French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [74]
As well as being the traditional accompaniment of spaghetti dishes, a tomato sauce goes well with fried chicken, with all manner of croquettes, with fried steak and with fried eggs.
COULIS DE TOMATES À LA PROVENÇALE,
FRESH TOMATO SAUCE (2)
Put 1 lb. of chopped tomatoes in a thick pan with a tablespoon of olive oil, a chopped onion, a clove of garlic, a chopped carrot, some parsley stalks, a little fresh or dried marjoram or basil, a little salt and freshly ground pepper. Simmer until the moisture has reduced and the tomatoes are a thick pulp. Sieve, and taste for seasoning.
SAUCE CATALANE
TOMATO, GARLIC AND ORANGE SAUCE
From the Perpignan district, to the west of the Languedoc, where the cookery has a distinct Spanish influence, comes this sauce which in its native region goes particularly with partridges and with pork. But it is good with other things from chicken and mutton to fried eggs or slices of baked gammon.
Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a sauté pan. Put in several whole cloves of garlic and add immediately about 1 lb. of ripe, peeled tomatoes, roughly cut up. Season with a little salt, pepper and a lump of sugar, and cook for 10 minutes. Now add half a dozen slices of Seville or bitter orange, pips, but not rind, removed. Cook uncovered for another 20 minutes, until the sauce is thick. Remove the garlic before serving. (In the Roussillon they like a colossal quantity of garlic and do not, of course, take it out; but then they are accustomed to these large amounts of garlic, whereas here we are not.) The bitter orange slices give a curious and interesting flavour to the sauce but do not let them cook it in more than 20 minutes or they will be too bitter.
PURÉE D’OSEILLE
SORREL SAUCE
Wash and chop very finely a small handful of sorrel leaves, not much more than lb. Melt it gently in oz. of butter. Stir in, bit by bit, pint of cream previously boiled (this is important, for sorrel is very acid and there is a risk of the cream curdling when the two come into contact) and then thin it with a tablespoon or two of the stock from the dish the sauce is to accompany—usually veal or fish. A very excellent little sauce, which also makes, in larger quantities, a good accompaniment to poached eggs.
It may be hard to believe, but a purée of green gooseberries, barely sweetened, with the same additions of cream and stock, is almost indistinguishable from a sorrel purée.
SAUCE RAIFORT AUX NOIX
WALNUT AND HORSERADISH SAUCE
On page 38 I have quoted Escoffier’s recipe for this sauce as he noted it down after a visit to the Haute Savoie. The sauce was served, he records, with an ombre-chevalier, the excellent freshwater fish from the Lac du Bourget, cooked in white wine from his host’s vineyards and left to cool in its cooking liquid. But it is so original and delicious that it seems a pity to confine it to partnership with a rare fish. I have often served it with cold salmon trout and have come to the conclusion that it is an even better sauce for this lovely and delicate fish than the more usual sauce verte.
To make the sauce for three or four people, use 2 oz. shelled and skinned walnuts and 2 tablespoons of freshly and finely grated horseradish (see page 97), a teaspoon of sugar, a little salt, the juice of half a lemon, and pint of thick cream.
To skin the walnuts, pour boiling water over them and rub off the skins as soon as they are cool enough to handle. It is a tedious operation but, having compared the sauce made with unskinned walnuts to the original version, there is no question but that the latter is very much finer. It is an example of how a short cut in cooking can be taken only to the detriment of the final result.
Having skinned the walnuts, then, chop them finely. Stir them very lightly