Retro recipe: Scalopine de Veau Linda

How much brandy do you need for flambeeing anyway?

By: Mrs Robot

You know that feeling when you first make something and you think, "This tastes like something I'd buy in a restaurant"? That's how we felt the first time I made Scalopine de Veau Linda.

Our copy of The Complete Hostess by Quaglino is in pretty good shape for its age!

The recipe comes from The Complete Hostess by Quaglino. Yes, the actual Quaglino, whose restaurant was the place to be seen in 1930s London and is still pretty swanky today. I picked up the book in Oxfam in the late 1990s. It cost £6.99, which was a lot for a secondhand book then, especially as I wasn't much of a cook, but I loved the 1930s deco styling. When I looked at it properly for the first time I was shocked to find that in most of the recipes, there were no quantities!

Sometimes the recipes were unhelpful in the extreme: Sole Dieppoise, for example, is simply "Poached. Cover with white wine sauce mixed with its reduce stock, and garnish Dieppoise." WHAT IS A GARNISH DIEPPOISE? If you don't know, Quaglino isn't going to tell you. On the other hand, Quaglino is very good at specifying things like a 1926 Lanson champagne (anyone want a kidney?), and as he discusses ingredients it really opens your eyes to the seasonality of foods in the 1930s, and to how hard it was to get certain things, even for the class of person who'd be using the book. Vintage port? Easy. Green pepper? Ooooooh, exotic!

First, prepare your veggies...

At least all the ingredients for Scalopine de Veau Linda are all stated, and the method easy enough to follow. Because it's so quick to make, I prepared the veggies for tonight's tea first: green beans, asparagus, and little bubble-and-squeak cakes. The latter were made from leftover new potatoes and savoy cabbage and carrot from a previous meal; the carrots had been braised with star anise, butter and sugar so were packed with an unusual flavour. All very easy to assemble.

Cream and butter. This is not for dieters.

As soon as the veggies were cooking I got my cast-iron frying pan really hot. I fried off seasoned veal escalopes in butter with button mushrooms, flambeed them with brandy, and finished them with cream, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and some chopped parsley. It really is that simple, though as with all simple things you need to watch the details. Don't be tempted to swap the butter for oil or (shudder) margarine as you need the flavour. It's very important to use button mushrooms for this as older, open-capped ones turn the sauce an unappealing grey. Likewise I get the pan really hot before popping the meat in as I like it to colour a bit, as this gives a lovely golden-brown tone to the sauce. Finally, add more brandy than you think you'll need, as the cream does soften all the other flavours.

I like to fry the mushrooms thoroughly. They absorb the butter and meat flavours.

A note on the veal: we buy British rose veal from our local butcher; the calf has not been crated, and has been allowed to run around. If you really don't like the idea of veal, I've also tried this technique with pork medallions cooked in butter with apple and flambeed with calvados, and that is also delicious.

Don't overcook the cream - you don't want it to separate.

The photos of the finished meal don't look that great. My presentation skills definitely need work. However, it tasted brilliant. Certainly nothing to sniff at after a day in the office!

Trust me, it tastes amazing - my presentation doesn't do it justice.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Recipe Review: Crispy Pork Belly

from My Vietnamese Kitchen by Uyen Luu

 By: Mr Robot

Give me a new cookery book and odds are the first thing I’ll make will involve pork belly. It’s one of my favourite things in the world anyway, and the prospect of a NEW favourite thing is pretty much irresistable. So it was with Uyen Luu’s My Vietnamese Kitchen – an excellent, stimulating book that’s become something of an obsession lately.

Having spent the customary couple of hours monkeying (point...Oooh...point....Oooh Oooh...point...OoohOoohOooh-pointpointpoint) I trotted down to the butcher. A vast slab of meat, my good man, and don’t even think about scoring it. Pigs away.

The recipe itself is simple but very effective. I’m always up for a new crackling technique, and this one starts with poaching the pork belly for 5 minutes in bicarbed water. Then there’s patting dry and rubbing the skin with a mixture of lime and salt, and then starting the roasting skin-side down before flipping it later.

As I say, that’s a new one on me (it may be tiresomely obvious in the Asian world – I don’t know enough either way) but it works an absolute treat. In fact it’s joined the sainted Kerridge at the top of my What To Do With a Lump of Pig list – no matter what you’re doing with your pork belly, this is a damn good way of roasting it if you want the kind of crackling that makes you weep with joy.

While the lime and salt business is going on skinside, there’s a marinade for the meaty bit – spices, soy, fish sauce etc – that gets half an hour or so. If we had any niggle with the recipe at all it’s that this element got a little lost; certainly you don’t want to overpower the pork but next times I make it (there will be many) I might be inclined to marinate it a bit longer.

Then it’s just served up with some rice noodles and a dipping sauce.

Whatever you do, DO NOT SKIMP ON THE DIPPING SAUCE. Give it at least as much love as the pork itself - as with many of these recipes, it absolutely makes the dish: salty, sour, sweet, punches of chilli and garlic . . . . hard not to dribble just thinking about it.

The rice noodles carry the sauce flavour beautifully, which cuts the fattiness of the pork, while that amazingly crunchy skin gives vigorous counterpoint to splidgy meat and soft noodles. It all goes round and round like circular stairway to heaven.

Overall cooking time is about 2 to 2 ½ hours but actual work time is only about 40 minutes or so. At the end you’ll have one of those dishes that triggers cries of delight at the first taste, and tears of regret at the last. Guaranteed.

If you were hoping to blag a free recipe here you’ll be disappointed – we don’t do that. These cooks need to make a living just like anyone else so if you like the look, buy the book

All images (c) PP Gettins