Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 Read online

  A Note on Copper Pots

  Copper pots are the most satisfactory of all to cook in, as they hold and spread the heat well, and their tin lining does not discolor foods. A great many tourist or decorative types are currently sold; these are thin and glittering, and have shiny brass handles. To get the full benefit out of cooking in copper, the metal must be ⅛ inch thick, and the handle should be of heavy iron. The interior of the pot is lined with a wash of tin, which must be renewed every several years when it wears off and the copper begins to show through. A copper pot can still be used when this happens if it is scrubbed just before you cook with it, and if the food is removed as soon as it is done. If cooked food remains in a poorly lined pot, some kind of a toxic chemical reaction can take place. It is thus best to have the pot re-tinned promptly.

  In addition to re-tinning, there is the cleaning problem, as copper tarnishes quickly. There are fast modern copper cleaners available. A good homemade mixture is half a cup of white vinegar, and ¼ cup each of table salt and scouring powder. Rub the mixture over the copper, using steel wool if the pot is badly tarnished, then rinse in hot water. The tin lining is cleaned with steel wool and scouring powder, but do not expect it ever to glitter brightly again once you have used the pot for cooking. (All cleaning, alas, removes infinitesimal bits of the tin lining.)

  Never let a copper pot sit empty over heat, or the tin lining will melt. For the same reason, watch your heat when browning meats in copper. If the tin begins to glisten brightly in places, lower your heat.

  No-stick Pots and Pans

  Since our first edition, pans with no-stick surfaces have appeared everywhere, and modern improvements have made their surfaces increasingly more resistant. We are enthusiastic about no-stick cookie sheets, cake pans, muffin tins, and especially no-stick frying pans. What a particular blessing they are for omelettes, sautéed potatoes, and hash. Treat no-stick surfaces with care, however: use wooden or plastic utensils, hide your pans from kooks and non-cooks, and don’t expect the surface to last forever.

  Any of the following items come in enameled cast iron:

  Oval Casseroles

  Oval casseroles are more practical than round ones as they can hold a chicken or a roast of meat as well as a stew or a soup. A good pair would be the 2-quart size about 6 by 8 inches across and 3½ inches high; and a 7- to 8-quart size about 9 by 12 inches across and 6 inches high.

  Baking Dishes

  Round and oval baking dishes can be used for roasting chicken, duck, or meats, or can double as gratin dishes.

  Saucepans

  Saucepans in a range of sizes are essential. One with a metal handle can also be set in the oven.

  Chef’s Skillet and Sauté Pan

  A chef’s skillet, poêle, has sloping sides and is used for browning and tossing small pieces of food like mushrooms or chicken livers; the long handle makes it easy to toss rather than turn the food. A sauté pan, sautoir, has straight sides and is used for sautéing small steaks, liver, or veal scallops, or foods like chicken that are browned then covered to finish their cooking in the sauté pan.

  Besides the usual array of pots, roasters, vegetable peelers, spoons, and spatulas, here are some useful objects which make cooking easier:

  Knives and Sharpening Steel

  A knife should be as sharp as a razor or it mashes and bruises food rather than chopping or cutting it. It can be considered sharp if just the weight of it, drawn across a tomato, slits the skin. No knife will hold a razor-edge for long. The essential point is that it take an edge, and quickly. Plain rustable steel is the easiest to sharpen but discoloration is an annoying problem. Good stainless steel knives are available in cookware and cutlery shops, and probably the best way to test their quality is to buy a small one and try it out. The French chef’s knives, pictured here, are the most useful general-purpose shapes for chopping, mincing, and paring. If you cannot find good knives, consult your butcher or a professionally trained chef.

  Knives should be washed separately and by hand as soon as you have finished using them. Tarnished blades are cleaned easily with steel wool and scouring powder. A magnetic holder screwed to the wall is a practical way of keeping knives always within reach and isolated from other objects that could dull and dent the blades by knocking against them.

  Wooden Spatulas and Rubber Scrapers

  A wooden spatula is more practical for stirring than a wooden spoon; its flat surfaces are easily scraped off on the side of a pan or bowl. You will usually find wooden spatulas only at stores specializing in French imports. The rubber spatula, which can be bought almost anywhere, is indispensable for scraping sauces out of bowls and pans, for stirring, folding, creaming, and smearing.

  Wire Whips or Whisks

  Wire whips, or whisks, are wonderful for beating eggs, sauces, canned soups, and for general mixing. They are easier than the rotary egg beater because you use one hand only. Whisks range from minute to gigantic, and the best selections are in restaurant-supply houses. You should have several sizes including the balloon whip for beating egg whites at the far left; its use is illustrated.

  Bulb Baster and Poultry Shears

  The bulb baster is particularly good for basting meats or vegetables in a casserole, and for degreasing roasts as well as basting them. Some plastic models collapse in very hot fat; a metal tube-end is usually more satisfactory. Poultry shears are a great help in disjointing broilers and fryers; regular steel is more practical than stainless, as the shears can be sharpened more satisfactorily.

