French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [231]
FROMAGE DE FONTAINEBLEAU
Fontainebleau is a very light and fluffy fresh cream cheese, which has now become a well-known commercial product, being sold in French dairies and restaurants enfolded in a little white cloth and served in individual portions in cartons or metal containers: and being prepared in large quantities by special machinery in a factory it attains a greater degree of aeration than can be achieved in the ordinary household. On the other hand, prepared at home it does not sink so quickly, is a fraction of the cost and tastes rather better. In the house where I stayed in Paris in my student days, we used to have it served in one large bowl from which we all helped ourselves to pretty big quantities. The consumption of cream in that establishment must have been huge by present-day standards.
For ample helpings for four people, the ingredients are pint of double cream, about 2 oz. of very fresh milk (in those days in France both cream and milk were unpasteurised), about a dessertspoon of caster sugar or vanilla sugar, if available.
Pour the fresh cream into a bowl, cover it, leave it in a cool place but not in the refrigerator, for 3 or 4 days, according to the weather. If it is insufficiently ripened it will be insipid but, on the other hand, it must not have the slightest hint of a cheesy taste. The day it is to be eaten, buy the fresh milk. Sprinkle the sugar over the cream and start to whip it with a loop whisk or a fork. As it gets stiffer, add the milk a little at a time. Don’t whip it too stiff, or it will lose its lightness and turn to a buttery mass. Simply pile it up in a bowl or into little glasses and you will find that it keeps its shape. But if you want to make it fluffier, fold in a stiffly whipped egg white or two.
Serve it by itself, with caster sugar separately. When they were in season, we used to have fresh raspberries, or raspberries and red-currants mixed, or wild strawberries with our Fontainebleau.
MOUSSE AU CHOCOLAT A L’ORANGE
CHOCOLATE AND ORANGE MOUSSE
Nearly everyone knows and appreciates the old and reliable formula for a chocolate mousse—4 yolks beaten into 4 oz. of melted bitter chocolate, and the 4 whipped whites folded in. Here is a slightly different version, its faint orange flavour giving it originality.
Break 4 oz. of good quality bitter chocolate into squares and put in a fireproof dish in a low oven. When the chocolate is soft, after a few minutes, take it from the oven, stir in 4 well-beaten yolks, then 1 oz. of softened butter, then the juice of 1 orange. Use a Seville orange when in season; its aromatic flavour comes through better than that of the sweet orange.
Beat the 4 egg whites as for a soufflé and fold them into the chocolate mixture. Pour into little pots, glasses or coffee-cups. This quantity will fill 6. Put in the refrigerator or a cool larder until ready to serve.
Should you have some orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier or Curaçao, add a spoonful in place of the same amount of the orange juice.
SORBETIÈRES AND ICE-CREAM APPARATUS
The confection of sorbets and ice creams in refrigerator trays is only partially satisfactory. Timing is difficult to gauge, and, frozen statically, the cream mixture does not expand. The old hand-cranked ice tub or sorbetière can still be bought at big department stores and a few kitchen supply shops. Although efficient it devours ice and freezing salt and is mighty hard going to work. Electrically operated sorbetières, American, Canadian and French, are on the market. They are expensive, still require ice and freezing salt, although in smaller proportions than the hand-operated machine, and are really for restaurants or for largescale household use. For the small household a French-manufactured sorbètiere to fit in the freezing compartment of a refrigerator was for many years available on the English market, and was described in this chapter. This sorbètiere