French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [72]
SAUCE VINAIGRETTE A L’ŒUF
VINAIGRETTE AND EGG SAUCE (1)
Chop very finely a small shallot or a little piece of onion with a tablespoon of parsley, add salt and freshly milled pepper, stir in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a little vinegar or lemon juice and, when available, a few chives, cut with scissors. Boil an egg for 3 minutes, scoop out the yolk into the sauce, give it a stir, add the chopped white. This sauce is excellent with a boiled chicken, or with fish.
SAUCE GRIBICHE
VINAIGRETTE AND EGG SAUCE (2)
Much the same as above but with the addition of chopped gherkins, a scrap of chopped lemon peel, and hard-boiled instead of soft-boiled egg.
SAUCE RÉMOULADE
Pound the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs to a paste with a drop of vinegar. Stir in a raw yolk, a teaspoonful of French mustard, salt, pepper. Add olive oil (about pint) as for a mayonnaise. Flavour with chopped tarragon, chives and capers, allowing about one teaspoonful of each. This makes a sauce of a creamier consistency and less rich than a mayonnaise.
SAUCE PROVENÇALE POUR LES SAUMONS
PROVENÇAL SAUCE FOR SALMON
Bertrand de Guégan8 quotes this recipe as being from the hand of Maneille, chef des cuisines of the famous restaurant of the Trois Frères Provençaux, which flourished in Paris in the days of the First Empire, and the proprietors of which are said to have been responsible for introducing the brandade de morue to Parisians and to have invented poulet à la Marengo for the benefit of Napoleon’s generals, returned victorious from Italy. It is a more likely theory than that which attributes the invention to Napoleon’s cook upon the battlefield. Maneille’s version, incidentally, is made without tomatoes.
Here is the Provençal sauce for salmon; it is, as anyone can see, very little different from what we now call a sauce rémoulade, but it is an excellent version which can be followed in every detail.
‘Take a medium-sized onion, 50 grammes (approximately 1 oz.) of capers and a substantial pinch of parsley; chop all together, after having washed the onion and parsley and wrung all three ingredients dry in the corner of a cloth. Take 2 anchovies (which you rinse well before pounding), 2 cooked yolks of eggs and 1 raw one. Beat all together and incorporate, little by little, lb.9 of olive oil, smelling of the fruit, and the juice of a lemon. Your preparation, being well worked, can be kept for at least three days without being retouched. This sauce needs a great deal of care to be made without failure.’
I must say it does not seem at all difficult to me—much more reliable than a straightforward mayonnaise. But I find a tablespoon of capers and 3 or 4 anchovy fillets rather than 2 whole anchovies provide a sufficiently strong flavouring.
SAUCE RAVIGOTE
Chop very finely a big bunch of mixed parsley, tarragon, and watercress, with chervil and chives when they are available (about 2 oz. altogether), plus 3 anchovy fillets, a tablespoon of capers and 2 or 3 little gherkins or a small pickled cucumber. Stir in about 4 tablespoons of olive oil, a very little tarragon vinegar, and a thread of lemon juice. The sauce should be pretty thick, and can also be further seasoned by the addition of a little mustard. Good with boiled beef and chicken as well as with fish. Enough to serve four to six people.
SAUCE VERTE
This is, I think, one of the great achievements of the simpler French cooking, but when I say simple I mean simple in conception rather than in execution, for it is hard work to make in any quantity, and so far as I know there is no short cut.
First prepare a very thick mayonnaise with 2 or even 3 egg yolks, to pint of best olive oil, and a few drops of wine or tarragon vinegar. The other ingredients