French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [229]
For 2 lb., then, of peeled and cored sweet apples, evenly and rather thinly sliced, melt 2 oz. of butter in a frying-pan. Put in your apples, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of soft white sugar (vanilla-flavoured if you like) and cook gently until the apples are pale golden and transparent. Turn the slices over very gently, so as not to break them, and, if they are very closely packed, shake the pan rather than stir the apples. Serve them hot; and I doubt if many people will find cream necessary. The delicate butter taste is enough.
POMMES À LA NORMANDE
APPLES WITH CALVADOS
Over the apples cooked as above pour a small glass of warmed Calvados; set light to it and shake the pan until the flames die down.
LES BOURDAINES
APPLES BAKED IN PASTRY
The Anjou version of the apple dumpling.
Fine large eating apples are peeled and cored, and the cavities filled with plum or quince jam. They are then wrapped in an ordinary tart pastry, the edges well pressed together, each dumpling brushed with milk or cream and baked in a low to moderate oven for about 1 hour.
An alternative to ordinary tart pastry is the pâte sablée or crumbly pastry described for the apple tart on page 452. But for 6 apples use twice the quantity of ingredients, divide the pastry into 6 equal pieces and roll each out to a square upon which you place the prepared apple. Fill it with. the jam and draw the edges of the pastry up towards the top. Be sure to moisten all the joins with cold water so that the pastry does not burst in the baking. Place them on a baking sheet and cook them at Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F. for just over an hour. Les bourdaines make a dish of great charm for children.
POIRES ÉTUVÉES AU VIN ROUGE
PEARS BAKED IN RED WINE
A method of making the most cast iron of cooking pears very delicious. It is especially suitable for those households where there is a solid fuel cooker of the Aga or Esse type.
Peel the pears, leaving the stalks on. Put them in a tall fireproof dish, or earthenware crock. Add about 3 oz. of sugar per pound of pears. Half cover with red wine. Fill to the top with water. Bake in a very slow oven for anything between 5 and 7 hours, until the pears are quite tender and the juice greatly reduced. From time to time, as the wine diminishes, turn the pears over.
A big dish of these pears, almost mahogany-coloured by the time they are ready, served cold in their remaining juice with cream or creamed rice separately, makes a lovely sweet. The best way to present them is to pile them up in a pyramid, stalks uppermost, in a shallow bowl or a compotier on a pedestal.
POIRES SAVOIE
PEARS COOKED WITH CREAM
For this you need slightly unripe dessert pears. Peel 2 lb. of them, slice them into quarters or eighths and cut out the cores. Melt a small piece of butter, about oz., in a shallow flameproof dish, in which the pears should fit as nearly as possible in one layer only. Put in the pears and add 4 to 6 tablespoons of white sugar and a piece of vanilla pod. Simmer very gently until the pears are soft, which will take 5 to 10 minutes if the pears are nearly ripe, 20 to 25 if they are hard. Pour in 4 to 6 tablespoons of thick cream and cook another minute or two, shaking the pan until the cream thickens. Transfer to a moderate oven for a few minutes until a golden skin has formed on the surface.
Serve hot, preferably in the dish in which they have cooked.
PRUNES AU FOUR
BAKED PLUMS
Fresh, slightly unripe plums are cooked in the oven in the same way as the apricots described on page 437, but usually they need less water, more sugar, and they will cook rather more quickly; all these factors, however, depend upon the variety, the size and comparative ripeness of the plums used. It is an excellent method of dealing with almost any sort of plums but, best of all, for large ones, purple, yellow or green.
CRÈME FOUETTÉE
WHIPPED CREAM
This is simply the old recipe for crème Chantilly