This free recipe book contains over 200 recipes for Italian dishes including Sauces, Fish, Beef, Veal, Lamb, Chicken, Game, Vegetables, Pasta, Egg dishes and Sweets & Cakes. Impress your family and friends by serving them authentic Italian cuisine.
Excerpt:
SAUCES
As the three chief foundation sauces in cookery, Espagnole or brown sauce, Velute or white sauce, and Bechamel, are alluded to so often in these pages, it will be well to give simple Italian recipes for them.
Australian wines may be used in all recipes where wine is mentioned: Harvest Burgundy for red, and Chasselas for Chablis.
Espagnole, or Brown Sauce
The chief ingredient of this useful sauce is good stock, to which add any remnants and bones of fowl or game. Butter the bottom of a stewpan with at least two ounces of butter, and in it put slices of lean veal, ham, bacon, cuttings of beef, fowl, or game trimmings, three peppercorns, mushroom trimmings, a tomato, a carrot and a turnip cut up, an onion stuck with two cloves, a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, parsley and marjoram. Put the lid on the stewpan and braize well for fifteen minutes, then stir in a tablespoonful of flour, and pour in a quarter pint of good boiling stock and boil very gently for fifteen minutes, then strain through a tamis, skim off all the grease, pour the sauce into an earthenware vessel, and let it get cold. If it is not rich enough, add a little Liebig or glaze. Pass through a sieve again before using.
Velute Sauce
The same as above, but use white stock, no beef, and only pheasant or fowl trimmings, button mushrooms, cream instead of glaze, and a chopped shallot.
Bechamel Sauce
Ingredients: Butter, ham, veal, carrots, shallot, celery bay leaf, cloves, thyme, peppercorns, potato flour, cream, fowl stock.
Prepare a mirepoix by mixing two ounces of butter, trimmings of lean veal and ham, a carrot, a shallot, a little celery, all cut into dice, a bay leaf, two cloves, four peppercorns, and a little thyme. Put this on a moderate fire so as not to let it colour, and when all the moisture is absorbed add a tablespoonful of potato flour. Mix well, and gradually add equal quantities of cream and fowl stock, and stir till it boils. Then let it simmer gently. Stir occasionally, and if it gets too thick, add more cream and white stock. After two hours pass it twice slowly through a tamis so as to get the sauce very smooth.
Ingredients: Bacon, onions, carrots, ham, a bunch of herbs, parsley, mushrooms, cloves, peppercorns, stock, Chablis.
Put the following ingredients into a stewpan: Some bits of bacon and lean ham, a carrot, all cut into dice, half an onion, a bunch of herbs, a few mushroom cuttings, two cloves, and four peppercorns. To this add one and a quarter pint of good stock and a glass of Chablis, boil rapidly for ten minutes then simmer till it is reduced to a third. Pass through a sieve and use for masking meat, fowl, fish, &c.
Genoese Sauce
Ingredients: Onion, butter, Burgundy, mushrooms, truffles, parsley, bay leaf, Espagnole sauce (No.1), blond of veal, essence of fish, anchovy butter, crayfish or lobster butter.
Cut up a small onion and fry it in butter, add a glass of Burgundy, some cuttings of mushrooms and truffles, a pinch of chopped parsley and half a bay leaf. Reduce half. In another saucepan put two cups of Espagnole sauce, one cup of veal stock, and a tablespoonful of essence of fish, reduce one-third and add it to the other saucepan, skim off all the grease, boil for a few minutes, and pass through a sieve. Then stir it over the fire, and add half a teaspoonful of crayfish and half of anchovy butter.
Italian Sauce
Ingredients: Chablis, mushrooms, leeks, a bunch of herbs, peppercorns, Espagnole sauce, game gravy or stock, lemon.
Put into a stewpan two glasses of Chablis, two tablespoonsful of mushroom trimmings, a leek cut up, a bunch of herbs, five peppercorns, and boil till it is reduced to half. In another stewpan mix two glasses of Espagnole (No. 1) or Velute sauce (No 2) and half a glass of game gravy, boil for a few minutes then blend the contents of the two stewpans, pass through a sieve, and add the juice of a lemon.
