French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [221]
1 rabbit, 1 lb. stewing beef, 1 hare or 1 lb. lean pork, 6 shallots, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 bayleaf, small sprig of thyme, large bundle of parsley, 1 dessertspoon of flour, salt, sugar, 1 square of plain chocolate, 1 bottle red wine, equal quantity of water, 3 large carrots, pork dripping or oil.
This is essentially a peasant dish, ‘La grosse cuisine de la campagne,’ and it should therefore be as rich and vulgarly hearty a savoury stew as possible when finished. It will be spoilt if the meat is cut into too delicate pieces or the carrots carefully sliced.
Heat the oil or, better still, pork dripping, in a large, thick saucepan which has a closely-fitting lid. Cut the shallots very finely, and slowly and gently brown them in the hot fat, adding the carrots carefully peeled but cut only in 2 or 3 pieces. Sprinkle generously with salt, and when well browned add the meat. For pork and beef, trim off gristle and excess fat and cut into rather large chunks. For hare and rabbit, dry the joints well before adding to the frying vegetables. Brown the meat well all over, then add the garlic finely sliced, and the herbs, sprinkle with flour and mix all well together. Now pour on a bottle of red wine and bring quickly to the boil and bubble vigorously for about 5 minutes, reduce the heat, add an equal quantity of water, stir well, add a teaspoon of sugar and 1 small square of plain chocolate. Put on the lid and simmer, just a murmur, for about 3 hours. Allow to get quite cold. On the second day simmer again for about 2 hours before serving. Taste before doing so and adjust seasoning; it may be a little sharp, in which case a sprinkle more sugar will usually put matters right.
The choice of meats, as you see, is left pretty well to individual taste (shin of beef cut from the bone and sparerib or hand of pork on the bone with its skin is what I use, plus a hare or rabbit if either happen to be available). A whole bottle of wine and an equal quantity of water seems a lot of liquid, and this question is one which frequently arises in French recipes of this type, because the French peasants and workmen reckon on filling out their meal with a great deal of bread soaked in the sauce; in fact, two-thirds of the quantities can be used, but less I think would deprive the dish of its character. If there is a lot of sauce left over, serve it with poached eggs as described for œufs à l’huguenote on page 190, or poured round a mousseline of potatoes (page 272).
As for the chocolate, of which rather less than an ounce is needed, it is not an uncommon ingredient in Italian and Spanish cookery, particularly in hare dishes, and is there as a sweetening and thickening for the sauce. Its use perhaps filtered down to the Bordelais through the channel of Basque and Béarnais cookery. And Bayonne, for generations one of the great chocolate manufacturing centres of France, is not far off.
CASSOULET DE TOULOUSE
On page 54 I have referred to Auguste Colombié and his cookery school in Paris for young ladies. Here is his recipe for the famous cassoulet of the Languedoc. Being a native of that province, he should know what he is talking about. His method, however, differs in several respects from that of other Languedoc cooks, but he shows how it can be made in quite a small quantity. It is, as he says, essentially a family dish, to be eaten at midday, and preferably on a Sunday or holiday, and if you insist on having a course to start with, it must be something very light; M. Colombié’s suggestions are oysters when in season, or a few crisply fried small fish such as smelts. Here is his recipe:
CASSOULET COLOMBIÉ
BEANS WITH PORK, MUTTON, SAUSAGE AND GOOSE
‘Three-quarters to a pound of white haricot beans, of the variety known as Soissons, or flageolets of Arpajon,29 a garlic sausage, or a chitterling sausage weighing lb., about lb. of preserved goose (I will discuss this later), 1 lb. of shoulder of mutton, 4 oz. of fat bacon or salt pork, 2 cloves of garlic, an onion