[Sca-cooks] Re: OOP 'fredo sauce????

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Adamantius replied to my questions with:
>>  Well, only inasmuch as it's another dish prepared in the serving
>>  bowl. It involves pancetta or cured hog jowls (I forget what those
>>  are called in Italian), diced and cooked with onions, garlic,
>>  sometimes some herbs and other vegetables, mixed with cheese and raw
>>  eggs, tossed with the hot pasta until the eggs are cooked into a sort
>>  of creamy scrambled-egg sauce.)
>
>Doesn't sound like any pasta carbonara I've ever had. Vegetables?

Well, for example, Drake mentioned mushrooms as an option. Some
people include chopped Bell peppers, that sort of thing. I've seen it
with fresh green peas. Classically, though, the onions and garlic are
all that would normally be included. A tiny bit of sage is good.

>Are the eggs blended together/whipped before hand? Or just mixed in
>still seperated?
>
>>  I think in both cases, these used to
>>  be either home-style dishes, or from a time when waiters in
>>  restaurants used to actually prepare food at the table, which is more
>>  or less a dead art, as far as I can tell.
>
>Huh??? Waiters used to prepare food at the table?? Rather than
>just deliver it to the table? I've seen it from time to time, but
>I just figured that that was the unusual and often done for
>theatrics as much as anything else.

An indicator that times, they are a-changin'. They used to toss
salads at the table (in involved process for Cesare Salad), prepare
crepe desserts (pre-cooked crepes, but they'd reheat, sauce, flame
with brandy, etc., before serving), and carve roast duck, use the
carved carcase to make the sauce, sauce and serve, all in a chafing
dish at the table. Oh, and stir-fry (more or less) Beef Stroganoff at
the table, again, in a chafing dish. Probably these were dishes that
weren't ordered often enough to warrant every waiter having these
skills, but most good restaurants had at least some of their waiters
to perform these tasks.

I bet Edouard can do all of them, or would have fun trying, anyway
;-).  But many "morons, the Things From Beyond The Pass" are no
longer trained in these areas. (Sorry, am quoting Lenny Henry, whose
character is a fairly realistic view of the Eternal Struggle in
restaurants, in my experience. No disrespect intended to Edouard or
any other restaurant servers who do it professionally and well, and
there are cooks who are unworthy of the name, too.)

>  > Casualties of this demise
>>  include real Cesare Salad (not named after the Julio-Claudian
>>  Imperial Family and so not spelled that way), the aforementioned
>>  Spaghetti Carbonara, Fettucine Alfredo, real Beef Stroganoff, and
>>  various game ragouts, salmis of wild duck,
>
>What is a "salmis"?

A salmi (pl. salmis) is a ragout, sort of a quickly-cooked stew, of
deboned roast game (usually birds like pheasant or woodcock), cooked
with wine, mushrooms, maybe some cream. Good stuff, and it used to be
prepared in fine restaurants at tableside by the headwaiter or
another waiter. I'm talking approximately from the 1880's to the
1930's, I guess.

>  And how is "real" Beef Stroganoff supposed to
>be made? I've had some good home made stuff, but lately most of
>what I've had comes frozen from the store.

It's just very quickly sauteed, almost stir-fried, first mushrooms
and onions, then paper-thin slices of beef (ideally tenderloin),
deglaze the pan with red wine (some people add a hit of a thickened
brown sauce like espagnole or demiglaze at this point, but it's not
strictly necessary), and finish with sour cream, being careful not to
allow the cream to boil. I've seen _nominally_ similar dishes made as
stews with cheaper cuts of meat. I think this last may be another of
those Middle American variations, like goulash being made with
macaroni and ground beef.

Adamantius

>
>Stefan
>Still got to do the Gyros, but then maybe on to Beef Stroganoff...
>Went to my first Dim Sum chinese meal with my mother and mil and
>family for Mother's Day. Pricey, but interesting. Hard to keep
>track of what is available. I think I need labels...
>
>--
>THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
>**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
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