  Drum Sieve and Pestle

  The drum sieve, tamis, is used in France when one is instructed to force food through a sieve. The ingredients, such as pounded lobster shells and butter, are placed on the screen and rubbed through it with the pestle. An ordinary sieve placed over a bowl or a food mill can take the place of a tamis.

  The Vegetable Mill (or Food Mill) and Garlic Press

  Two wonderful inventions, the vegetable mill and the garlic press. The vegetable mill purées soups, sauces, vegetables, fruits, raw fish, or mousse mixtures. The best type has 3 removable disks about 5½ inches in diameter, one for fine, one for medium, and one for coarse puréeing. The garlic press will purée a whole, unpeeled clove of garlic, or pieces of onion.

  The Food Processor

  This marvelous machine came into our kitchens in the mid-seventies—fifteen years after the first edition of this book! The processor has revolutionized cooking, making child’s play of some of the most complicated dishes of the haute cuisine—mousses in minutes. Besides all kinds of rapid slicing, chopping, puréeing, and the like, it makes a fine pie crust dough, mayonnaise, and many of the yeast doughs. No serious cook should be without a food processor, especially since respectable budget models can be bought very reasonably.

  Mortar and Pestle

  Small mortars of wood or porcelain are useful for grinding herbs, pounding nuts, and the like. The large mortars are of marble, and are used for pounding or puréeing shellfish, forcemeats, and so on. The electric blender, meat grinder, and food mill take the place of a mortar and pestle in many instances.

  Heavy-Duty Electric Mixer

  1. Whip, for eggs

  2. Dough Hook

  3. Flat Beater, for heavy batters, ground meat, etc.

  A heavy-duty electric mixer makes light work of heavy meat mixtures, fruit cake batters, and yeast doughs as well as beating egg whites beautifully and effortlessly. Its efficient whip not only revolves about itself, but circulates around the properly designed bowl, keeping all of the mass of egg whites in motion all of the time. Other useful attachments include a meat grinder with sausage-stuffing horn and a hot-water jack which attaches to the bottom of the stainless steel bowl. It’s expensive, but solidly built and a life-long aid to anyone who does lots of cooking.

  DEFINITIONS

  WE HAVE TRIED, in this book, to use ordinary American cooking terms familiar to anyone who has been around a kitchen, but we list a few definitions here to avoid possible mi
sunderstanding.

  BASTE, arroser To spoon melted butter, fat, or liquid over foods.

  BEAT, fouetter To mix foods or liquids thoroughly and vigorously with a spoon, fork, or whip, or an electric beater. When you beat, train yourself to use your lower-arm and wrist muscles; if you beat from your shoulder you will tire quickly.

  BLANCH, blanchir To plunge food into boiling water and to boil it until it has softened, or wilted, or is partially or fully cooked. Food is also blanched to remove too strong a taste, such as for cabbage or onions, or for the removal of the salty, smoky taste of bacon.

  BLEND, mélanger To mix foods together in a less vigorous way than by beating, usually with a fork, spoon, or spatula.

  BOIL, bouillir Liquid is technically at the boil when it is seething, rolling, and sending up bubbles. But in practice there are slow, medium, and fast boils. A very slow boil, when the liquid is hardly moving except for a bubble at one point, is called to simmer, mijoter. An even slower boil with no bubble, only the barest movement on the surface of the liquid, is called “to shiver,” frémir, and is used for poaching fish or other delicate foods.

  BRAISE, braiser To brown foods in fat, then cook them in a covered casserole with a small amount of liquid. We have also used the term for vegetables cooked in butter in a covered casserole, as there is no English equivalent for étuver.

  COAT A SPOON, napper la cuillère This term is used to indicate the thickness of a sauce, and it seems the only way to describe it. A spoon dipped into a cream soup and withdrawn would be coated with a thin film of soup. Dipped into a sauce destined to cover food, the spoon would emerge with a fairly thick coating.

  DEGLAZE, déglacer After meat has been roasted or sautéed, and the pan degreased, liquid is poured into the pan and all the flavorful coagulated cooking juices are scraped into it as it simmers. This is an important step in the preparation of all meat sauces from the simplest to the most elaborate, for the deglaze becomes part of the sauce, incorporating into it some of the flavor of the meat. Thus sauce and meat are a logical complement to each other.

  DEGREASE, dégraisser To remove accumulated fat from the surface of hot liquids.

  Sauces, Soups, and Stocks

  To remove accumulated fat from the surface of a sauce, soup, or stock which is simmering, use a long-handled spoon and draw it over the surface, dipping up a thin layer of fat. It is not necessary to remove all the fat at this time.

  When the cooking is done, remove all the fat. If the liquid is still hot, let it settle for 5 minutes so the fat will rise to the surface. Then spoon it off, tipping the pot or kettle so that a heavier fat deposit will collect at one side and can more easily be removed. When you have taken up as much as you can—it is never a quick process—draw strips of paper towels over the surface until the last floatíng fat globules have been blotted up.

  It is easier, of course, to chill the liquid, for then the fat congeals on the surface and can be scraped off.

