My favorite Aunt Alexandrine is still living in mon pays, a little old lady of eighty-five, and I wonder if she remembers, as I do, the day she let the thickens cook coo fast! it was her sister's wedding day. All the relatives had arrived at the farm, cousins to several degrees, in-laws of all sorts, and numbers of the bride's new relatives. The wedding feast would take all afternoon to cat, but there was still more cooking to do. There was the soup for breakfast next morning and the lunch that had to be served after the men had made a tour of the farm and the women bad caught up on back gossip. So there was work aplenty for everyone that busy morning before we went off to the church for the bridal mass.
One of the chores assigned to my Aunt Alexandrine was to watch the poulet an vin on the window sill heater and to remove some of the charcoal if the poulet cooked too fast. But was her pet and easily enticed l:cr away to toss a ball back and forth with me, so the chicken was forgotten, Suddenly we heard Grand-mère's angry voice, “Les poulets, les poulets, Podeur est forte, its cuicent trop vite.” (The chickens, the chickens, 1 smell them cooking too fast.) Even my gentle mother scolded Alexandrine and spanked me, too, for what might have been a major tragedy, overcooked chickens!
Many years later when 1 went back home from Paris and visited my grandmother, proud to tell her of the great kitchens in the Ritz where I was working, she cooked her good poulet au vin à Pétuvée for me. As I left 1 said to myself, “mon Dieu, quelle sauce” And it was indeed a dish that any chef, no matter how famous, would have been proud of, for there is no substitute for cooking à l’étvée
There aremany, many terms used in French cooking nor easily translated into English. Two of them are à Péuvée mijote. In my French-English dictionary the translation of étuver is“to stew.” and of mijoter “to stew or simmer.” But simmering and stewing bring to my mind a picture of a kettle with the cover lap-tapping as the steam rises from chicken or meat simmering inside. Or stewed apples, prunes, or perhaps tomatoes buing merrily on the range. And that is not what the French mean when they say cuire à Pétuvee. They mean the slowest cooking imagine, in as tightly closed or scaled a manner as possible—not, of course, in a pressure cooker. Mijoter, in my cookery experience if not in the dictionary, lias always meant “to cook over a very, very gentle heat.” Together they mean slow cooking, gentle heat, and a tight aeal, a combination that produces results to make any Frenchman homesick.
My earliest food memories arc of dishes such as the poulet au vin à Pétuvée cooking in a big clay casserole so gently, so quietly that not the tiniest wisp of steam escaped from under the thick heavy cover. Grand-mère's big farm kitchen always seemed more exciting than any other Such a food-loving family she had to cook for, so much good food passed through the kitchen door: vegetes and fruits, poultry and meat, milk and cream, all raised on the farm! And what a superb cook she was. Grand-mère's skill, handed down through generations of good cooks as is the fashion in Fiance, was passed along to each of her four daughters with pains-taking concern. The love for line cooking aside, one simply did not waste good foodstuffs by preparing them carelessly, mais non, not in a thrifty French household.
The stone walls of Grand-mère's house were at least two feet thick, making wide sills for the casement windows. One of the sills in the kitchen had a special top of colored tiles with four openings. Under this ledge a recess had been left in the wall and lined with brick. It looked something like a shallow oven without a door. But under the openings were iron racks for holding a few pieces of charcoal with pans beneath to catch the ashes that dropped down. A pot was started on the kitchen stove, and then it was transferred to this sill heater with its small charcoal fires and allowed to mijoter. If the contents of the casseroles did anything mote than just barely bue, the lire was considered too hot and the offending extra piece of charcoal removed.
In retrospect I can see many reasons for the popularity of this method of cooking. Economy played a great part in the cuisine of a country where fuel cannot be wasted The French palate demands that every bite be eaten at its peak of succulence. And cooking à Pétuvée seemed tofill the bill so often. It was just a muter of adjusting the time: shortening it for the young spring chicken or the tender white veal; increasing it for the tougher cuts of beef -and our farm-raised beef, although fine in flavor, was seldom so tender as that you get in this country. Meat cooked à Pétuvée always tender, always succulent, never stringy, never tasteless. The sauce with itsending of wine, seasonings, and herbs was as delecte as it was subtle in flavor.
The quantities of food that had to be prepared for the large families of those days wts another consideration. Chez grand-mère there were always special occasions for gala eating: reunions, weddings, christenings, and feast days. There were not facilities for broiling or even for roasting chickens to serve the twenty or thirty that gathered around her hospite te. But three large casseroles of poulet au tin did it very well—and without too much watching or last minute attention.
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