No. 840

Attereaux Piedmontese

Attereaux Piemontaise

Make a preparation of consistent cooked polenta, finished with butter and grated parmesan; spreading it a quarter of an inch thick. Cut from this round pieces an inch and a quarter in diameter, also some white Piemont truffles an inch across and an eighth of an inch in thickness; pieces of fresh Swiss cheese, three-quarters by one-eighth of an inch, and run these alterately on skewers, first the polenta, then the cheese and truffles; dip them in beaten eggs and bread-crumbs, and fry to a fine golden color.

← No. 839 Attereaux of Oysters Hot Side Dishes No. 841 Attereaux of Sweetbreads a la Moderne →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives quantities for nothing here, assuming a kitchen that already had polenta, truffles and a rack of silver skewers on hand. The technique is straightforward once you know what an attereau is and how firm the polenta has to be.

What an attereau isA small skewer of cooked morsels, breaded and deep-fried, served as a hot side dish or garnish. Ranhofer used ornamental silver attelets; short bamboo skewers work, soaked first so they do not scorch in the fat, or metal ones trimmed to about four inches.
The hinge: the polenta must be cold and firmSpread the finished polenta a quarter inch thick on an oiled sheet and refrigerate at least two hours until it cuts cleanly. Warm or soft polenta will not hold a punched round, and it will burst its crust in the fryer.
Polenta proportionsFor roughly 24 skewers, cook 1 cup coarse cornmeal in 4 cups salted water or light stock until very thick, then beat in 3 tablespoons butter and 3/4 cup grated Parmesan. "Consistent" here means stiff enough to stand on a spoon.
White Piedmont trufflesThese are Alba truffles, in season roughly October to January and priced accordingly; modern practice generally keeps them raw, since heat drives off much of the aroma. Sliced cooked mushroom or a black winter truffle stands in for the appearance, or leave the truffle out and shave fresh white truffle over the finished skewers.
"Fresh Swiss cheese"Not a fresh curd cheese but a young, unripened Swiss-style cheese, mild and elastic. A young Emmental or a mild Gruyere cut to the specified 3/4 inch by 1/8 inch does the job; it should melt without running out of the crust.
BreadingFlour lightly, then egg, then fine dry crumbs, and press the crumbs on firmly. A second pass through egg and crumbs is worth the trouble, as the cheese layer will try to escape.
FryingDeep fat at 350-375F, one to two minutes, just until golden. Any longer and the cheese liquefies and the polenta swells and cracks. Drain on a rack, not paper, and serve at once.
Yield and servingA quarter-inch sheet from the quantities above gives about two dozen skewers, enough for eight as a side dish. They are meant to go out hot, arranged upright or fanned on a napkin, and they do not hold.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's, printed The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its long run of attereaux, from oysters to sweetbreads to this Piedmontese version, shows how much of the hot side-dish course depended on the deep fryer. The word is generally traced, like the French attelet or hatelet, an ornamental skewer, to the same haste or hate root meaning a spit; grand nineteenth-century service used silver skewers with decorative tops as much for the look of a platter as for the eating. The Piedmontese label points to the two ingredients Piedmont was famous for exporting to fashionable kitchens: maize polenta, a staple of northern Italian peasant cooking that arrived on Delmonico's menu dressed in butter and Parmesan, and the white truffles of Alba, then as now the most expensive thing in the region. Ranhofer's willingness to cook a white truffle in hot fat is a period marker in itself, since modern Italian practice tends to favour it raw, shaved over a finished dish.