French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [45]
Émincer To slice thinly. Term usually applied to cooked meat which is to be sliced for reheating. Émincé is occasionally and wrongly understood to mean minced.
Étuvée, Cuisson à l’ To cook something in a hermetically sealed pot with very low heat all round, i.e. petits pois a l’étuvée. Some French cooking ranges have a special oven called a fourneau à l’étuve in which meat, poultry, vegetables and so on can be cooked in this way. It is more or less the equivalent of the coolest oven on our solid fuel stoves of the Aga and Esse types. The system can be usefully applied also to gas or electric ovens set to the lowest possible temperature. The estouffat de bœuf à l’albigeoise on page 342 is an example of such cooking.
Foncer, Marquer To line a stew-pan or braising-pan with fat pork, vegetables, herbs and so on before putting in the meat. Foncer is also a pastry term meaning to line a tin with the prepared dough.
Fouler To pound through a sieve. The word is said to be the origin of our fruit fools.
Frapper To freeze a liquid, a cream. Also to chill wine or fruit, i.e. champagne frappé—chilled, not frozen, champagne; melon frappé— iced melon.
Fricasser Literally this means to cook something in a saucepan, and although nowadays a fricassée is understood to mean a dish of chicken stewed in butter, the sauce thickened with egg yolks and/or cream, it formerly meant all sorts of ragoûts of meat, fish, poultry, etc. The English fricassée of left-over chicken would be called, in French, émincés de volaille.
Friture For deep frying, the French prefer the dripping from beef kidney fat (suet) to any other, sometimes mixing it with veal dripping. Pork lard, called saindoux, can also be used (see page 98). In olive-growing areas, naturally, oil is used. In times like recent years when olive oil has been very expensive, ground-nut oil (huile d’arachides), which is quite devoid of taste or smell, has to be substituted. But it does not produce such crisp results as olive oil. Oil, and all fats whether animal or vegetable, are improved for purposes of deep frying if simmered for the first time before using for about half an hour. The risk of frothing and boiling over is then diminished. Every time frying oil or fat has been used it is imperative to rid it of all particles and impurities by filtering it through a cloth or very fine sieve before it is put away for further use.
And since we are on the subject of frying fat, perhaps this is the place for me to beg once more of English housewives to abolish that sinister bowl of mixed fats, improperly filtered and therefore full of little specks of frizzled food and other impurities, which lurks in so many larders and refrigerators. To use these mixed fats for frying or for basting the joint is to spoil your dish from the start, for more often than not they are stale and sour, and naturally impart this horrible taste to the gravy, as well as to the meat or poultry which has been cooked in them. We all know that aftertaste of stale fat which ruins so much food in even the best restaurants. The smell as you go through the door is very often sufficient warning. In the home there is no excuse for it. By all means economise, as we were all obliged to do in the days of rationing, by saving good fat or dripping. But do not mix the fat from bacon, mutton, pork, beef, duck and so on all together in one bowl. Keep each one separate, perfectly filtered, and in a covered bowl, and do not try to keep them too long. Better to spend a few extra shillings on buying fresh lard, oil, or butter than to risk your family’s health and digestions by using stale fat.
The practice of half-frying certain foods and then leaving them until meal-times before re-cooking them is common in restaurants but also not unknown in the home. It is a dangerous practice, for in the meantime the food may become infected.
Glaçage (a) The glazing of meat after it is cooked by anointing it with