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Overview
This charming little book was first published in 1956, when people in England were still enduring postwar restrictions on both traveling and eating. In the words of its author, Lesley Blanch, “benign fate whisked me elsewhere to follow less restricted ways, travelling widely and eating wildly.”
Her gastronomic world tour includes eighty recipes, each prefaced by an account of where they were first tasted or with some amusing anecdote. You’ll find delicious dishes from her journeys around Europe and to the Middle East and Far East, Africa, the Pacific, Central and South America, and even a good old Baked Virginia Ham from the USA.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781909808713 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grub Street |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| Sales rank: | 1,033,607 |
| File size: | 13 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
EUROPE
PAIN PERDU
(LOST BREAD: FROM FRANCE)
(FOR 6)
(In England this dish is called The Poor Knights of Windsor)
The French nation is celebrated all over the world for its wonderful food. It is true that every country has some special dish, but perhaps the French have more than any other. In any case, they are all deeply interested in good cooking, take a lot of trouble over even the simplest everyday food, and care passionately what they eat. 'Serious' is an adjective often applied to gastronomy. 'Une maison serieuse' they say of a restaurant they recommend: or, of a woman who cooks really well — 'une femme serieuse.' Praise could go no higher. The celebrated French chef, Monsieur Vatel, stabbed himself to death when the fish did not arrive in time for a dinner in honour of Louis XIV. But it is just this fact, that they do take so much trouble over the simplest food, that makes the French such famous cooks; it is far more how they cook than what they cook that has made them celebrated.
I have chosen here some of the simplest dishes; but prepared with a lot of care and attention, they have become famous all over the world. Pain Perdu, for example, is eaten throughout France as a favourite dessert. It is, in fact, a variation of bread and butter pudding, though rather more elegant. I first learned to make it, along with several other good French dishes, when our house in the Midi was swarming with village builders who were taking their own time in repairing its crumbling walls. Although the Midi is not, strictly speaking un centre gastronomique like Strasbourg or Lyons, I always noticed the builders were deeply interested in food, and during their two hours mid-day break they would sit in the shade under the olives, swigging red wine and discussing the merits of one kind of saucisson or another. They never left the house without saying Bon Appétit!, and sometimes they would come into the kitchen, lifting saucepan lids, advising and discussing my efforts most knowledgeably. After a heated argument with the foreman over the respective merits of tchaktchouka and ratatouille (both simmered vegetables, one from Tunis, the other from Provence) I found I was treated with a new warmth. The mason was heard to remark to the plumber that some English cared what they eat: and when the carpenter built new shelves for my modest batterie de cuisine he said 'Tiens! Madame does not content herself with sandwiches, then?'
After that, it was one long, delightful causerie gastronomique. Advice was lavished on me. Elaborate and unpronounceable regional foods were described to me in the bewildering local patois. Out of all the confusion, came such pleasures as Panisse, Pain Bagnia, and Pain Perdu, too.
And once, on a day of overpowering heat, before we had achieved a refrigerator, and when our larder was bare, five unexpected guests descended, all very vivacious, and sat about, getting increasingly glum as they waited to be fed. Tiptoeing to the back door, I confided in the builders, who took over completely. Mario brought in a neighbour's chicken and started plucking it, while Caesar fetched vegetables from his own terre as they call their little allotment gardens. These are often a mile or so beyond the village, where they all live huddled in gardenless houses behind the medieval fortress walls. Marcel, the foreman, clumped into the kitchen to show me how to make Pain Perdu — a dish he had often described lyrically but which I had dismissed as too much trouble.
I shall always remember him, far too large for the kitchen, covered in cement splashes, his huge paws delicately beating eggs and measuring sugar. No doubt he made life unbearable for his wife in her own kitchen; no doubt he was then the one sitting about glumly waiting to be fed. But in my kitchen he was the hero who saved the day and taught me how to make Pain Perdu. Here it is:
6 slices stale while bread
225ml/½ cup milk
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons butter Cinnamon
Take 6 slices stale white bread about 1/2 inch thick. Remove crusts. Bring to a boil the milk with 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. Pour the milk into a soup plate or flat dish. Cool a little and dip the slices of bread in it. Dip them fast, in and out, so they do not become soggy or break, and lay them on a plate to drain, while you beat up the yolks of 3 eggs. Put these in another soup plate, and dip your slices of bread in the egg mixture, carefully but quickly, so that each side gets evenly eggy. Use a spatula to handle them. Put them to drain on a clean cloth, or a big sheet of paper for a moment or two. Now melt some butter — for 6 slices about 2 tablespoons — in a frying pan. When it starts to smoke, that is the moment to fry the slices very quickly, first one side, then the other. When they are a pale golden brown they are done. Sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon and serve them piled up and wrapped in a clean napkin to keep them warm. 'The dish is none the worse for it, and it looks genteel', as one old cook-book says.
