French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [224]
If you use cider instead of wine for this dish, do not use an unlined iron pot in which there is a risk of the cider turning black.
Other vegetables won’t be needed with this filling dish, but some sort of green salad afterwards would be welcome. The quantities given for the stew should be enough for six to eight people, and it can be reheated slowly without coming to harm, although it may need a little extra liquid for a second heating.
LA DAUBE VIENNOISE
‘In my youth I saw the daube viennoise30 being cooked. There was a family who, as Easter approached, would put a whole quarter of beef and some chickens into a great trough into which they poured abundant amounts of wine and spirits and spices. On Easter Sunday, all their friends were invited to eat the daube in ceremonial state; with it went the charming little wine of Saint-Prin.
‘Today, a veal rump (this is the classic term) is served. It is presented whole upon a great dish, with its tail and kidneys nicely arranged upon a bed of big fat leeks.’
PAUL-LOUIS COUCHOUD.
Translated from an article on La Bonne Table en Dauphiné, in the magazine La France à Table, undated but circa 1956
Les Restes
The left-overs
‘L’Art d‘accommoder les restes,’ says the Larousse Gastronomique, with some severity, ‘is not to be considered as the summit of culinary achievement.’ On the contrary, the writer of the article on les restes is of the opinion that any household where there is customarily an abundance of left-overs is badly run. Either the food has been carelessly bought or badly cooked.
However, Larousse makes a clear distinction between food left over through bad management and that intentionally cooked in large enough quantities to serve two or three meals. There are surely, though, other kinds of left-overs, and perfectly legitimate ones.
Without allowing economy to get out of hand to the point of hoarding things which should have been consigned to the dustbin in the first place, there are bones and trimmings from joints, small quantities of meat left on a chicken carcase, enough cold salmon or other fish to make a little dish for two people, the end of a ham or a piece of gammon, or a little rich sauce from a beef and wine stew.
The requisites of dishes made from such things are, as I see the matter, as follows. They should be cheap, quick and easy to cook, and the result should be as attractive as if all the ingredients had been chosen especially for that dish. These conditions preclude the buying of a lot of extra ingredients, the opening of jars of this and tins of that, which in their turn become left-overs; nine times out of ten a dish made in such a way is not only a false economy but a messy concoction, full of ingredients without point or purpose.
Next, and perhaps most important of all, use your little odds and ends of left-overs while they are still fresh; don’t hoard them in the larder or refrigerator until they are dried up and stale.
Lastly, when it comes to heating up already cooked food, leave the frying-pan out of it as much as possible and, instead of frizzling the food in fat, heat it as slowly as possible in stock in a covered pan.
Here is a brief list of recipes in this book in which left-overs can be used, and some suggestions as to the best purpose to which trimmings and oddments can be put.
White fish: Mayonnaise de poisson, page 288.
In a creamy cheese sauce as for the skate dish, page 291.
Salmon: Mayonnaise de poisson, page 288.
Mousse made as for the ham mousse, page 235.
Mussels, prawns and other shell fish: Riz pilaff as for the mussel dish on page 320. Mussel omelette, page