Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (48 page)

Put a slice of prosciutto in the bottom of a saucepan with some butter and a
bouquet garni
made of carrot, celery, and sprigs of parsley; on top of this place the mutton chops, carved from the loin and left whole; season with salt and pepper. Brown the meat on both
sides, add another bit of butter if necessary, and then add chicken gizzards, livers, sweetbreads, and fresh mushrooms or reconstituted dried mushrooms, all chopped. When everything has browned, moisten with broth and cook over a slow fire. Bind the sauce with a little flour, and lastly add half a glass, or even less, of good white wine that you have boiled in a separate pan until reduced by half. Boil a little longer until the wine is absorbed in the sauce. Just before serving, remove the prosciutto and the
bouquet garni
, strain the sauce, and skim off the fat.

Instead of mutton, you can prepare a fillet of veal in the same way, adding peas to the other ingredients. If you make these two dishes carefully, they will come out delicious.

Remove all the tough leaves from the artichokes and cut them into four or five wedges. Take a slice of untrimmed prosciutto, chop it very fine, mix it with a little butter, and spread this mixture on the artichoke wedges. Pound and flatten the chops, which can be of veal or beef, season with salt and pepper, and place two or three artichoke sections in the center of each cutlet. Then roll them up and tie them crosswise with twine.

Finely chop a little onion and place it in a saucepan with butter and oil; when the onion is nice and brown, arrange the cutlets in the saucepan and season again with salt and pepper. When the cutlets have browned, finish cooking with tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with water. Remove the twine before sending to the table.

The meat of the fillet is the most tender, but if some knave of a butcher should give you the part with all the tendons, you can rest assured that your cat will end up getting half of it.

Take a fillet weighing about 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds), roll it up, tie it, and put on the fire with a medium-sized onion cut into
thin slices, along with several small slices of prosciutto and a bit of butter. Season sparingly with salt and pepper. When the meat is browned all over and the onion has dissolved, sprinkle with a pinch of flour. Let the flour brown, and then moisten with broth or water. Simmer slowly, then strain the sauce, and skim off the fat. This done, put the meat back on the fire in the sauce, along with three fingers of Marsala wine. Simmer again slowly. Send to the table with the reduced sauce (be careful not to make it too thick by using too much flour).

You can also stud the fillet with lardoons and cook just with butter and Marsala wine.

Since one often hears people in restaurants asking for fillet Parisian style—perhaps because it is a simple, healthy, nutritious dish—I suppose I should say a few things about it, and describe how it is cooked. Have the butcher cut you some round cutlets about as thick as your finger from the best part of the beef fillet. Sauté in butter that has already browned a little over a high flame. Season with salt and pepper, and when the cutlets have formed a crust all over so that they stay juicy and rare on the inside, sprinkle a pinch of chopped parsley over them and remove immediately from the fire. But before taking it to the table, cover the fillet with brown stock or some similar sauce, or—more simply yet—serve the cutlets with the juice left over in the pan, adding a pinch of flour and some broth to make a sauce.

Take a lean veal cutlet weighing between 300 and 400 grams (about 10-1/2 and 14 ounces); pound and flatten well. Beat three or four eggs, seasoning them with salt and pepper, a pinch of grated Parmesan cheese, and some chopped parsley. Fry the eggs in butter as if you were making an omelette about as wide as the cutlet. Lay the omelette on top of the cutlet, cutting off the excess and using these pieces to fill in any empty spots. Once you have done this, roll up the veal chop tightly with the egg inside, and tie it; then roll in flour and put in a
saucepan with butter, seasoning with salt and pepper. When the veal is nice and brown all over, finish cooking in broth. Serve in its own sauce, which will turn out quite thick on account of the flour.

Sformati filled with cutlets or giblets are usually made with vegetables, rice, or semolina. If you choose semolina, use recipe 230, blend all the butter and Parmesan cheese into the mixture, pour into a plain mold, or a mold with a hole in the center, which you have greased with butter while lining its bottom with a sheet of buttered paper. The meat stuffing, which you will put in the middle of the semolina or as a sauce in the hole in the mold, should be cooked with a dash of truffles or of dried mushrooms, which will give it a delicate flavor. Cook in
bain-marie
and serve hot with the sauce poured over it to give it a nicer appearance.

This dough takes the place of bread to eat with the filling, which can be any kind of stewed meat or mushrooms.

300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of Hungarian flour

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of butter

an additional 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of brewer’s yeast

3 egg yolks

2 deciliters (about 4/5 of a cup) of heavy cream or high-grade milk

salt to taste

I should warn you that you will have a little more cream than you need.

