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Veal, Grenadins Of
Take from the fillet a slice of veal about an inch in thickness, and divide it into neat round pieces; or if preferred the round pieces of lean cut out of five or six chops from the best end of a neck or loin of veal may be used. Flatten the collops, and lard them very thickly, on one side only, with strips of fat bacon. Put the bones and trimmings of the veal into a stewpan with a pint and a half of cold water, a carrot, a turnip, an onion stuck with two cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, a sprig of marjoram, an ounce of lean ham, a small lump of sugar, half a tea-spoonful of unmixed mustard, and a little salt and white pepper. Let the sauce boil till it is strong and pleasantly flavoured. Skim frequently, and when it is done enough strain it, let it get cold, and then remove the cake of fat from the top. Rub garlic quickly across the bottom of a bright stewpan, dissolve a thick slice of fresh butter in it, lay in the pieces of veal, the larded side uppermost, and let them remain until they are lightly browned. Pour in as much of the strained gravy as will just touch, without covering, the larding, and let the veal simmer gently till done enough. Skim the gravy, and baste the veal frequently with the liquor. Take out the meat, and put into the gravy a pint of young freshly-shelled green peas, with a small lump of white sugar. Leave the lid off the pan, and let the peas boil for five minutes, then put in the veal, and let it simmer till the peas are done enough. Put the peas on a dish, place the collops, with the larding uppermost, upon them, pour the gravy over all, and serve. If preferred, instead of green peas being used, the veal may be dished upon a puree of mushrooms, cooked sorrel, and endive. Some cooks, instead of making the grenadins of uniform size, cut one large one to place in the centre, and form the rest of the meat into diamonds, to be arranged round it. Time, two hours to simmer the grenadins.
A braise built in two stages: a strong veal stock made from the trimmings, then the larded collops browned and simmered in it. The larding is the point of the dish, and everything else in the method exists to protect it.
- Keep the larding dryThe gravy should come only to the base of the bacon strips, never over them. Submerged lardons soften and slide out; left proud of the liquid and basted, they brown and baste the lean veal as it cooks. If your pan is wide, use less stock rather than more.
- Larding without a needleA larding needle is the traditional tool and still the easiest. Failing that, cut fat bacon or unsmoked pork fatback into 2-inch strips about a quarter-inch square, chill them firm, and thread them through shallow slits made with a thin boning knife. Salt pork, blanched, works as well as bacon and is less assertive.
- Imperial measuresA pint and a half here is imperial, about 30 fl oz, roughly 3½ US cups. The pint of shelled peas is a volume measure rather than a weight; the equivalent weight, and the quantity of pods needed to yield it, vary with the peas.
- Unmixed mustardThis means dry mustard powder, not the made-up paste in a jar. Half a teaspoon in the stock is a background seasoning; it should not read as mustard in the finished sauce.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, tied, with the marjoram added separately as the recipe specifies. Tie them so they can be lifted out before straining.
- The two hoursTwo hours suits grenadins cut thick and simmered barely at a tremble. Collops of the inch thickness specified here are likely to be done sooner, and past that point the lean veal goes dry and stringy no matter how often you baste. Judge by tenderness, and keep the liquid at a shiver, never a boil.
- PeasFive minutes plus the finishing simmer suits peas rather firmer and starchier than most sold today, though the recipe itself asks for young ones. Modern garden or frozen peas need two to three minutes; add them at the very end, after the veal returns to the pan, or they will collapse to khaki.
- DegreasingChilling the stock overnight and lifting the fat cake off is still the cleanest method and worth the wait. The braising liquid should be skimmed again before it goes over the dish.
- YieldSix collops serve four as a main course, six as part of a longer meal. The strained stock keeps three days refrigerated or freezes well.
Grenadin is the French kitchen's name for a small, thick, larded and braised cut, usually of veal, generally treated as a scaled-down fricandeau; the two appear side by side in nineteenth-century English cookery books, the fricandeau cut from the whole cushion of the leg and the grenadins portioned out for individual plates. The larding is not decoration. Milk-fed veal carries almost no intramuscular fat, and threading it with bacon was the standard way of keeping a lean cut succulent through a long braise, a technique of long standing that passed out of French practice into English service. The instruction to arrange one large grenadin at the centre with the rest cut into diamonds around it belongs to the era of dishes carried in whole and presented at table, where the geometry of a platter mattered as much as its flavour. Cassell's, compiled for households with a cook but not necessarily a French one, offers the peas, the mushroom pur e and the endive as interchangeable beds, each a recognised classical accompaniment to braised veal.