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Garbure Au Gratin
Cut one-half a very small cabbage in quarters, remove the core and outer stale leaves and slice it exceedingly fine. Slice also one carrot, one turnip, one onion, two leeks and two branches celery; place them in a saucepan with three and a half quarts water, adding one ounce of good butter, a half-pound piece salt pork and a cervela sausage. Season with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper, cover the pan and let simmer for two hours, then pick up the lard and cervela. (Keep the pork for further use.) Cut the cervela in slices and add to the soup, pour the soup into an earthen soup dish, arrange six slices toasted French bread on top of the soup, sprinkle two ounces grated Parmesan cheese over, then set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove and serve.
A Gascon vegetable soup finished as a gratin. Nothing here is difficult, but the original leaves out the oven temperature and uses two ingredient names that no longer mean much at a supermarket counter.
- CervelaThis is cervelas, a smooth, lightly smoked French pork sausage, already cooked and about the size of a large frankfurter. A good garlic kielbasa or a Polish smoked sausage is the closest easy substitute; ordinary hot dogs are too soft and too sweet.
- "Pick up the lard"An awkward translation from the French lard, meaning the salt pork, not rendered fat. You are simply lifting the pork and the sausage out of the pot after simmering; the pork is set aside for another dish and only the sliced sausage goes back in.
- Salt pork and seasoningHalf a pound of salt pork over two hours will season the broth heavily on its own. Add the teaspoon of salt at the end rather than the start, after tasting, or blanch the pork for five minutes first and drain it.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives none. A gratin of this kind wants a moderately hot oven, about 400F, for the twenty minutes stated; the aim is a browned cheese crust, not further cooking of the soup.
- The dish itselfThe "earthen soup dish" must be genuinely ovenproof and wide rather than deep, so the bread sits in a single layer and the crust covers the surface. Preheating the empty dish, or transferring the soup to it while boiling hot, keeps the twenty minutes from cooling everything down.
- BreadStale, dry French bread cut about half an inch thick and toasted hard. Fresh or soft bread disintegrates into the broth instead of holding the cheese.
- Quantities and yieldThree and a half quarts of water with this quantity of vegetables gives a thin, brothy soup; it serves six generously, matching the six slices of bread. Slicing the cabbage "exceedingly fine" matters, as it must soften completely into the liquid over the two hours.
Garbure is the everyday soup of Béarn and Gascony in southwest France, and the origin of the name is disputed — the derivations often suggested for it are traditional rather than documented. In its home region it is built on cabbage, whatever root vegetables the garden offers, and a piece of preserved pork — salt pork, ham bone, or a scrap of confit — with the meat often lifted out and eaten separately, exactly as this version instructs. The gratin finish with toast and Parmesan is no restaurant invention: browning bread and cheese over garbure is itself found in its home region.