LA BONNE CUISINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

LA BONNE CUISINE.

AN IMPORTANT ROLE. THE PART CRESS PLAYS. (By a FRENCH CHEF.) Among salads, there is one in Paris which plays so important a role that one cannot take a meal in the restaurants of the capital without the appearance of some leaves, at least, of this vegetable. I refer to cress, which at the very start lends itself agreeably to the making of an excellent soup, the "cressonmere," which is composed in part, of SOO grammes of cress leaves stewed in butter, and then moistened with a litre of consomme, the other part, of 300 grammes of mashed potatoes, reduced to a puree. The whole is then passed through a fine sieve, and the proper thickness is given to the soup by the addition of two decilitres and a half of milk. A morsel of butter is added, and carefully stirred in with a wooden spoon, and some minutes before serving, 00 grammes of hashed cress leaves are added. This is a delicious dish, refreshing, and excellent to wake the appetite.

Cress possesses (I say so between parentheses) a great pharmaceutical interest. French mothers, for example, give it to their children, and prepared as follows:—The cress is cooked in milk and not strained like the soup above mentioned. This is considered very nourishing and is given by French mothers to their children in the early spring, as it is supposed to clear the blood. The Persians nourish their babiea almost exclusively with cress. The Romans considered it a stimulant, and good for aching teeth and gums, and that it even made hair grow! In Paris an incredible quantity of cress is consumed. There is not a beefsteak, or a roast fowl, served without its bouquet of cress, a habit which does not date from yesterday. In the chronicles of Louie XIII., the husband of Anne d'Autriche, they already served chicken, quail, duck, pigeon, pheasant, or partridge, on a bed of cress. When cress is used as a salad, it must not be forgotten that the taste of cress is in itself very delicate, and, by putting in too much vinegar, it loses all its savour, and if you add too much oil, what you have left is a mass of sodden and unappetising green stuff. To make a good salad of cress, don't season till the very last minute, using just enough oil, so that each leaf shall be slightly moist, and a few drops of white wine-vinegar, and a pinch of salt. At the same time, nothing is better than fresh cress, eaten with a gril), the cress being moistened only with the gravy. The best cress in France is the cress they call "Cresson de Fontaine," which is gathered along the borders of the stream?, but as this is only found in the belle saison, and there is never enough of it, there have been installed-in the outskirts of Paris, enormous "cressontiieres," between Chantilly and Senlis, where they cultivate it artificially. This is the cress which arrives at the "Hallos" (the central markets) every day, by hundreds of kilogrammes. "Tripes a la Mode de Caen." A popular dish, and one which deserves a greater adjective when cold is tripe, the Tripes a la Mode de Caen, which in Paris possesses as great a renown as the Foie Truffe of Strasbourg and the forcemeat balls of Lyons.

Tripe a la Mode dc Caen ie a dish exceedingly difficult to succeed in making. Not that the recipe is complicated, but mistakes are often mado with the ingredients. What constitutes the secret of a good Tripes a la Mode de Caen are the proportions employed. A mixture of beef-foot and beef tripe (one of the foot for every 31b of the tripe) is placed together on a bed of carrots cut ill circles, large onions, each pricked with a clove, a bouquet, composed of thyme, two laurel leaves, some parsley, with its root —these, covered with water, are cooked together in a liermeticallyclosed casserole on a very slow fire for at least six hours. When cooked the sauce, which ought to be oily and rather dark, should be reduced. Connoisseurs only place tripe, feet and condiments by layers in their brassiere, first the carrots and onions then the tripe and pieces of the beef foot, again a layer of carrots and onions, and another layer of the tripe, etc. Lastly, a layer of carrots, onions and the bouquet mentioned .ibove. If this dish is to be served hot, then the plate must 'be very hot.

The Tripe a la Mode de Caen should bo accompanied by a good bottle of cider, and dry cider is the best, but not too dry all the same. • Scino celebrated cooks claim that tripe needs eight hours 1 cooking. They put it to cook on a slow fire before going to bed at eleven, and do not take it off until the morning. In Perigord they add truffles to the preparation. At Frankfort on the Maine they cook the tripe almost in the same way, but add myrtle and old -spice containing some red pepper and cumming. At Marseillaise, sheep tripe is used, in which they put garlic, tomatoes and white wine, calling it Paqucts de Marseille, becaiiuo each morsel after being stuffed is tied up like a little package. They use a special method at Lyons also, and th» English method—serving up tripe with a white milk sauce, sometimes ako rolling it in a beaten egg and breadcrumbs, and frying it—is much liked. I think, however, without any parti pris, that the Tripe a la Mode dc Caen is the most succulent of all, especially when moistened with a good glass of Calvados apple juice, and served hot.