Tag: French

Venison in red wine

This is a recipe from Elizabeth David ‘French Provincial Cooking’. We are making our way through the prodigious quantities of food in the freezer, and this time I hauled out a stew pack of venison. This was easy and tasty, I used the timer function on my oven to cook it slowly through the afternoon. 

INGREDIENTS: 

  • Around 900g to 1kg venison. If it is in one piece, tie it to a sausage shape
  • 4 tbsp full-bodied red wine
  • 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp flour (I used gluten-free flour)
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 3 rashers of streaky bacon 
  • 1 onion, sliced

METHOD:

  • Put the venison in a container with a lid, and add the red wine, vinegar and olive oil. Leave to marinade overnight. 
  • Put the meat in a smallish casserole dish with the marinade. In a small cup, mix the flour with a little marinade to make a paste, and stir that in, also add the bay leaves and salt and pepper. 
  • Over the top of the meat, layer slices of onion and then streaky bacon. 
  • Cover, and cook at 150C for four hours. 

We served this with fried mushrooms and potato and celeriac mash. 

French mushroom omelette

This is a recipe from Elizabeth David, making the perfect quick meal this evening. I had a lot of eggs to start with. I bought some from a neighbour, and then my daughter called in with more. Then there were the reduced mushrooms in the co-op. I have quite a few recipes for eggs and mushrooms, and normally I would go and cook an omelette without a recipe. Anyway, Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking was out on the table, and this is how I interpreted her instructions to make one omelette. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • Approx 60g mushrooms finely sliced
  • approx 30g butter
  • A grate of salt, black pepper and nutmeg
  • half a teaspoon of flour
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tbs cream

METHOD:

  • In a small pan, fry the mushrooms very gently in the butter and season with salt, black pepper and nutmeg. As the mushrooms cook down, add the flour and cream and stir together. 
  • In a small bowl, beat together the three eggs. You really just need to mix the eggs, the mixture doesn’t need to be too homogenous. 
  • In a small frying pan, melt around 10g of butter. Turn the heat up high and before the butter really begins to brown, pour in the eggs. 
  • Add the mushroom mixture dotted around in the cooking eggs. Tip the pan and lift the edge of the omelette, so raw egg reaches the underneath. Keep repeating this move until the top of the omelette is about to set. Fold it in three and serve on a warm plate. 

 

Elizabeth David: French Provincial Cooking

This is not a modern recipe book. There are no pictures. A lot of the quantities are sketchy, and some of the writing is about the history of dishes, references to other cultures. But this is a classic. I was so pleased it was reprinted and is still available. It conjures the resonance of meals past, it brings to mind flavours and atmospheres, it tells you how to prepare ingredients just so. The adverbs are well chosen, and it encourages experimentation. 

It was first published in 1960, her fifth book. She lived in France with a French family whilst studying at the Sorbonne, and when she returned to the UK, she set herself to learn how to cook. 

The first paragraph tells you about her love of food and of discovering how to cook. ‘Staying in Toulouse a few years ago, I bought a little cookery book on a stall in the Marche aux puces held every Sunday morning in the Cathedral Square. It was a tattered little volume, and its cover attracted me.’

It is still available widely, describing how to cook simple French food well, and how to attempt the more complex dishes with a bit of knowledge. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137599.French_Provincial_Cooking