BRANDADE OF CODFISH
(FROM BRITTANY)
(FOR 4)
This takes rather a long time to prepare, but it is superlatively good, particularly as made in Brittany, where the fishermen and their families, living in those austere white-washed villages along the savage, rocky coastline, live largely on fish. Fresh or salted cod spells dullness to me, unless it is transformed, as in a brandade. Personally, when young, I grew to loathe codfish, for we were served nauseous hunks of it at school; and, later, much of my life seems to have been spent cooking cods' heads for my many cats. In retrospect I see myself, like the daughter of Herodias, always confronted by a reproachful head on a platter.
But brandade banishes all such memories. Here codfish undergoes a magical change, and steps up into the class of pâté, and can very well be the pièce de résistance for a party. There are several variations of brandade. Catherine, my Basque cook, at once a tower of strength and an emotional tempest in the kitchen, advocates the Provençal, no-milk way, but I prefer the Breton way. This is how to make it:
675g/1½ pounds codfish, salted or dried
4 or 5 cloves of garlic
300ml/1 cup milk
300ml/1 cup olive oil Salt and black pepper
Take the salted, or dried, codfish, and let it soak all night in cold water to cover. Next day drain the fish, bring it to a boil in fresh water, and let simmer. After 5 minutes it should be cooked tender. Drain again, cut it in small pieces removing all the bones and skin. Mash in a lot of garlic. No good making a brandade if you don't like garlic, for this needs a lot of it. Use about 4 to 5 garlic cloves, peeled, chopped small, and then crushed, or mashed, into the fish. Warm the milk in a small saucepan. In another saucepan heat the salad oil (olive oil is best). Keep them on a very low fire; they must not boil. It is best, once they are warm, just to stand them near the fire, not on it. Now add alternate spoonfuls, first one of milk, then one of oil, to the fish, stirring 1 or 2 minutes between each addition. The stirring and mashing is best done with a wooden spoon.
When all the milk and oil are gone, and you are positively worn out with stirring, your brandade should be ready, a lovely, thick, smooth purée, looking like mashed potatoes. Add pepper and salt (it should be highly seasoned). You can eat it hot or cold. If hot, then warm it up thoroughly in a saucepan, over a low flame, and serve with quarters of lemon and perhaps little triangles of fried bread (see p. 15). If served cold, it is best with dry toast.
GREEN SALAD
(FROM FRANCE)
(FOR 4)
You may wonder why I write about salads in a cookery book. But a green salad is one of the 'musts' with every French meal, in every province, a sort of signature to any French menu, so perhaps something about how to make the best kind is appropriate here. The classic French one is about the best I know. While in America they overdress their salads, in England salad is generally underdressed to the point of nudity, and apt to be interpreted as large wet lettuce leaves with perhaps some beetroot, all floating in water and vinegar and thus unfit for man or rabbit. The French, great classicists, frown on the American habit of secreting unlikely substances in their salads, cubes of cream cheese, tinned fruit, or dollops of jam, but I am not surprised. When I was in the States these large bowls of mystery seemed to assume the proportion of some unlucky dip; whatever you fished up was bound to be wrong — from the point of view of the classic salad, that is. In France, a salad is always eaten as a course by itself, sometimes with cheese, but after, never with, the main dish. It is usually of plain lettuce, sometimes of endive, or mâche (lamb's lettuce, or field salad), or else chicory, but that is about all. Sometimes tomatoes are added, beetroot never. Mayonnaise is not used for this plain green salad but it is reserved for special kinds, such as potato salad. An oil and vinegar, or lemon, dressing is usual, and the bowl is well rubbed with garlic. Now here is the way to make a really good French salad.
