I don't want to run the risk of someone wanting to eat me with lemon and butter. Gourmet suggests a nice jaunt to Prince Edward Island for real lobster instead.
The real beauty of the month is Parsleyed Ham En Croûte, though:
I was admiring the ham wads stacked so tightly in the bread, held together with greenish mortar, when I wondered if I was seeing correctly. Are the artfully-arranged slices separated by a jiggling sea of gelatin? (Strap in for the answer.... The recipe is long and I could only scan part of it, so it's in a messy scan + photo format!)
Yep! The recipe starts out with making a Madeira Aspic (a broth, tomato, and wine gelatin). From there, cooks go through dozens of little steps (boiling pork rind in various configurations, mincing veggies, hollowing out bread, "distributing the fat and lean [ham] cubes evenly," weighting the bread, taking the bread out for a little walk and maybe a cigarette, etc. until finally the loaf can be sliced up and set on chopped up leftover aspic to ensure that it's sufficiently soggy.
You've got to appreciate rich people food. It's way more time-consuming than most of the quick-n-easy poor people recipes, but it doesn't always sound like the end product will be considerably tastier. It's the difference between wasting wine or canned tuna in the gelatin.
If Parsleyed Ham En Croûte seems a little too fancy, I'll leave you with a much simpler recipe from the "Gastronomie sans Argent" section, which features carrots this month. I'm not sure whether this recipe is supposed to be a side dish or a very sad dessert, so I'm guessing it's the upscale equivalent of the gelatin that's a salad if it's served on a lettuce leaf and dessert if it's not.
Maybe it's soup if it's served early in the meal and dessert soup if it's served at the end! (I guess that means I'm serving it as dessert.)
The picture of your first recipe reminds me of an anatomy picture gone horribly wrong. The "ham wads" look like cross section illustrations of the arms and legs. The ham represents the muscles, the bread represents skin and subcutaneous fat, and they all seem to be floating on a puddle of vomit.
ReplyDeleteInteresting interpretation-- certainly not one that makes it sound any more edible.
DeleteIt's interesting that Gourmet magazine would be so pro aspic and prune. Sign o' the times
ReplyDeleteApparently EVERYBODY was required to be pro aspic and prune for a while.
DeleteFunny that prunes, carrots and sweet potatoes stewed together like that is a traditional Jewish (Eastern European) dish called tzimmis. I guess if Gourmet was ever influenced by Jewish cooking they'd have kept it quiet.
ReplyDeletebest.... mae at maefood.blogspot.com
That's interesting. It seems like food publications are more interested in presenting various types of cuisines now, so I'd imagine a current publication would be excited to present a dish as being authentically Jewish. I could be wrong, of course...
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