French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [77]
We came back the next night for a specially ordered dinner of Provençal dishes, for the proprietor was a Marseillais and his wife the daughter of the owners of the house, which had been converted from a farm to a restaurant-filling station. The young man was a cook of rare quality, and the dinner he prepared to order put to shame the world-famous Provençal three-star establishment where we had dined a day or two previously. But had it not been for the appearance of the delicious hors-d’œuvre, which was so exactly the right food at the right moment, we should have had our drink and paid our bill and gone on our way not knowing. . . .
Even simpler in composition was another hors-d’œuvre which was served us at a hotel at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. It consisted simply of a very large round dish, quite flat, completely covered with overlapping circles of thinly sliced saucisson d’Arles; in the centre was a cluster of shining little black olives. Nothing much, indeed, but the visual appeal of that plate of fresh country produce was so potent that we felt we were seeing, and tasting, Arles sausage and black olives for the very first time.
So you see one does not need caviar and oysters or truffled foie gras and smoked salmon or even pâtés and terrines and lobster cocktails to make a beautiful first course. One needs imagination and taste and a sense of moderation; one must be able to resist the temptation to overdo it and unbalance the whole meal by offering such a spread that the dishes to follow don’t stand a chance; one must remember that eggs and vegetables with oil and mayonnaise drâtessings, and pés with their strong flavours and fat content and their accompaniments of bread or toast are very filling but not quite satisfactory to make a meal off; so the different components of an hors-d’œuvre must be chosen with great care if they are to fulfil their function of serving as appetisers rather than appetite killers.
To translate all this into practical terms I would say that a well composed mixed hors-d’œuvre consists, approximately, of something raw, something salt, something dry or meaty, something gentle and smooth and possibly something in the way of fresh fish. Simplified though it is, a choice based roughly on these lines won’t be far wrong. Then, apart from the selection of these things described in more detail below, there are a few French hors-d’œuvre which are nearly always served on their own, such things as poached or mollet eggs in a tarragon-flavoured aspic jelly, a salad made from the sliced boiled beef of the pot-au-feu, crevettes bouquet (large freshly boiled prawns served plain with lemon and salt), salade niçoise and artichauts vinaigrette.
LES CRUDITÉS
RAW VEGETABLES
These are for the raw, crisp element of an hors-d’œuvre. They consist of sliced very firm raw tomatoes, dressed with the minimum of oil, lemon and seasoning, sprinkled with finely chopped parsley. Cucumber sliced very thin and dressed in the same way. Radishes, washed, trimmed of excess greenery but left otherwise as God made them, rather than disguised as water lilies. Raw Florentine fennel, the outer leaves removed, the heart cut into quarters, and sprinkled with plenty of lemon juice to prevent it turning brown. Or alternatively cut into fine strips and dressed with oil, salt, lemon. Celery treated the same way. Very young raw broad beans piled on a dish in their pods, to be eaten à /a croque au sel, i.e. simply with salt. Raw red or green peppers, cut into the thinnest of rounds, all seeds and core carefully removed, dressed with oil; prepared in advance and perhaps mixed with a few black olives.
Raw carrots (carottes râpées) very finely grated, the red part only, the yellow core being discarded; the resulting preparation almost a purée, is mixed with a very small amount of finely chopped shallot, a little oil, lemon juice, salt and a pinch of sugar if necessary, depending on the quality of the carrots.
Céleri-rave rémoulade, peeled and washed raw celeriac, shredded on the special