1 head lettuce or 4 heads chicory or 1 head endive Garlic (optional)
3 tablespoons peanut oil or olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice or tarragon vinegar or light white wine vinegar
½ teaspoon salt Pepper to taste
¼ teaspoon dry mustard (optional)
¼ teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons chopped spring onions (optional)
2 tablespoons parsley (optional)
2 tablespoons fresh dill (optional)
1. Mix the salad in a bowl really large enough to be able to turn it easily without pieces falling overboard. For 4 people, you'd be surprised what a large bowl you need.
2. Be sure your salad leaves have been well washed and are really well dried. You will never get a good salad if water remains in. Shake your wet lettuce several times, swinging it round and round in a salad basket, or, if you haven't one, a clean cloth. Now let it drain and dry in the air for 10 minutes. Shake it again in a dry cloth. It should be crisp, fresh, yet quite dry.
3. Rub your bowl with a piece of garlic if you like the flavour. It improves a salad greatly.
4. Mix your dressing: for 1 head of lettuce, enough for 4 people, put in 3 tablespoons oil. (I find peanut oil the lightest and best for salads, and it does not have that very strong taste which some people find disagreeable in olive oil.) Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice or tarragon vinegar or light white wine vinegar; add nearly ½ teaspoon salt, a big shake of pepper, ¼ teaspoon dry mustard or not, as you like, and ¼ teaspoon sugar. Mix all this into your oil and vinegar and stir well. Pour into the salad bowl.
5. Put in half your salad leaves and turn them thoroughly till they are all well covered with the dressing. Then put in the other half and continue turning it lightly, but thoroughly. Don't mash it, or the leaves will be sodden. Just keep turning lightly, over and over. To finish, you can sprinkle with fine-chopped spring onions, the green stalk part, about 2 tablespoons; or fine-chopped parsley; or better still, fresh dill, chopped fine. This gives a most delicate, delicious flavour. I know all this sounds a long troublesome process, but it is well worth it. Once you have mastered this art — for so the French consider it — you will find most people want to eat your salad in preference to any other.
ROQUEBRUNE TARTINE
(FROM PROVENCE)
(FOR 4)
This is properly known as Pain Bagnia, a specialIty of the lovely coast between Menton and Marseilles; but as we eat it a great deal in my home village of Roquebrune, among the olives and cypress groves hanging high above the Mediterranean and the little harbour of Monaco, I call it Roquebrune Tartine. It is very simple to make; a perfect picnic food. Indeed, I don't know what we should do without it in Roquebrune, for the hazards of housekeeping there are considerable. So many feast-days or Saints' days are announced by the clanging of the church bell, Grande Margharita as it is called locally, and then within an hour or so, the few shops empty, and the grocer, the butcher and the baker go out to celebrate, to drink their wine and to play boule at the vine-shaded bowling ground. Far below, you may glimpse a few tin cockle-shell boats in the bay. Maybe — but only maybe — a fisherman will climb up to the village, through the terraced groves of olives, bringing his catch. His arrival is announced by a handbell and clapper, at which everyone who wants some fish (and all the cats of the village) rushes to the Place des Deux Frères. Sometimes the rival fish-merchant turns up too. She is rising eighty, and usually gets a lift up the hill in the municipal dust-cart, her basket balanced on the mound of garbage, so that I, for one, do not patronize her. Thus, as you see, housekeeping can be a chancy affair and Roquebrune Tartine is a great stand-by.
1 loaf long French bread or 4 French rolls Garlic
10 stoned ripe olives
1 red pimento
2 tomatoes Few cooked green string beans (optional)
3 or 4 anchovies
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar
Get a long French loaf, or 4 French rolls, cut them in half, lengthwise. Rub cut surfaces with garlic. Spread them with a mash of the following: 10 stoned ripe olives, 1 sliced red pimento, 2 small tomatoes, and a few strips of green string beans if you have them. Some people add 3 or 4 anchovies, but they have a very strong taste, so be cautious. Mix everything together with about 2 tablespoons olive oil, and 1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice. When the mixture has become nice and smooth, spread it thickly over the bread. Now put the 2 halves of your loaf or rolls back together, and either tie round with string, or put them under a pastry board or tray with something heavy on top. Leave them to settle down a bit — say an hour at least. Then they are ready. Perfect picnic food.
