With autumn appetites well launched in most sections of this country, we look to our markets for the foods of this season to be at their best: cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli, for instance, and plums, grapes, and pumpkin. Of course, we don't actually have to depend upon them when frozen foods are available the year round and fresh ones come shipped from all over the continent. Such an off-season profusion of fruits and vegetables was never dreamed of in my early days of menu planning. But I find there are still many people who like to take advantage of foods in their proper season. I'm that way myself.
Foods are so often associated in my mind with the pleasant memories of a particular time of the year that they are, so to speak, sauced with the special sights and smells of the season. Autumn takes me back to the savoriness of my mother's stuffed cabbage and the smell of her plum tarts as she brought them out of our big, black kitchen stove. Back, too, to the leaves dropping from the oak trees, to guns being cleaned and excited dogs circling around, to the smell of the wood burning in the fireplace and the wine fermenting in the cellar.
Long experience with vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli has taught me the importance of carefully cleaning them. These vegetables grow aboveground and look clean because they are well protected with leaves, but their late maturity gives insect pests a whole summer to work their way under the leaves and inside the plants. I recall a most embarrassing experience many, many years ago when I was on my very first job as a young chef at the Hotel Bristol in Paris. Queen Amelia of Portugal was staying there and had ordered cauliflower with mousseline sauce. A beautiful, firm white head was cooked and arranged on a napkin with the sauce in a sauceboat. But when the maitre d'hôtel cut through it with the serving spoon, he uncovered a big, ugly looking worm. He was quick enough to hide it by covering it with a corner of the napkin and by serving a piece from the other side. And he was mad enough to rush down to the kitchen as soon as he could and berate everyone there.
I was only sixteen, and it made a great impression on me. I promised myself it would never happen to me if I ever got to be a head chef. And it never has because I always have cauliflower cut in quarters; if a whole head is served, we reassemble it on the serving dish. I also remember an assistant I once had who was so fussy about his food that he wouldn't eat anything prepared by anyone but himself. He never trusted our vegetable man to clean broccoli, of which he was particularly fond. But one day, despite all his careful cleaning and cooking, he found a little green worm on his plate and never ate broccoli again. I laughed to myself because broccoli in those days was on the expensive list, and this experience was money in our pocket. Of course, I have reason to suspect it was a practical joker in the kitchen who put this over on him.
In cooking any vegetable, a good rule to remember, as I have mentioned before, is that most delicate spring vegetables require very little water, while more strongly flavored fall vegetables taste better when cooked in plenty of water. Here are some useful hints for cooking cauliflower. To clean this vegetable, put it in cold water and sprinkle vinegar or lemon juice over the head, especially the older heads, to draw out any insects. A trick of French vegetable chefs is to put a piece of charcoal in the cooking water to keep the head white. Of course, if it is an old head that has already yellowed, this will not whiten it.
Cook cauliflower in enough salted water to cover it well until it is just soft, or for thirty to thirty-five minutes. After twenty five minutes, it is a good idea to test with a fork because nothing is less attractive than mushy, overcooked cauliflower. After draining it, place the vegetable on a towel or napkin so that no surplus water will be left to dilute the sauce. Cream sauce, mousseline sauce, or polonaise butter are the favored sauces. If the cauliflower is old, a good trick is to sauté the flowerettes in butter after draining. It will taste better, and the yellowish color will be camouflaged.
In the case of broccoli, particular care must be made in selecting a good bunch. If the cut ends of the stalks are dry and shriveled, or if they have become moldy looking because of humid weather, they have been around the market too long and their flavor will not be delicate. And don't buy broccoli unless the tops are a good green color. As soon as they turn yellowish or the buds show the beginnings of a few yellow flowers, the vegetable is definitely too old to be good. When cleaning broccoli, use plenty of water with vinegar to draw out insects and soak the stalks long enough for the water to penetrate the compactly budded tops.
Pinterest
