat cut from between the end of the ribs next the flank which are called tendrons or sometimes côtelettes parisiennes.
Curiously enough, French cookery does not seem to provide any equivalent of the best of all cheap veal dishes, the Lombard ossi buchi, shin of very young veal sawn into short chunks and stewed with tomato and white wine, although there is a Provençal dish called aïllade de jarret de veau in which the shin meat is cut from the bone in solid strips, and stewed with tomato, which seems to have a natural affinity with veal, with the addition of garlic and parsley. Blanquette de veau, made alternatively from a mixture of breast and shoulder, or shoulder only, is famous, but to my taste this dish with its creamy white sauce is rather insipid, and I find that the same cuts stewed in the Marengo fashion, with oil, tomato and white wine, have a good deal more character.
In the recipes in this section I have tried to show methods, some of them purely local, of cooking veal which are not normally to be found in cookery books; and once one has understood the type of meat with which one is dealing it is very easy to devise one’s own recipes, for veal is a meat which makes a good background for quite a variety of flavourings and sauces.
Whatever one may feel about the desirability or otherwise of the expensive cuts and those roasts with little clumps of vegetables called jardinière, printanière and the rest which become so monotonous on Continental hotel menus, particularly in Switzerland, it must be remembered that veal is an immensely useful, indeed almost essential ingredient in good cookery. This is mainly because of the gelatinous quality but neutral flavour imparted to stocks and broths and sauces by the bones, trimmings, feet, shin and head; and the close texture and mild flavour of lean, minced veal makes it an indispensable ingredient in numbers of pies and pâtés, galantines, and stuffings for game and poultry.
NOIX DE VEAU À L’ALSACIENNE
VEAL IN WHITE WINE JELLY
A perfect summer dish, which owes its characteristic flavour to the white Alsatian wine in which the meat is cooked.
Ingredients are a noix of veal, the cut approximating to the topside of the leg in beef, weighing 2 to 3 lb., trimmed of all fat and tied into a sausage shape; a large onion and a large carrot, 2 thickish rashers of very fat smoked bacon, a wine-glass of dry white Alsatian wine (Hugels Flambeau d’Alsace is ideal) and approximately the same quantity of clear, well-flavoured stock made from shin of veal so that it will set when the dish is cold; parsley and tarragon;