SEMI-DRY HEAT
Semi-dry heat of oven. When a piece of meat is two inches thick it’s too big to put under a normal-size grill. In olden days they roasted a whole ox in the open but only by having a vast heat source. Nowadays we use an oven because that encloses the heat around the food and so costs less in fuel and takes up less space. But the enclosed space means that the hot air will become moist, because the water inside the meat is turning to steam. The old open-fire method of cooking – roasting – was so dry that it needed an attendant who would watch the spit turning and constantly moisten the outside of the meat with fat. We still do this when we brush fat over a steak before grilling, because that’s radiant heat, but when a joint (or what Americans call a roast) is put in an oven there is no need to baste it. In fact basting the meat is THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO TO IT. Since there is no need to baste it there is no need to have the meat standing in a tray of highly indigestible burning fat. I will explain why.
All meat shrinks when subjected to heat. Because the meat contains juice, that juice will be forced to the surface by the shrinkage. The juice is vital and everything must be done to preserve it. The hot air of the oven will dry those juices as they emerge and the outside of the meat will become dark and shiny. That first outside slice will be delicious. If you baste the meat you are rinsing those juices away as fast as the heat dries them; stop it. In fact, do the reverse, sprinkle a trace of flour over the raw joint to encourage the juices to dry as they emerge. While the joint is cooking don’t prod the meat, and especially don’t stick a fork into it or a stream of juice will escape.
Fat is an important part of cooking; it should occur naturally in the tissue of the meat but you can put it there by sewing threads – lardons – through it or putting thin sheets of fat around it (pages ref1 and ref2 illustrate this). Having done that, put the meat on a wire rack so that the heat can get all around it. Put it in the oven. When it is ready, eat it.
When is it ready?
Cooking means bringing the centremost part to a certain temperature. If you have a meat thermometer the sensitive point of it will register this temperature. Leave the thermometer in the joint until the meat is done. If you have a glass-fronted oven you can watch the temperature rise. These are the temperatures I recommend, although the beef and mutton might be a little too underdone for some tastes. Remember though that it’s the underdone meat that contains the most flavourful juices. The temperatures I have given for pork and veal are generally agreed to be the best ones; these meats are never eaten very underdone(i.e. never below 131°F.).
| ºF. | |
| Lamb | 165 |
| Mutton | 145 |
| Pork | 180 |
| ºF. | |
| Beef underdone | 140 |
| Beef medium | 160 |
| Veal | 175 |
If you don’t have a thermometer then it’s usual to guess the time the meat will take to cook by weighing the joint while considering its general shape, e.g. a thin flat-shaped piece will cook more quickly than a cube shape. As for grilling, only the better quality cuts of beef are suitable for roasting although, because a pig doesn’t get so muscular, any part of a pig can be roasted and very nearly any cut of veal or lamb, if you are careful (i.e. don’t have the oven heat too high). The general temperature for cooking meat is 350–400ºF. because that’s hot enough to ensure the meat doesn’t generate too much steam, but if you have a meat thermometer and like your beef crusty outside and juicy inside you can step up the heat. Cooking inside an oven is called baking. The roast beef of old England is more correctly called the baked beef of old England but the two words have become interchangeable because nowadays no one does true roasting. For some things this semi-dry heat in a box is particularly good, e.g. fish, pastry, bread, and cakes. What’s more, an enclosed box of heat can be measured and controlled.
Many flour mixtures have finished cooking when they become quite dry and so recipes tell you to insert a long needle; if it comes out with a trace of wet mixture on it the cooking isn’t completed. Leave such tests until as near the end of the process as you can. Opening the oven door before the flour has had a chance to harden will result in the tiny particles of heated air that are holding it all up cooling and collapsing: cake sinks.
Thermometers are used only in meat cookery; other items are given the time stated by the recipe plus the skill and experience of the cook. I suggest you make a mark in the margin on the recipe so that next time you will know the exact time that suits your oven. Baked goods are usually allowed to cool on a wire rack so that the steam can escape from all sides and not be trapped and cause sogginess. Meat too will be easier to carve if it is rested – reposé – for ten or fifteen minutes in a warm place, but remember that the cooking process will continue inside the meat even after it’s come out of the oven. Allow for that.*
SAUTER
Sauter means to cook in a frying-pan with just enough fat to prevent the food sticking. In a restaurant kitchen the food is turned by tossing it (sauter means to jump); so you see the fat must be minimal. Food to be cooked in this way is usually in thin slices (i.e. slices of veal or calf liver) although sometimes larger things are sautéed for a few minutes to brown them before cooking them in liquid. Onions, carrots, and pieces of meat are often treated like this before they are put in a stew. This is because oil can be heated far beyond the boiling point of water; when we want to extract flavours only available at high temperature this is how it’s done. Fish is often sautéed because its flesh cooks quickly. If the fish has a heavy skin, remove the skin before cooking. If it has a light skin the chef often makes shallow diagonal cuts along the fish to help the heat enter – this is called scotching; it also helps to prevent the fish curling, for all flesh foods shrink when heated and some distort (see also meunière, pages and sauté, pages).
FRITURE
The word frying – friture – means just one thing in France. It means what we call deep-frying, a technique introduced into Britain and the U.S.A. in comparatively recent times. That’s why in America deep-fried potatoes are called ‘French fries’. The secret of friture is cleanliness of pan and fat and what one expert calls ‘surprise’: the immersing of the item of food in the fat in one fast movement. The fat must always be deep so that the piece of food can float in the fat. The fat must not be old or burnt and if the frying is done correctly there should be no taste of fat in the fried food. The French chef would probably use rendered down beef suet – the fat around the beef kidney – for all kinds of deep-frying (although, of course, he would have a separate pan of it for cooking fish). Vegetable oils are good, especially for