On devient cuisinier, on nail rôtisseur. Brillat-Savarin said that anyone can Iearn to be a cook, but one must be born knowing how to roast. Some people may believe him, but not I. And nor my white-hatted colleagues. Brillat-Savarin was no cook. If he were. he would know that one must learn to be a rôtisseur, just as one must learn to be a potager or a saucier.
Of all the kitchen arts. roasting makes the greatest demands on the cook. The rôtisseur must exercise unerring judgment and make split-second decisions, and eternal vigilance is the price of his perfection. As soon as the roasts begin to cook in the ovens, the watching begins. Down the line of ovens the chef goes, opening on schedule each oven door, pulling out the enormous pans, turning the meat in this one, the birds in that, and basting-forever and again pouring the pan liquids over the meat with his long-handled spoon. As the dinner hour approaches, the chef tests the meat by tapping it with his first two fingers, much as a doctor taps a patient's chest. The feel, the way the meat responds to his thumping-soft, springy or firm-tells him whether the meat is raw, rare, or well-done. He lifts the chickens to let the juices run from their insides. If the juices are clear and colorless, the bird is done. Even the slightest pink tinge indicates that more cooking is needed. Or the chef may pierce the thickest part of meat or bird with a long metal skewer or with his long-lined fork and watch the juices that ooze out. Blood-red juices mean that the meat is very rare, pink means medium-rare, and a clear liquid indicates that the meat is well-done. To the roaster-and he invariably has learned his craft the hard way under exacting masters-roasting means much more than simply putting something into the oven, setting the temperature control, and leaving things to take care of themselves.
And the rôtisseur must also have ingenuity, ingenuity enough to cope with emergencies in the kitchen that promise to rouse the wrath of a guest or the temperament of a headwaiter. I recall the day a waiter, so frightened that his mouth twitched, came to me in panic: “Monsieur Louis, 1 put an order for roast chicken for a small dinner party into my pocket and forgot to give it to the rôtisseur. And the guests have arrived.” He knew, as I did. that his job was at stake, because at the old Ritz we always roasted specially ordered chickens just at serving time.
“Tell the captain, '' I said, “to keep the soup and fish courses on the table as long as he can. I'll have the chickens ready.” And 1 rushed to the kitchen.
I knew there would be small chickens in the told room, cleaned, trussed, and ready for the oven, and that the huge kettle of deep fat was always kept hot on the range, ready for frying potatoes or other foods. So 1 grabbed four chickens. hurried them into the fat. and while they sizzled and cooked, told the rôtisseur to put a roasting pan with plenty of butter in it into the oven. Fifteen minutes in the very hot fat was enough to color the chickens and partially cook them. At that point we lifted them out, drained them well, sprinkled them inside and out with salt, and then rolled them in the melted butter in the roasting pan until they were completely and generously coated. Ten or twelve minutes in the oven and they were roasted to a beautiful brown. When we tested the second joints, we found the birds done to a juicy turn, as succulent a platter of roast chicken as that jittery waiter ever took to the dining room.
There was a time when all roasting was done on a spit before an open fire. As a matter of fact, the kitchens in many of the great private homes of France and England still use the revolving spit over an open fire instead of a closed oven for roasting, and many connoisseurs maintain that this is the only fit way to roast a fine piece of meat or a good bird. The theory of spit roasting is that intense radiant hear, applied evenly to all the surfaces of the meat, browns the outside perfectly and lets the good flavor of the meat develop more fully than it can in the inevitably steamy atmosphere of the closed oven. As the meat turns on the spit, its juices and fat drip over and into it, assuring succulence. During the last fifty years the oven has replaced the spit in hotel and restaurant kitchens, and chefs have learned to manage their ovens and roasting pans to achieve similar results.
Don't try to roast anything but finegrained, tender meat. Tender cuts come from the parts of the animal that get the least exercise, and the animal must be properly raised and fattened. The cuts of beef suitable for roasting are the rib sections, the sirloin, the filet, and sometimes the rump. The filet contains so little fat that it is greatly improved by larding with strips of fat pork. Suitable cuts of lamb and pork include the loin and rack and the hindquarters, that is, the legs of the lamb, and the hams, either fresh or cured, of the porker. The loin, the rack, the rump, and often the breast of veal are roasted, The rump of veal has little fat, and since it must be well cooked, it may become too dry during roasting. The rump, therefore, should be larded with strips of fat pork, or it may be braised rather than roasted to retain its moistness, and even then larding will improve the meat.
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