  Roasts

  To remove fat from a pan while the meat is still roasting, tilt the pan and scoop out the fat which collects in the corner. Use a bulb baster or a big spoon. It is never necessary to remove all the fat at this time, just the excess. This de-greasing should be done quickly, so your oven will not cool. If you take a long time over it, add a few extra minutes to your total roasting figure.

  After the roast has been taken from the pan, tilt the pan, then with a spoon or a bulb baster remove the fat that collects in one corner, but do not take up the browned juices, as these will go into your sauce. Usually a tablespoon or two of fat is left in the pan; it will give body and flavor to the sauce.

  Another method—and this can be useful if you have lots of juice—is to place a trayful of ice cubes in a sieve lined with 2 or 3 thicknesses of damp cheesecloth and set over a saucepan. Pour the fat and juices over the ice cubes; most of the fat will collect and congeal on the ice. As some of the ice will melt into the saucepan, rapidly boil down the juices to concentrate their flavor.

  Casseroles

  For stews, daubes, and other foods which cook in a casserole, tip the casserole and the fat will collect at one side. Spoon it off, or suck it up with a bulb baster. Or strain off all the sauce into a pan, by placing the casserole cover askew and holding the casserole in both hands with your thumbs clamped to the cover while you pour out the liquid. Then degrease the sauce in the pan, and return the sauce to the casserole.

  New Edition Note: An efficient degreasing pitcher now exists: pour in the hot meat juices and let the fat rise to the surface. Pour out clear juices—the spout opening is at the bottom of the pitcher; stop when fat appears in the spout.

  DICE, couper en dés To cut food into cubes the shape of dice, usually about ⅛ inch in size as illustrated on this page.

  FOLD, incorporer To blend a fragile mixture, such as beaten egg whites, delicately into a heavier mixture, such as a soufflé base. This is described and illustrated in the Soufflé section on this page. To fold also means to mix delicately without breaking or mashing, such as folding cooked artichoke hearts or brains into a sauce.

  GRATINÉ To brown the top of a sauced dish, usually under a hot broiler. A sprinkling of bread crumbs or grated cheese, and dots of butter, help to form a light brown covering (gratin) over the sauce.

  MACERATE, macérer; MARINATE, mariner To place foods in a liquid so they will absorb flavor, give off flavor, or become more tender. Macerate is the term usually reserved for fruits, such as: cherries macerated in sugar and alcohol. Marinate is used for meats: beef marinated in red wine. A marinade is a pickle, brine, or souse, or a mixture of wine or vinegar, oil, and condiments.

  MINCE, hacher To chop foods very fine, as illustrated on this page.

  NAP, napper To cover food with a sauce which is thick enough to adhere, but supple enough so that the outlines of the food are preserved.

  POACH, pocher Food submerged and cooked in a liquid that is barely simmering or shivering. The term can also be used poetically for such things as “chicken breasts poached in butter.”

  PURÉE, réduire en purée To render solid foods into a mash, such as applesauce or mashed potatoes. This may be done in a mortar, a meat grinder, a food mill, an electric blender, or through a sieve.

  REDUCE, réduire To boil down a liquid, reducing it in quantity, and concentrating its taste. This is a most important step in saucemaking.

  REFRESH, rafraîchir To plunge hot food into cold water in order to cool it quickly and stop the cooking process, or to wash it off.

  SAUTÉ, sauter To cook and brown food in a very small quantity of very hot fat, usually in an open skillet. You may sauté food merely to brown it, as you brown the beef for a stew. Or you may sauté until the food is cooked through, as for slices of liver. Sautéing is one of the most important of the primary cooking techniques, and it is often badly done because one of the following points has not been observed:

  1) The sautéing fat must be very hot, almost smoking, before the food goes into the pan, otherwise there will be no sealing-in of juices, and no browning. The sautéing medium may be fat, oil, or butter and oil. Plain butter cannot be heated to the required temperature without burning, so it must either be fortified with oil or be clarified—rid of its milky residue as described on this page.

  2) The food must be absolutely dry. If it is damp, a layer of steam develops between the food and the fat preventing the browning and searing process.

  3) The pan must not be crowded. Enough air space must be left between each piece of food or it will steam rather than brown, and its juices will escape and burn in the pan.

  TOSS, faire sauter Instead of turning food with a spoon or a spatula, you can make it flip over by tossing the pan. The classic example is tossing a pancake so it flips over in mid-air. But tossing is also a useful technique for cooking vegetables, as a toss is often less bruising than a turn. If you are cooking in a covered casserole, grasp it in both hands with your thumbs clamped to the cover. Toss the pan with an up-and
-down, slightly jerky, circular motion. The contents will flip over and change cooking levels. For an open saucepan use the same movement, holding the handle with both hands, thumbs up. A back-and-forth slide is used for a skillet. Give it a very slight upward jerk just as you draw it back toward you.

  INGREDIENTS

  EXCEPT FOR WINES AND SPIRITS, and possibly foie gras and truffles, all the ingredients called for in this book are available in the average American grocery store. The following list is an explanation of the use of some items: