Provençal Cuisine

Trouts from Fontaine de Vaucluse
Cook them in a slightly seasoned court bouillon with local white wine. Serve them cooked as cooked.

Crayfish Tails with Cream
Cook 36 crayfish in a mirepoix sauce with white wine and a few spoonfuls of good cognac. Shell the crayfish, place the tails in a saucepan with the liquid, strained through a fine sieve and reduced. Add 3 deciliters of fine creamy béchamel sauce to the crayfish tails.
NOTE: With the crayfish shells pounded with 100 grams of fine butter, you can make an exquisite soup for the next meal. Moisten the mirepoix sauce used to cook the crayfish with one and a half liters of broth, bring to a boil, and add five spoonfuls of rice cream diluted with a little cold water. Boil for 12 to 15 minutes over low heat and add the crushed shells. Boil for another 2 minutes and strain through a fine sieve into a saucepan. Keep warm. When ready to serve, finish the soup by stirring in 1.5 deciliters of very fresh cream.
If you don't have cream, thicken the soup with three egg yolks diluted with a few spoonfuls of hot milk and a spoonful of fine butter.

Marbled Saddle of Lamb
Choose a saddle of very fatty lamb with very white flesh; place it in a roasting pan appropriately sized for the saddle; baste it lightly with butter, season with salt, and bake in a moderately heated oven, basting it often with the butter during cooking. When the saddle is two-thirds cooked, sprinkle it with fresh, finely chopped breadcrumbs; continue cooking. When it reaches the desired doneness, sprinkle it lightly with chopped parsley. Place the saddle on a serving platter, add about two deciliters of broth or simply hot water while cooking the saddle, and boil for a few minutes. Baste the saddle with some of this juice, and serve the remainder on the side.
Serve a vegetable dish of boiled new potatoes and the broad beans at the same time.
NOTE: Do not skim the fat from the juice.

Field Beans and Lettuce
Choose small, freshly picked broad beans that have not yet reached maturity; shell them, and remove the small black line from the top of the bean. For half a liter of shelled broad beans, chop two carefully washed heads of lettuce.
Heat a large spoonful of butter in a saucepan, combine the broad beans and lettuce, and let simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Add boiling water to cover the beans. Cover the saucepan and cook over moderate heat. To finish, just before serving, thicken the beans with two egg yolks brushed with two spoonfuls of cream or milk and a few small pieces of butter.

Dono Mistral Strawberries
For six to eight people, choose two pounds of beautiful strawberries; remove the stems, and quickly submerge the strawberries in 4 to 5 liters of very cold water in a bowl. Remove them immediately, lifting them with both hands so that any sand or other impurities they may contain remain at the bottom of the water. Place them in a shallow dish, sprinkle with sugar, and drizzle with 4 to 5 small glasses of dry curaçao. Cover the dish and chill.
Strain 250 grams of raspberries through a fine sieve, add 100 grams of caster sugar to the resulting purée, and keep it on ice.
Prepare half a liter of whipped cream flavored with vanilla sugar.
Presentation. Place the strawberries in a bowl surrounded by crushed ice, pour the raspberry purée over the strawberries, and top with the vanilla cream.
Serve a plate of beautiful macarons lightly drizzled with curaçao.

NOTE: If desired, you can add a few spoonfuls of orange ice cream to the strawberries before topping them with the cream.

A. Escoffier.