Home › Veal › Blanquette of Veal
Blanquette of Veal
Reheat two cups cold roast veal, cut in small strips, in one and one-half cups White Sauce I. Serve in a potato border and sprinkle over all finely chopped parsley. Ragoût of Veal Reheat two cups cold roast veal, cut in cubes, in one and one-half cups Brown Sauce seasoned with one teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce, few drops of onion juice, and a few grains of cayenne.
A
Two thrifty made-over dishes from the same base: cold roast veal, gently reheated in a sauce. The whole job takes ten minutes once the sauce is made, and the only thing that can go wrong is overheating the meat.
- The hinge: warm it, do not cook itThe veal is already cooked and it is very lean. Bring the sauce to a bare simmer, add the meat, and hold it just long enough to heat through — three or four minutes. Boiling it squeezes the strips dry and stringy.
- White Sauce IFarmer prints white sauce in more than one thickness. The medium sort runs to roughly 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour cooked together without colouring, then 1 cup milk whisked in, with salt and pepper. For the 1½ cups called for here, scale up by half; check your own copy, as the numbering and proportions differ between editions.
- Brown SauceFor the ragoût, a roux cooked to a nut-brown colour and let down with beef or veal stock rather than milk. A good jarred demi-glace base, thinned to 1½ cups, does the same work.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and use the liquid that collects. "A few drops" is literal — it is there for aroma, not onion flavour. A pinch of onion powder is a fair substitute.
- Potato borderStiff mashed potato, seasoned and often bound with egg, piped or spooned around the rim of an ovenproof dish and browned before the veal goes in the middle. Something in the region of 1½ lb potatoes should suit this quantity.
- "Few grains of cayenne"Roughly 1/16 teaspoon — the amount that clings to the tip of a knife. It should sharpen the Worcestershire, not register as heat.
- YieldTwo cups of cut meat serves two generously or three modestly with the potato. If you are starting from a fresh roast rather than leftovers, a 1 lb piece of cooked veal shoulder or leg gives about the right volume.
A true blanquette de veau is a dish in its own right: raw veal simmered in a pale broth with onion and carrot, never browned, the cooking liquid then thickened with flour and finished with egg yolk and cream. What Farmer gives here is a made-over dish — a way of turning Sunday's cold roast into Tuesday's supper — borrowing the French name for the white sauce and the ragoût's name for the brown. American cookbooks of this period gave considerable space to such reheatings, since a household roasting a large joint with only an icebox to keep it in had reason to use it up quickly and make it look like something new each time. The potato border was one common device for that: it dresses up a dish of chopped leftovers and, incidentally, stretches it. Veal was also more usual on the American domestic table then than now, and the cuts involved are not ones every modern butcher carries as a matter of course.