Home › Sausages › Blanquette of Veal with Cucumbers
Blanquette of Veal with Cucumbers
Cut some cold veal into neat pieces about the size of a walnut and a quarter of an inch thick. Pare and quarter a large cucumber, and cut it into lengths of half an inch. Sprinkle a little salt upon these, and cover them with vinegar. Let them remain for half an hour. Drain them well, and dry them with a soft cloth. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a bright stewpan, and add a pinch of grated nutmeg and a small piece of sugar. Put in the slices of cucumber, and let them simmer gently till tender. Drain off the butter, pour some white sauce upon the cucumber, add the pieces of veal, and let all simmer gently together till the meat is quite hot. Place the veal on a dish, pour the sauce over, and garnish the dish with sippets. The white sauce should be made with nicely seasoned veal stock made from the veal bones, and thickened with white thickening. It will be improved by stewing onions and mushrooms in it to flavor it, but it will be very good without them. A little lemon juice may be stirred in at the last moment. Time to stew the cucumber in the butter, about half an hour.
A rechauffé — a way of using up cold roast or boiled veal rather than cooking it from raw. The whole dish stands or falls on reheating the meat gently in the sauce; anything approaching a boil will make already-cooked veal dry and stringy.
- Cold vealLeftover roast or poached veal, cut in walnut-sized pieces a quarter-inch thick. Roughly 1 lb of cooked meat with one large cucumber serves three or four. Cooked chicken or turkey behaves the same way if veal is hard to find.
- White thickeningA cooked flour-and-butter thickening kept pale — equal weights of butter and flour, cooked a minute or two without letting it color. About 1 oz of each to a pint of stock gives a sauce that coats. The result is a velouté in all but name.
- Salting the cucumberThe half hour in salt and vinegar draws out water and firms the flesh so it does not collapse into the butter. Drain and dry thoroughly, or the sauce will thin and taste sharp.
- A slice of fresh butterRead this as 1½ to 2 tablespoons — enough to film a wide pan. "Fresh" means unsalted, as against the heavily salted keeping butter of the period.
- A small piece of sugarA lump, perhaps a teaspoon's worth. Most likely there to counter the vinegar and the cucumber's slight bitterness rather than to sweeten the dish.
- Half an hour for the cucumberLong by current habit, but the stewing is at the barest simmer in butter and the pieces are meant to be soft and translucent rather than crisp. Keep the heat low and cover the pan; 15–20 minutes is often enough with modern thin-skinned cucumbers.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or toasted, set around the rim of the dish. Cut them and fry them while the sauce finishes so they stay crisp.
- Lemon at the endStir it in off the heat. Acid can slacken a flour-thickened sauce held over direct heat, and in any case the point is a lift of freshness rather than cooked-in sourness.