Don't Sweat the Aubergine

again.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • Slow-heating . See Gently does it ( here ). Raw meat produces a good deal more scummy material as it heats in liquid than does meat that has been browned. Warming the daube on the hob, and leaving the casserole uncovered, allows you to skim off the scum as it rises. In a covered, simmering pot, the scum would merge with the liquid. It won’t do you any harm, though.
    2 • Runny liquid . Reducing the sauce in a daube would be as beside the point as doing it when you make a Lancashire hotpot or Irish stew. You serve the meat and vegetables moistened with their cooking liquid. Noodles or rice are ideal accompaniments.
BLANQUETTE
    Again, adapted from
Simple French Food
.
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4
    4 chicken legs or 1kg stewing veal or 4 spare rib pork chops
    Water
    1 onion stuck with 2 cloves
    Herbs
    Salt
    Butter
    Flour
    Small pot (142ml) double cream
    2 egg yolks
    Put the meat in a casserole, add water barely to cover, and bring slowly to a simmer, uncovered, on the hob, skimming as you do so (see Slow-heating, here ). Add the onion, herbs of choice and salt, and simmer, very gently, on the hob or in a gas mark 1/140°C oven (see Gently does it, here ). When the meat is tender (45 minutes to an hour for the chicken, perhaps 90 minutes for the veal), take it off the heat, leave it to rest for 10 to 15 minutes (see Resting, here ), and remove it to a warm plate.
    Sieve the liquid, discarding the onion and the herbs, into a measuring jug, and work out how much flour and butter you’ll need to make a velouté – one that remains quite thin, with only a little body (see Velouté, here ). Return the meat to the casserole, and cover. Make a roux, and follow the béchamel procedure. Check the seasoning, and pour the sauce back over the meat. Mix the egg yolks and the cream, and season with pepper if you like. Ladle a little of the hot sauce into this mixture – you’re getting the eggs used to the high temperature they’re about to meet. Pour the eggs and cream into the stew, stirring carefully and warming gently. Don’t let the sauce boil: you’ll end up with a liquid containing bits of scrambled egg. When the sauce thickens some more, serve. (Olney’s recipe includes sorrel, which you stew in butter, then incorporate into the cream and egg mixture.)
Curry
    What I’m getting at in this book is that most home cooks are not interested in authenticity; they want to acquire templates of cookery techniques and recipes, so that they can be confident of putting together, from ingredients to hand, something that will taste nice. I reiterate that point here in a probably doomed attempt to mitigate the offensiveness of taking a liberal position on the creation of a spicy stew. That heading, ‘curry’, is ill-advised for a start: its use as a generic term for spicy food is a British habit, not an Indian one.
    Buy whole spices when possible. Warm them gently in a dry saucepan, until they give off a toasted aroma. Grind them with a pestle and mortar, in a herb mill or in a coffee grinder. They need a little cooking, in fat, to lose their powdery taste; but you have to do it with care, because they burn easily. Don’t fry finely ground spices such as chilli powder and turmeric: they will certainly burn. Be aware, too, that the aroma from these toasted spices as they stew with the meat will invade your home, and linger there.
    I am going to leave the composition of the spice mixture to you. For 4 people, you could use a 2 tbsp perm of several of the following: asafoetida, cumin, coriander, chilli powder, dried chilli, fresh chilli, black peppercorns, fenugreek, cloves, turmeric, cardamom (use just the seeds, or put whole pods into the stew), ginger (fresh, grated), mustard seeds, mace, nutmeg. Some recipes include cinnamon. If you can find curry leaves, you could add, say, half a dozen to the frying mixture. Stir in coriander leaves, plus more fresh chilli, at the end of cooking.
    Start by frying onions – I’d include 3 or 4 – in enough oil, in a casserole dish, to keep them well lubricated; or, if you have it, use ghee (Indian clarified butter). Get the onions to brown ( see here ), then add 2 chopped cloves of garlic, and let that take some colour too. Add your spice mixture, and cook it gently for about a minute.
    Meanwhile, brown your meat, as you would in a beef, lamb or chicken stew ( see here and here ). Tip it into the spiced onions, and add water or stock. Don’t use