French Provincial Cooking (98 page)

For a 12 lb. turkey cooked at Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., the average cooking time is about 3
hours. Turn it over at half time. Do not attempt to cook a large turkey in a small oven at a high temperature, for it will dry up and the outside will burn.

For the sauce, a little white wine or Madeira can be added to the buttery juices in the pan, and the whole quickly boiled up in a small saucepan.

In France, a salad such as the beetroot and celery one on page 150, rather than vegetables, is usually served with the turkey.

If you prepare your chestnut and apple stuffing a day or two in advance, remember to take it out of the refrigerator some time before cooking the turkey. If it is icy cold when the bird is put into the oven it will be so long before the heat penetrates that it will not do its work of lubricating the bird.

The flavour of guinea fowl is mid-way between that of the chicken and the pheasant. It can be an excellent bird when well cooked but tends to be rather dry. So it is best cooked according to pheasant rather than chicken recipes. All the methods given for pheasant on pages 419-21 can be applied to guinea fowl, including, for an old bird, the one with rice, sausages and sweet peppers.

A plain roast duck is one of the most excellent of dishes but one of the most difficult of all roasts to get quite right, for if the breast is properly cooked and still just pink inside, the legs are almost bound to be uneatably underdone. If the bird is only for rather small helpings for three or four people, this doesn’t matter, for only the breast and wings are served, carved into elegant long pieces, the legs being kept and recooked for a second dish next day. But if the whole duck is to be eaten at one meal, then the legs must be properly cooked as well. In either case it seems preferable to me to roast the bird slowly, and during the process to get rid of at least some of the excess fat. For while chicken, turkey, veal and some beef cuts need extra basting fat, pork, duck and goose are best moistened with stock, wine or slightly salted water.

Suppose you have bought a full-grown 5 lb. duck which, when drawn and dressed, will weigh about 3 lb., start off then by making a stock as follows: put the giblets (but not the liver) in a small saucepan with, if possible, 2 or 3 tablespoons of white wine or vermouth; a small sliced onion, a little piece of carrot and a chopped unpeeled tomato. Let the wine bubble and reduce for a couple of minutes. Add a little salt and a bouquet of herbs including parsley, thyme and celery leaves. Cover with
pint of water and simmer gently for an hour or so.

To cook the duck, turn on the oven low, to Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F. If the duck has been trussed with a wooden skewer thrust through the legs and its tail end rearing up in the air, remove the skewer so that the duck lies flat. Rub it all over with olive oil. Put it
on its side
, in the roasting tin, and leave it to cook uncovered for 30 minutes. Now pour from the tin all the fat which has run out. Turn the bird over on to its other side. Over it pour
pint of the strained stock, hot. Leave it another 30 minutes. Turn it breast upwards and cook another 10 minutes, for the skin of the breast to brown. Pour off the stock to serve separately as a sauce. There will not be much surplus fat to get rid of, because most of it has already been removed by the first operation of pouring it from the tin. Heat it quickly in a saucepan, adding what flavour you please, such as the finely pared, shredded and blanched rind of a Seville orange, a handful of stoned cherries, a few drops of orange or cherry-flavoured liqueur and so on. Alternatively, the duck could be stuffed with its liver as described in the recipe for
canard à /a serviette
, and the sauce made in the same way.

Do not throw away the fat from the duck. It is valuable for frying bread, for sauté potatoes and so on.

A duck of this size should just about serve six people; but it must, although full grown, not be an elderly animal fit only for braising or stewing; and a duckling, which will weigh only about 2 lb. when plucked and drawn, needs only about 45 minutes’ cooking by this slow-roasting system. But although this size bird is what is technically known as a duckling, full-grown young birds, weighing anything up to 6 lb. gross weight, are now commonly sold by English poulterers as ducklings. On the whole they are better value than the very small duckling or
caneton
.

For a 5 lb. duck (weight before drawing and dressing), the other ingredients are 2 onions, 4 carrots, a little piece of turnip and a small stick of celery, 4 to 6 oz. of salt pork or streaky bacon, olive oil or butter, seasonings, bouquet of herbs, 3 lb. of very small new peas or a large tin of French or Belgian
petits pois extra fins.

Buy the duck the day before it is to be cooked. Have it trussed flat, not rearing up like a heraldic animal as is customary for roasting ducks in this country. Rub it all over with coarse salt and leave in a big dish until next day.

Prepare a generous
pint of good stock by simmering the giblets of the duck, an onion, 2 carrots, a bouquet and the rind of the salt pork or bacon in water, with seasonings, for a good hour. Strain.

In a heavy oval braising pot heat a little olive oil or butter. Put in the salt pork or bacon cut into strips. Add 2 diced carrots, a finely-sliced onion and the little pieces of turnip and celery. When the fat from the salt pork or bacon is running, put in the duck from which the excess salt has been wiped with a soft cloth. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 5 minutes until the vegetables are beginning to brown and the fat is running from the duck. It is an improvement to the finished dish if the duck is now removed from the pan and all the fat poured off. Put back the bird. Pour in the heated stock. Put in the bouquet of bayleaf, thyme and parsley. Add a little freshly-ground pepper but no salt. Cover the pan. Transfer to a preheated oven at Gas No. 3, 330 deg. F., and cook for an hour. Now pour all but a very little of the stock out of the pan into a bowl. Return the duck and the bacon, etc., to the oven and leave uncovered so that the skin of the bird can cook golden and crisp.

If fresh peas are being used, half cook them in salted water, strain them and put them round the duck to finish cooking. If tinned
petits pois
are to be used (it is impossible to use English tinned garden peas because, so far as I know, all of them have added green colouring matter, and this will quite ruin the appearance of the dish), strain off their liquid and put them, without further ado, into the pan with the duck.

By the time the duck and peas are ready, in about another 15 minutes, the gravy you have poured off should be fairly cool and the fat risen to the top. Pour this off. Quickly reheat the remaining clear gravy in a small saucepan, tasting it to see if the seasoning is right. Transfer duck, peas, bacon or pork and all the little pieces of vegetable to a sizzling hot serving dish. The gravy is to be served separately.

Readers may think all this represents rather a performance for a simple dish of duck and green peas. But, on second thoughts, they will probably realise that duck, which can be so good, is a fat bird and, if care is not taken with the cooking, may easily produce a greasy dish. In this recipe the overnight salting of the bird, the successive pouring off of the fat and clearing of the gravy will, if carefully attended to, produce a finished dish which is neither cloying nor too fatty. It is, after all, attention to these small extra details which makes the whole difference between a rough and ready dish and one which a Frenchman would call
soigné.

Cook your duck exactly as above and prepare a couple of heads of celery as described for celery stewed in butter on page 248. Keep them rather under-cooked and transfer them to the pan with the duck instead of the peas. Celery goes particularly well with duck.

For this dish, the proper cherries to use are the bitter, bright red morellos, the equivalent of the ones the French call
griottes.

A 4 to 5 lb. duck is browned lightly in butter, in a
daubière
or braising pot, with 3 or 4 carrots, a small sliced onion, a bouquet of parsley, thyme and bayleaf, and a calf’s foot split in two. Add a wineglass (6 oz.) of white wine and a pint of stock made from the giblets of the duck. Add seasoning, cover the pot and cook very gently either on top of the stove or in the oven for 1
hours. Remove the duck and cook the rest of the contents for another 1
hours. Strain the sauce into a bowl and, when it has set, remove all the fat. Stew
lb. of stoned morello cherries with a little sugar for a minute or two. Heat up the stock, clarify it if necessary (see page 72) and pour it into a square or oblong mould, terrine or tin, over the strained cherries.