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Stewed Neck of Veal
Trim a neck of veal, soak it in tepid water for a short time, then put it in boiling water and leave it for ten minutes. Put one-fourth pound of butter in a stewpan and add two ounces of flour and stir it over the fire until well mixed; then put in the veal, two or three onions, carrots and parsnips, a bunch of parsley, a clove of garlic, two or three cloves, a little salt and pepper, and moisten with a little water. Cook the meat gently until tender, then take it out and place it on a hot dish. Boil the cooking liquor until well reduced, then strain it through a fine hair sieve. Mix one tablespoonful of chopped gherkins and one teaspoonful of vinegar with the sauce, and serve in a sauceboat with the veal.
Stewed Veal, Provincial Cut into pieces three pounds of lean veal from the breast or shoulder-blade and place them in a stewpan with one ounce of butter, two tablespoonfuls of sweet oil and one chopped onion. Cook for ten minutes, stirring now and then; add two tablespoonfus of flour, stir again and moisten with one quart of white broth. Season with one heaping tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper and add half a dozen minced mushrooms, three crushed cloves of garlic and a bunch of garnished parsley. Cook for forty minutes, and serve on a hot dish with a little chopped parsley sprinkled over it. Stewed Veal, Solferine Cook three pounds or so of veal cut into pieces from the breast or shoulder in one ounce of butter with half a dozen small young onions. When cooked for ten minutes add two tablespoonfuls of flour, and moisten with one quart of white broth, and one gill of tomato sauce, seasoning with one tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of pepper. Stir together well until it reaches the boiling point, then add two turnips and two or three carrots cut out into various shapes with a vegetable scoop, and a garnished bouquet. Cook for forty minutes longer, and serve. Any kind of vegetables in season may be added.
Three related veal stews run together in one block: a blanched neck braised in a butter roux and finished with gherkins and vinegar, then two quicker breast-or-shoulder stews. The techniques are sound; the seasoning and timings need adjusting.
- Neck of vealA bone-in neck, roughly 3-4 lb, is a butcher's order rather than a case item. Bone-in veal shoulder or shank behaves the same way. The blanching step - tepid soak, ten minutes in boiling water, then discard that water - is there to draw out blood and scum so the sauce stays pale, and it is worth keeping.
- The roux comes firstButter and flour are cooked together before the meat goes in, so this is a fricassee rather than a brown stew. Keep the roux blond, without colour, and moisten sparingly: "a little water" means barely covering, since the finished liquor is reduced hard and strained to make the sauce.
- Cook gently and longer than statedCook gently and expect longer than stated -- forty minutes is short for breast or shoulder veal cut into pieces; an hour to an hour and a half at a bare simmer is safer, and a bone-in neck will want longer still. Keep the pot below a boil throughout or the flour-thickened liquor will scorch on the bottom.
- Salt"One heaping tablespoonful of salt" to three pounds of meat and a quart of broth is far more than modern palates or modern commercial broths will take. Season with about two teaspoons of kosher salt at the start and correct at the end, particularly after the liquor has been reduced.
- Sweet oil and white brothSweet oil is olive oil - mild, not the peppery kind. White broth is unbrowned veal or chicken stock; a light chicken stock stands in without complaint.
- Gill, and other measuresA gill is half a cup, so the Solferine takes 1/2 cup of tomato sauce. A hair sieve is a fine-mesh strainer; a chinois or a strainer lined with damp cheesecloth gives the same clarity.
- Garnished parsley, garnished bouquetBoth mean a bouquet garni - parsley stems with thyme and bay tied in a bundle, or wrapped in a leek leaf. Remove before serving.
- The gherkin finishThe chopped gherkins and vinegar go into the reduced, strained sauce off the heat, at the last moment. They are the point of the first dish: the acid cuts the butter-and-flour richness. Add them early and they turn dull and soft.
- YieldEach of the three serves six as a main course. All reheat well; thin the sauce with a little stock, as the roux tightens on standing.
Neck and breast are the cheap ends of the calf, and they appear in the Waldorf's own kitchen book. All three preparations follow the classic French blanquette-and-fricassee method, and both garnish names are borrowed from that vocabulary. "Provincial" is provencale in translation, which is why the oil, garlic and mushrooms are there. Solferino, as a kitchen term, is generally traced to the 1859 battle in Lombardy and attaches to dishes carrying tomato, usually with vegetables cut into small even shapes - here the turnip and carrot balls scooped out with a vegetable spoon. The gherkin-and-vinegar sauce on the neck belongs to the older family of piquant sauces that were a standard answer to a rich white braise.