With a quarter of the flour, the yeast, and a little of the cream, which should be lukewarm, make a small loaf like a
Krapfen
and set it aside to rise. Knead the rest of the flour together with 70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of butter (softened beforehand in wintertime), the egg yolks, the salt, the little loaf after it has risen to twice its original size, and enough lukewarm cream to make a dough of the right consistency, which you should be able knead in a bowl with a wooden spoon. You will know that you have worked the dough enough when it begins to come away from the sides of the bowl as you knead; then set it aside to rise in a warm place. When the dough has risen, pour it on a floured pastry board, and after dusting your hands with flour, roll it out to a thickness of 1/2 a centimeter (about 1/5 of an inch).

Take a smooth mold with a hole in the middle; the mold should have a capacity of about 1 1/2 liters (about 1-1/2 quarts), so that the dough will fill it only halfway. Grease the mold and dust it with flour, cut the dough into strips, and arrange them in layers until you run out of dough. Melt the 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of additional butter, and us it to brush each layer of dough before adding the next. Cover the mold and set aside so that the dough can rise again; when it reaches the rim of the mold, bake in an oven or a Dutch oven.

Add the filling after you have removed the pudding from the mold. Serves five to six people.

Prepare a good brown stock to use both for the rice and for the giblets. First saute in butter the giblets (to which you can add a few thin slices of prosciutto if you like), seasoning with salt and pepper. Then finish cooking with brown stock. Adding a dash of mushrooms or truffles can only make the giblets taste better.

Sauté the rice in butter and nothing else, then cook until done with boiling water. Season with brown stock, and when done, with Parmesan cheese. When the rice has cooled a little, add beaten egg in the proportion of two eggs per 300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of rice.

Take a smooth round or oval-shaped mold, grease with butter and line the bottom with buttered paper. Pour in the rice and bake until solid. After removing the rice from the mold, pour over it the giblet sauce, which you have first thickened a little with a pinch of flour. Serve the sformato surrounded with the giblets, swimming in more of the sauce.

The lovely and most gracious Signora Adele wishes me to tell you how to make this mold of hers, which has a very delicate flavor.

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of butter

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of flour

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of Gruyere cheese

112 a liter (about 1/2 a quart) of milk

4 eggs

Make a béchamel sauce with the flour, milk, and butter, and before removing it from the fire add the Gruyère, grated or cut into small pieces, and salt. Once the sauce has cooled a little, add the eggs, first the yolks one at a time, and then the whites, beaten until stiff.

Pour this mixture into a smooth mold with a hole in the middle after greasing the mold with butter and dusting it with bread crumbs. Bake in a Dutch oven and serve filled with stewed giblets or sweetbreads.

Serves six pe’ople.

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of milk-fed veal

1 chicken breast weighing about 130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces
)

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of untrimmed prosciutto

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of grated Parmesan cheese

3 eggs

a dash of nutmeg

a pinch of salt

Using a mezzaluna, chop the veal, chicken breast, and prosciutto and then put them in a mortar along with the butter, Parmesan cheese, and a bit of crustless bread soaked in milk. Crush it all very well until the mixture is fine enough to pass through a sieve. Put the puréed mixture in a bowl and add three tablespoons of béchamel sauce (recipe 137). For this dish, the béchamel should have the consistency of a soft paste. Add the eggs and nutmeg and blend well.

Take a smooth tin mold, grease it with butter and line the bottom with a sheet of buttered paper cut to size; pour in the mixture and bake in
bain-marie
.

After removing the pudding from the mold, remove the paper from the top and in its place sprinkle a mixture made up of chopped chicken livers cooked in brown stock. Serve hot. If it turns out well, everyone will praise it for its delicacy.

But now is a good time to say that all dishes made with fillings of ground meat are heavier on the stomach than foods that need to be chewed because, as I have said before, saliva is one of the elements that contribute to digestion.

Because of its ingredients, this is a nutritious pudding that I believe can satisfy the delicate taste of the ladies.

Using three pork brains, which can weigh up to about 400 grams (about 14 ounces), you will need:

2 whole eggs

1 egg yolk

240 grams (about 8-1/2 ounces) of cream

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of grated Parmesan cheese

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter

a dash of nutmeg

salt to taste

By cream I mean the heavy cream that dairies prepare for whipping.

Put the brains on the fire with the butter; salt them and cook, stirring often so that they do not stick to the pan. Take care not to let them brown. Then pass them through a sieve. Add the Parmesan, nutmeg, beaten eggs, and cream, and blend well. Pour this mixture into a smooth mold greased with cold butter and cook in
bain-marie
.