Len Deighton’s French Cooking for Men: 50 Classic Cookstrips for Today’s Action Men. Len Deighton
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Название: Len Deighton’s French Cooking for Men: 50 Classic Cookstrips for Today’s Action Men
Автор: Len Deighton
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Кулинария
isbn: 9780007524846
isbn:
Most cooks put a large knob of fat into the pot and fry the outside of the meat to make it brown before beginning to cook it. A few large chunks of onion or carrot provide extra moisture and extra flavour. For a more complex addition try the mirepoix described on pages. The French cook will always be very attentive when cooking in this way. He looks into the pot and dribbles a spoonful of stock over the meat. The meat must never stand in a pool of water or stock, it must be moist enough and hot enough to make its own steam. Maximum amount of basting with the minimum amount of liquid is the rule. See pages, and, for vegetables braised, pages.
Another way of using this same technique is to wrap a piece of food in heavy paper (or the transparent plastic ‘roasting bag’) and put it into a gentle oven. This food too cooks in its own moist heat. This is called cooking en papillotes and is described on pages.
STEWING
This is cooking done by circulating liquid. The liquid circulates because the pot is standing upon heat which causes the heated water to rise, move around, and cook the whole thing evenly by convection. Usually the food is cut into pieces because that speeds the process and releases more flavour into the liquid. (In this cooking method it doesn’t matter if flavour escapes from the meat.) Sometimes the meat is left in one large piece but as long as the liquid is free to circulate, it’s a stew. Fricassée, pages, is a stew. A heavy thickened mixture in which the liquid does not circulate is not a stew, it is braising and should be cooked in the oven. Stews can be solely protein foods, e.g. chicken, beef, fish, or veal, or can have vegetables such as carrots, potato, and onion added to them during the last part of the cooking time so it will all be ready together. In any case stews must be cooked slowly and gently – faire cuire doucement – and never be allowed to boil or bubble. About 180ºF. is ideal. Keep meat pieces equal size then they’ll all take the same time to cook. Total weight of meat used makes no difference, it’s the size of the cubes that counts. Leg of beef, the cheapest cut there is, will need about four hours; chuck steak, a medium-price cut, a little over two hours. The cheaper cut will be better flavoured and the streaks of connective tissue, which look horrible when you are cutting it up, will dissolve with long cooking and become a rich gravy. This body or texture – du corps – of the stew is a sign of a cook’s skill. Some cooks try to get it by artificial means, e.g. stirring in a little flour or a little potato that goes mashy. That’s terrible, try to avoid it. Get the texture by ingredients. For extra body add something that will give you texture, e.g. veal knuckle, pig’s foot, chicken feet, tripe, or oxtail, then discard it before serving.
It’s usual to add some flavouring matter to the stew liquid; onion, garlic, herbs, bacon, or ham. If you fry such items in olive oil the heat will bring out the flavour and the oil will add one of its own.* For a stronger flavour, part of the liquid is sometimes replaced by wine. Sometimes the cook is only concerned with the flavour of the liquid, intending to discard the meat finally and use only the stock. If you compare pages ref1 and ref2 you will see that the only difference between the finest way of making stock and the classic recipe for the French dish pot-au-feu is that in the latter you use a better-looking cut of meat.
In these notes about stewing I have concentrated on meat, but fish makes wonderful stews. Mix various types of sea fish to make bouillabaisse and various types of fresh-water fish to make matelote. If you are inventing a stew, beware of oily types of fish. Put the softest sort of fish pieces in last because they will cook more quickly. For best results have a little of various kinds. In any case fish stews will cook in less than half an hour, so go ahead, there’s time to invent a stew.
BOILING AND POACHING
Both words mean cooking in water on top of the stove, but the temperatures are different. The French are more precise in their words: when water is heated enough to shiver – frémir – it is just right for poaching – pocher; when it gets hotter there will be a bubble now and again at the same place. That is called mijoter and as far as the cook is concerned the water is boiling. (Beware, the cook seldom wants anything boiling.) If the water gets very hot it will go into a great rolling boil – bouillir – which is fine for reducing the volume of liquids but not for very much else.
Many dishes are called boiled but very few are actually boiled. (This word usually indicates that the liquid in which the food is cooked will not be served with it, i.e. boiled bacon, boiled mutton, etc.) Foodstuffs that are actually put into boiling water include eggs in their shells, vegetables, dried vegetables, cereals, and a few flour mixtures like pasta, suet puddings, and dumplings. Of these only the flour mixtures wouldn’t be just as good if cooked more slowly. (That’s because there are air particles which must be kept hot or they will collapse just as in baking pastry or cake.)
Most foods are best poached, i.e. kept at that gentle simmer or frémir as in poaching an egg. In English cookery it is very often the salt meats that are cooked in this way: salt beef, salt pork, bacon, and ham; that’s because immersion in water takes some of the salt taste out of them. Originally such foods were salted for the winter as a way of preserving them. By the time they were used they were very salty and needed a soaking in cold water before they were cooked. If you take my mother’s excellent advice about salt meat you will choose a suitable piece of meat and then ask your butcher to salt it in his brine tub. This will take about three days. After this brief salting it shouldn’t need any soaking, just go ahead and cook it. Don’t buy salt meat at random from the brine tub because the butcher sometimes consigns his old unsold meat to it and if it’s been in there too long it will be excessively salty. The standard rule for cooking salt meat: twenty-five minutes per pound plus twenty-five minutes. However I find that long cooking improves it and I suggest a four-hour minimum for any large piece. You need a pan big enough for the meat to just float and the water to circulate freely.
The French cook is not fond of salt meat; perhaps that has something to do with having a less severe winter and therefore not having to slaughter the animals at the winter solstice. More likely it’s because the liquid in which salt meat has been cooked is quite unusable as stock. With unsalted meat, however, the cooking liquid is served alongside as a soup; see pot-au-feu (pages). Clever frugal French. There’s more about poaching on pages.
CUISSON AU BAIN MARIE
If you put a basin of water inside a saucepan of boiling water, you will find it very difficult to bring the water in the basin to the boil, no matter how furiously you heat the saucepan. The basin will remain at the same temperature, 180º–90ºF., which is right for most cookery; so you can braise, poach, or stew using this type of gadget. All the double-boiler does is make braising, poaching, or stewing easier. It’s a way of cooking delicate mixtures, e.g. egg custard and those sort of thick stews that are too solid to circulate (that daube on page СКАЧАТЬ