French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [96]
Strain the remainder, reserving the liquid. Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan and in this melt a sliced onion and the chopped white parts of 2 leeks. Add a large skinned and chopped tomato; put in the chick peas and cover with the reserved liquid. Add salt if necessary and a little pepper. Simmer until the peas are soft enough to sieve. Heat up the resulting purée, adding more water, or stock, if it is too thick. Serve with croûtons of bread fried in olive oil. Enough for six good helpings.
This makes an interesting soup, although I suppose that the curious flavour of chick peas would not be to everybody’s taste.
LA SOUPE AU PISTOU
A famous Niçois soup of which there are many versions, the essential ingredient being the basil with which the soup is flavoured, and which, pounded to a paste with olive oil, cheese and pine nuts makes the sauce called pesto so beloved of the Genoese. The Niçois have borrowed this sauce from their neighbours, adapted it to suit their own tastes, and called it, in the local dialect, pistou. It is the addition of this sauce to the soup which gives it its name and its individuality. Without it, the soup would simply be a variation of minestrone.
Here is the recipe given in Mets de Provence by Eugène Blancard (1926), a most interesting little collection of old Provençal recipes.
In a little olive oil, let a sliced onion take colour; add 2 skinned and chopped tomatoes. When they have melted pour in 1 pints of water. Season. When the water boils throw in lb. of green French beans cut into inch lengths, 4 oz. of white haricot beans (these should be fresh, but in England dried ones must do, previously soaked, and cooked apart, but left slightly underdone), a medium-sized courgette unpeeled and cut in dice, 2 or 5 potatoes, peeled and diced. When available, add also a few chopped celery leaves, and a chopped leek or two. After 10 minutes add 2 oz. of large vermicelli in short lengths.
In the meantime prepare the following mixture: in a mortar pound 3 cloves of garlic with the leaves of about 10 sprigs of very fresh basil. When they are in a paste, start adding 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil, drop by drop. Add this mixture to the soup at the last minute, off the fire. Serve grated Parmesan or Gruyère with it. Enough for four.
CRÈME À LA VIERGE
CREAM OF TURNIP SOUP
This soup, and the one which follows, come from the little book called Les Secrets de la Bonne Table, about which I have already written in the introduction to this book. Both have the detailed instructions and that carefully studied quality of the cookery of an age when attention to detail was not considered a waste of time. It is worth following the recipes exactly; both produce very delicious soups.
‘I collected this recipe at Mondoubleau in Loir-et-Cher. Not everyone likes turnips, so before preparing it, make sure that it is to the taste of the guests. The variety of turnips known as Vertus (the long carrot-shaped ones) are preferable to any others, but in any case do not use hard or hollow turnips or those kept for the winter which usually have a strong taste; with new turnips, and a little care, the rather special taste of this vegetable will not be accentuated.
‘Put a large saucepan of water on to boil. Peel a dozen new turnips, cut them in rounds, and throw them into the boiling water. Cover the saucepan and remove it from the fire; it must not boil again. After five minutes, strain the turnips, rinse