VEAL MARENGO
(FROM FRANCE)
(FOR 6)
Napoleon said that an army marched on its stomach: he himself was not a great gourmet, only insisting on a roast chicken, on the instant, whenever he called for it. This necessitated a complicated arrangement by which a series of birds were always roasting, in relays, the clock round. Napoleon's generals, however, appear to have taken the question of cuisine very seriously, and we find that at least one culinary classic derives from the Napoleonic campaigns. Mayonnaise takes its name from a later general, MacMahon, who, when bivouacked in some devastated village during the Crimean campaign was told the fish could have no sauce, there was nothing left but some oil and a few eggs. 'Then look sharp and make a sauce with them', was his reply; and thus came the sublime mayonnaise (mahonnaise) we know today. Similarly, after the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon and his staff, cold, tired, and hungry, found themselves separated from their supply wagons. The one cook who was with them had nothing for supper but chickens and nothing to cook with them but some tomatoes. He made what turned out to be a culinary masterpiece by cooking the chickens in oil with cognac, and making a sauce of tomatoes. It sounds simple, but I daresay the brandy added a very special flavour. Since then dishes with a preponderance of tomato flavouring are often loosely dubbed 'Marengo'. Here, then, is Veal Marengo (without brandy, however).
1.3-1.8kg/3-4 pounds veal rump
150ml/½ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion
3 tablespoons flour Salt and pepper
300ml/1 cup water
3 tablespoons tomato purée Pinch of dried mixed herbs
225g/½ pound mushrooms
For 6 people, take the veal rump — cut in 4cm/1½ inch cubes. Put the olive oil and butter into a big frying pan or any dish you can heat over the flame. Put your veal into this and cook rather fast, turning frequently till it becomes a reddish colour. This should take about 10 minutes. Peel and cut thin 1 big onion. Add this to the meat and cook till it is a pale golden brown. Sprinkle meat and onion with 3 tablespoons flour, salt, and pepper to taste, and stir gently. Stir in the water, tomato purée, and a pinch of dried mixed herbs. Stir gently; if meat is not quite covered by the sauce add a little more water and tomato purée. Put the lid on and leave this to simmer very gently for 1 hour over the asbestos mat. Meanwhile, wash, peel, and remove stems from the mushrooms (tinned ones, if no others are available). Slice very thin. Stir into the veal and tomato and simmer another 15 minutes. At the last moment, stir in 3 tablespoons double cream (and if you can, a little cognac or Marsala).
ROMANY RABBIT
(FROM ANY GYPSY CAMP)
(FOR 4)
The Gypsies, or Romany people, are a proud, ancient race, and anyone who writes of them as 'gypsies', with a small G is no friend of mine. They are as much a people, with their own traditions, history, language, and customs as any other. Yet they do not have any one country, being found in most countries, part of, yet quite apart from all the rest of the inhabitants, going from town to town, selling the baskets and cradles they make, doing a bit of tinkering — mending copper and tin — and, I fear, often a bit of poaching, too. They pick up a pheasant, or any bird they can catch, on any of the land they pass. Rabbits are their more usual fare. Anyway, they have always been eating rabbit stew whenever they have been so kind as to ask me to eat with them.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Round the World in Eighty Dishes"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Lesley Blanch.
Excerpted by permission of Grub Street.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
SYMBOLS,
B – BEVERAGE,
MM – MAIN COURSE MEAT,
MV – MAIN COURSE VEGETABLE,
D – DESSERT,
E – EGGS,
P – POULTRY,
F – FISH,
S – SALAD,
MISC. – MISCELLANEOUS,
SP – SOUP,
MF – MAIN COURSE FISH,
V – VEGETABLE,
Suggestions for Beginners,
Equipment,
Specially about Lemons,
About Cooking in Oil,
A Few Useful Tips,
A Few Extras and Spices for the Cupboard,
A Few Special Cooking Terms,
Principal Weights and Measures,
Note on Weights and Measures and Oven-heat,
EUROPE,
THE BALKANS,
THE MIDDLE EAST,
AFRICA,
THE FAR EAST,
THE PACIFIC,
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA,
THE NORTH,
U.S.A.,
EXTRAS,