Читать книгу Bruce’s Cookbook - Bruce Poole - Страница 9

Soups, salads and charcuterie are usually seen as starters, but because starters (and a few salads) also appear elsewhere in the book, I think it fitting that the following recipes enjoy separate billing.

I am not sure when and where my love of charcuterie started. As a kid I certainly enjoyed ‘pâté’ and I guess it simply grew from there. I recall a long, winter weekend in Paris with Anna about twenty-five years ago and it was the first time I really experienced real traiteur shops. These are places where customers can buy high-quality food, prepared on the premises, to take home. Think truffled foie gras terrine and Provençale octopus salad take-away, as opposed to chicken chow mein. We stayed in the Marais district (near the stunning Place des Voges, where I recall longingly but fruitlessly reading the menu of the terrifyingly expensive three-star restaurant, L’Ambroisie) and the whole area seemed to be full of fantastic traiteur shops. The pristine window displays were crammed with glazed galantines, sliced ballotines, truffle-studded chicken terrines, cooked stuffed veal breasts and all manner of salads. And these places were packed, with customers queuing out on to the street. There were loads of superb patisserie and chocolate shops too. And pavement stalls stacked up high with wet, briny oysters. What a food culture. We stuffed ourselves.

Making decent charcuterie is not straightforward and requires time and skill. It is not a job to be rushed and patience is needed. However, it is incredibly rewarding and I can think of few other tasks that produce as much excitement in the kitchen as unmoulding a terrine, or carving the first slice from a jelly-covered duck ballotine. If you take care with these recipes you will produce delicious results, but please bear in mind that your charcuterie skills will certainly improve with time. To make a really immaculate terrine takes a lot of practice.

Soups and salads need little introduction. Made well, they each constitute a perfect precursor to a good meal. In slightly bigger quantities they can, of course, feature as the main event of a light lunch or supper. There is also one rather special tart in this section, so special, in fact, that it almost deserves its very own chapter.