Fred's Newsletter: 12.1.21
Always searching for the best of Scotland's larder.
Good morning,
Twice I had blanquette de veau last week and twice I was satisfied. Once on Friday evening and then early on Saturday morning I cleared the dish standing on my own in the kitchen at home. Early mornings are one of the most precious times of the day. I find it peaceful and rewarding. I hope you enjoyed your blanquette de veau too. It’s one of those dishes that’s so simple, it’s hard to achieve, but so rewarding when successful.
Scotland has a very wide-ranging larder and we are spoiled for choice when sourcing. This week, we are making a game pie with no less than five game meats and a further three sourced from the farm. So in the pie you will find roe deer, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and hare, then veal, pork and duck. L’oreiller de la belle Aurore was created by Claudine-Aurore Recamier, the mother of Brillat-Savarin, the famous French epicure and gastronome who wrote Physiologie du Goût – the Physiology of Taste. It was reportedly his favourite meal. It’s an elaborate pillow-shaped game pie that could weight up to 30 kilos. We will make ours slightly smaller and in the shape of a thin bolster pillow.
We are making the fish soup this morning using gurnards. It’s a tradition at l’escargot, to make either fish soup or bisque, and we cannot make enough.
For main courses, we will cook a shoulder of beef from Peelham Farm. Full of flavour this organic grass-fed beef will be braised like a Bourguignon but I will only add a few ingredients and a light stock to cook as organically as possible. It will be braised for at least 24 hours, very slowly. This is a great way of showing that simplicity can be tastier than an extremely complex dish with a hundred ingredients that end up in a messy, tasteless result.
A Lyon speciality comes next, les caillettes. Usually done with pork meat and liver with spinach, ours will be made with lamb, Hebridean hogget to be precise, snails and sweetbreads seasoned and cooked in a tomato stock. It is delicious and will satisfy your tastebuds.
We also have a very traditional and grand-mère style potée (cooked in a pot) from the Auvergne region. This in-a-pot dish would have spent a day on the live fire in the corner of the chimney cooking slowly. In the pot would mainly be salted meat, of any kind, but there would always have been some salted pork like shanks or ham hough, or duck legs and belly of pork. This would be enough for a few meals to which a bit more water would be added each time it was re-heated, and finally a soup would be made of the leftover stock. There would always be Savoy cabbages, no matter what potée it was. Ours this week will have brined, boned and rolled guineafowl, plus Peelham Farm pork belly and poached ham shoulder. Does it sound tasty? You will tell me ;-)
Finally, an old classic that has been cooked by many over the years - hare à la Royale - a dish that has many different names and ways of cooking: without wine, then with white wine, then again with red wine, boned, or not, thickened with blood, or not! The common ground of all these variations is that they were enjoyed using a spoon rather than a knife and fork. The meat needs to be cooked extremely slowly to preserve the moisture meaning it falls apart using a spoon.
We’re coming to the end of hare season and I thought I should give it a go. We usually only cook it once or twice a year in the restaurant as it’s very time consuming. The brown hares, from the Scottish Borders, will be boned out and rolled, then filled with a stuffing made of hare and pork with foie gras. Then a stock will be made with the bones and red wine, into which the rolled hare will be plunged for few hours of slow cooking. After the hare has rested in the sauce, the sauce will be reduced and seasoned just before serving.
Those in charge this week will have the task of re-heating it, without boiling it as its a very delicate dish. So keep an eye on it and simmer until it’s hot enough. I suggest piercing the hare with a small knife then testing the temperature on your arm. If it burns, it’s hot enough. I hope our game-lovers will enjoy this. We have limited numbers of this dish, so make sure to order it today to avoid disappointment.
For this week’s fish option, a lobster bisque will join some fresh cod. Another very satisfying dish.
This week we say a provisional ‘bye bye’ to gratin Dauphinois side dish, and a ‘hello’ to a potato and reblochon gratin. Let’s see if this causes a riot! Please understand that we need to get out of our routines sometimes. Poor Gonzallo our chef is having nightmares about Dauphinois. Does pumpkin and Parmesan sound good? Staying on the sides this week though are the garlic butter vegetables, a must for your mental health.
Moving on to desserts, the tarte Tatin for two needs no introduction. This week we will try and beat our record of thirty! But again, place your orders early if you don’t want to miss out. There’s also a decadent thick pistachio crème caramel made with duck eggs that reminds us of our childhoods, along with our gluten-free chocolate nemesis and the brioche butter pudding, again with chocolate and hazelnut prâline.
Mes amis, I never thank you enough for your emails of support and your encouragement, so thank you. Please keep emailing and sending your photos, some of your emails are very touching and rewarding.
In the meantime, I will leave you with a few words from Madame Patate, Lucy the queen of potatoes from Carroll’s Heritage Potato farm, who we've been buying from the last ten years or more.
A bientôt,
Fred