French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [48]
Piquage A process distinct from larding in that while in the latter case the lardoons are drawn right through the meat, in the former they are only sewn, or darned, through on the outer surface. The function of piquage is not to provide interior fat for the piece of meat so treated, but rather to act as a sort of elaborate barding or wrapping, to make a decorative appearance, and to add to the savour of meat such as veal. A fricandeau de veau, an old-fashioned dish seldom seen nowadays, and a râble de lièvre (saddle of hare) are two of the classic examples of piquéd meat and game.
The household substitute for this elaborate process is to wrap your meat and game in thinly cut slices of pork fat or unsmoked bacon.
Revenir, Faire To give vegetables, meat, fish, a brief preliminary cooking in butter or other heated fat until they have taken on a very slight colour. An important process in the making of the majority of French soups, ragoûts, daubes, and in the braising of poultry and meat.
Suer, Faire Often confused with the above, this means to give a preliminary cooking to a piece of meat or a bird in butter or other fat until beads of juice start to pearl on the surface.
Tomber, Faire To cook a piece of meat very slowly without other liquid than that produced during cooking by the meat itself. The liquid is then tombé, or reduced, to a syrupy consistency. So when instructed to faire tomber la sauce it means to reduce it. Faire tomber à glace is an expression also used in connection with sliced or chopped onions or shallots cooked in a small amount of liquid and reduced almost to a purée or a state of glaze.
Tremper la soupe To soak slices of bread in the soup before serving it.
Vanner une sauce To make a sauce quite smooth by stirring, to prevent a skin forming. If a béchamel or other thickened sauce has to be made in advance spread the surface with little knobs of butter while it is still hot. This will form a film which prevents the formation of a skin.
WINE FOR THE KITCHEN
The technique of using wine in cookery is extremely simple, almost the only rule to remember being that the wine must be cooked. As with all rules, there are exceptions, and to these I will return presently, but generally speaking, wine is added to a stew right at the beginning of the cooking, and at the end of the long, slow process of simmering has become transformed into a sort of essence which, combined as it is with the meat juices, and flavoured with vegetables and herbs, forms a richly aromatic sauce. To achieve this end it is not necessary to use large quantities of wine. With the exception of two or three of the recipes in this book, no dish calls for more than one large glass of red or white wine, often less, and of course the wine used is inexpensive table wine or vin ordinaire; although those to whom the drinking of wine is a daily occurrence will know that a glass extracted from their bottle of respectable table wine is likely to produce better results in the flavour of the finished dish than will some thin and sour stuff reserved especially for cooking. A friend once reproached me with having withheld from her some secret in the recipe for a beef and wine stew. She had cooked it, she said, exactly as I had told her but the flavour was not as good and rich as mine had been. In a sense she was right to tax me with inaccuracy, for I had forgotten to tell her that that particular day I had used a glass of my good Rhône wine in cooking the dish, and it had made all the difference.
Since practical application is more valuable than detailed instruction in the abstract, it will be more to the point to refer the reader to recipes in which the different systems of adding wine to a dish are fully set out, than to go into lengthy explanations here.
Typical recipes in which wine gently and lengthily cooked is an essential part of the dish are b