For our Sunday dinner, we had what I'll call une fricassée de veau aux carottes et aux champignons. We ate it with riz rouge de Camargue — red rice grown in southern France. It's a whole-grain rice; think brown rice but red instead. The veal was sold as a rolled-and-tied roast that could be cooked as a pot roast. I cut it up and cooked the pieces in a cream sauce made with white wine and veal broth. It's more colorful because of the carrots and the rice, but it's made by the same method used to make a blanquette de veau. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over the veal at the table.
On Saturday, we had artichokes for lunch. They were trimmed and washed (by me) and then cooked in a big pot of simmering water with some vinegar in it until they were tender. We let them cool to room temperature before eating them. We had potatoes, boiled in their skins, alongside. As the artichokes and potatoes cooled down, I made some mayonnaise using an egg yolk, sunflower oil, Dijon mustard, and a few drops of white wine vinegar (watch a video here). Don't forget the bread...
Over the weekend, we also finished up a cake that I made a few days earlier. It's a banana, pecan, and maple syrup cake. Thanks to our blogger friend Jean for the idea and the recipe. On top of the cake, those are banana chips (dried bananas) and toasted pecans that have been soaked in a tablespoon or two of maple syrup. Chopped pecans, fresh bananas, and some maple syrup also go into the cake batter. Above is the cake before it went into the oven, and below as it came out.
"Fricassée" is a word I've encountered a lot, but I just now got it. It's "creamed" like creamed spinach, i think. Your artichokes look so perfectly trimmed and cooked.
ReplyDeleteThe word fricassée has a complicated history, from the reading I've been doing. Centuries ago, it meant a stew for which the meat and vegetables were first browned in fat and then sprinkled with flour before liquid was added to make a gravy. Then it went out of fashion because the term took on a pejorative meaning, describing a stew in which you can stick anything you want — a kind of mish-mash. In French, the term ragoût suffered the same fate. Nowadays, the term used mostly in une fricassée de poulet or poulet en fricassée, meaning chicken that is cooked without being browned first, or just very lightly heated through in fat (butter) before flour and then liquid, usually cream, are added to make a sauce or gravy.
DeleteThanks Ken! Butter, fat, flour and drippings reminds me of cream gravy so popular in the US south.
DeleteComme M. Jourdain qui faisait de la prose sans le savoir, je faisais de la fricassée de poulet sans le savoir. En fin de cuisson du poulet, j’y ajoutais des champignons que j’avais fait revenir dans la casserole dans laquelle je ferais revenir le poulet. Je pense qu’une partie du liquide, ivrogne que j’étais, était soit du vin rouge soit du vin blanc. Comme toi, je servais ça avec du riz. C’était vraiment bon!
DeleteI love your cooking/eating posts! That cake is charming in appearance, but I would like the veal with carrots the best.
ReplyDeleteThe veal with red rice was my favorite too, but the cake was good and artichokes with home-made mayonnaise are always good.
DeleteWow, that all looks reallllly good!
ReplyDeleteWe also love artichokes but I hated having to trim them when I realized I don't have to do that! Now I just cook them as-is - maybe not "traditional" but they are perfectly fine that way. In fact you could probably then pick your teeth with the pointy ends when you are finished eating! (Just kidding!)
ReplyDeleteSillygirl, there is nothing traditional in trimming the artichoke. I think it’s a restaurant’s stunt to make the artichoke more attractive. In regular French homes you just remove the stem before cooking the artichokes. We usually eat them with a vinaigrette.
DeleteArtichokes are good with vinaigrette, but they're better with mayonnaise!
DeleteI seem to remember that Jeanine L. served artichokes with a choice of dressings, either vinaigrette or mayonnaise. I don't remember if she trimmed the artichokes, though.
DeleteThat's some good eats! The cake is pretty.
ReplyDeleteI was glad to find banana chips here in Saint-Aignan. They aren't essential, but I think they make the cake better.
DeleteWould you call that a jaunette de veau?
ReplyDeleteWhat kind or batter do you use for the banana cake?
..kind of batter... Sorry!
DeleteSee the recipe Jean posted and which I linked to.
DeleteThanks for all the negative comments, CHM. You are a piece of work. lol
DeleteThank you for the piece of work! LOL
DeleteI don’t know which negative comments you are talking about.
First you disapprove of my fricassee and then you disapprove of my artichokes. Maybe the way I prepare artichokes is a California thing. I don't remember where I learned it. The artichokes are much more attractive trimmed this way.
DeleteI didn’t disapprove of your fricassée, in fact it looked pretty good. I said it could be called “jaunette” because the sauce is yellowish whereas in the blanquette the sauce is white. As for the trimming I said it was done to make the artichaut look more attractive and that vinaigrette is the more common (and easiest) dressing. Of course you can have any dressing you want or none at all. Sorry if you felt my comments were negative. It was not my intention.
DeleteI think your mind and memory are exaggerating the whiteness of blanquette sauce. If it were exclusively cream, it would be almost as white as the plate I served my veal fricassee on. But the blanquette sauce also contains coloring agents including veal broth, carrots, bay leaves, mushrooms, and black pepper. As it is with people's skin color, "white" describing sauces and gravies is a highly relative term. In fact, I never called my veal fricassee a blanquette because I knew you would find something negative to say about that. I shouldn't have wasted my effort. You truly are a piece of work when you decide to be. I remember what a hissy fit you had in a Paris restaurant when you were served a mixture of white and (black) wild rice with blanquette de veau. I thought you were going to have a stroke, or call in the gendarmes. Too much is too much. Get a grip, CHM. "Jaunette" is offensive. Sorry.
DeleteTalking about a piece of work!
DeleteWhat do you understand "piece of work" to mean?
DeleteWhat a splendid Sunday dinner! I never knew about the red rice. Intriguing!
ReplyDeleteYes, add me to the list of those who didn't know about red rice. I am going to look for it here aux Etats Unis. Wish me luck.
DeleteKiwi, we get the red Camargue rice at Grand Frais in Blois. I'm sure there must be a Grand Frais store near you.
DeleteDiogenes, Whole Foods might have red rice.
DeleteYes Ken, smart suggestion!
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