No. 2709

Kohl-Rabies, Stuffed

Choux Raves Farcis

Shape them perfectly round and all of uniform size; empty out the inside and stuff them while raw, or else blanch them first in boiling salted water for a few moments; the stuffing consists of godiveau forcemeat (No. 85), having truffles, mushrooms and parsley, all chopped up, mixed in with it; range them in a sautoir lined with fat pork and moisten with a little gravy (No. 404); when done drain and strain the stock, remove all of its fat and reduce it with as much espagnole sauce (No. 414). Lay the kohl-rabies over the sauce and serve.

← No. 2708 Kohl-Rabies, Housekeeper's Style Cabbages & Greens No. 2710 Cardoons with half-Glaze →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, espagnole and a bowl of forcemeat standing by, so the whole procedure is compressed into one sentence. Here is what has to be supplied.

The vegetableKohlrabi, the swollen stem of a brassica; "choux raves" is simply the French name. Choose bulbs of 2 to 2 1/2 inches, peel them deeply enough to remove the fibrous outer layer, then trim to a true sphere and hollow out with a melon baller, leaving walls about 1/4 inch thick. Anything larger than a tennis ball will be woody at the core.
Blanch, and do it properlyThe recipe offers stuffing raw as an option, but raw kohlrabi needs far longer to soften than the forcemeat needs to set, and the filling will be dry and grainy before the shell yields. Blanch 5 to 8 minutes in well-salted water until a knife tip enters with slight resistance, then drain upside down.
GodiveauGodiveau is classically a veal forcemeat: lean veal pounded with beef kidney suet and ice water, seasoned and worked smooth (some versions bind with a panada). Ranhofer's No. 85 is not reproduced on this page. A modern equivalent is ground veal (or veal and pork) pulsed cold in a food processor with a little suet or fatback and an egg, plus the chopped truffle, mushroom and parsley. Keep everything refrigerator-cold or the fat will break.
TrufflesBlack truffle was a routine seasoning in this book and priced accordingly. Finely chopped cremini or rehydrated dried porcini, with the soaking liquid reduced into the sauce, gives the same purpose without pretending to be truffle.
Sautoir and fat porkA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan; a lidded braiser or a sauté pan with a foil cover works. Lining it with thin sheets of fatback or unsmoked pork belly keeps the bulbs from scorching and enriches the braising liquid. Blanched sliced bacon will do if fatback is unavailable, though it adds smoke.
Liquid and heatThe original gives no oven and no temperature: a sautoir lined with fat pork implies gentle cooking on the stovetop, covered. Add gravy or brown stock to come no more than a third of the way up the bulbs, cover, and cook over low heat until a skewer passes through the wall without resistance; if you prefer the oven, a moderate one (around 350F) for 45 to 60 minutes does the same job.
The sauceNo. 404 is a brown gravy and No. 414 an espagnole, that is, brown stock thickened with brown roux and flavored with mirepoix and tomato. Strain the braising liquid, skim it thoroughly, then reduce it with an equal quantity of a good demi-glace or reduced brown stock until it coats a spoon. The plating instruction matters: sauce on the plate, kohlrabi set on top, so the polished bulbs are not masked.
YieldOne bulb per person as a vegetable course, two as a main dish. Figure roughly 1 1/2 to 2 oz of forcemeat per hollowed bulb.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as an exhaustive record of the restaurant's repertoire, cross-referenced so that any dish could be assembled from numbered foundation preparations, which is why this recipe reads as a list of pointers rather than a set of instructions. Stuffed kohlrabi belongs to a large family of nineteenth-century French vegetable entrées in which a hollowed vegetable becomes a case for godiveau: the same treatment was given to cucumbers, onions, cabbage leaves and artichoke bottoms. Kohlrabi itself was better known in German and central European kitchens than in Anglo-American ones, and its appearance here under both a French and an anglicized name, with the odd plural "kohl-rabies," suggests a vegetable still unfamiliar enough to need translating for the reader. Ranhofer's method, braising in a fat-lined pan and finishing with the reduced cooking liquid bound into espagnole, is the standard classical braise of the period, in which the vegetable's own cooking juices are recycled into its sauce.