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Sweet Peppers Sauted
Place the sweet peppers in boiling water in order to facilitate the removal of the skin and divide each one in two, cutting away all the hard portions, and saute gradually in oil while cooking; then season with salt, some finely-chopped shallot and parsley; dress on a vegetable dish, and serve. Tomatoes, Andalusian Style Boil together in a saucepan one pint of tomato sauce and three pints of consomme. Add one-half tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of pepper, then put in two teaspoonfuls of tapioca, stirring well all the time. Cook for fifteen minutes, add twelve or fourteen chicken quenelles, and then serve.
Two separate items have run together in the setting of this page: a simple sauté of skinned sweet peppers, and a tapioca-thickened tomato consommé garnished with chicken quenelles. Treat them as two dishes.
- Peeling the peppersA dip in boiling water loosens the skin of thin-walled peppers but does little for thick modern bells. Charring them under a broiler or over a flame until blistered, then resting them covered for ten minutes, strips the skin cleanly and adds flavour the boiling method does not.
- "Saute gradually in oil"This means low and slow, not a hot pan. Halved peppers want 15-20 minutes over medium-low heat in a few tablespoons of olive oil until they collapse and sweeten; browning them fast leaves them raw-tasting inside.
- Shallot and parsley go in lateThe recipe seasons after the sauté for a reason. Chopped shallot added at the start in oil will scorch long before the peppers soften, so stir it in during the last two or three minutes with the parsley and salt.
- Yield for the peppersNo quantity is given. Reckon on roughly one large pepper per person as a side dish, and scale to the dish you are serving from.
- The tomato dish is a soupOne pint of tomato sauce to three pints of consomme, bound with tapioca and garnished with quenelles, is soup by any practical measure despite the heading. Serve it in bowls, not on a plate.
- Tapioca quantityTwo teaspoons of small pearl tapioca in four pints of liquid gives only a faint body and a scattering of translucent pearls. Use fine or small pearl, not instant granules, and stir often as it swells over the fifteen minutes.
- Ease off the pepperA full teaspoon of ground black pepper in four pints is aggressive by current taste. Add half, then correct at the end; the same applies to the half tablespoon of salt if your consommé is already seasoned.
- QuenellesThese are poached dumplings of pounded raw chicken bound with egg white and cream, piped or shaped with two spoons and gently poached in stock until firm, about eight minutes. Poach them separately and add them to the finished soup so they do not break up. Small store-bought chicken meatballs are a rough substitute at best.
Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book (1896) was assembled from the working repertoire of the Waldorf, and both of these entries show how thoroughly that repertoire was French. The name "andalouse" in kitchen French was generally associated with tomato, and Escoffier's later consomme andalouse is likewise a tomato-flavoured consomme bound with tapioca. The two recipes running together in one paragraph reflects the book's setting of a very large number of short, telegraphic entries with almost no headnotes.