Spring vegetable ragoût
At all times, even the most remote, the subject of the table has inspired literature: Homer in the Odyssey, or the young Anacharsis in his journey to Greece in the 4th century before the common era, in volume 2, page 442, where he recounts what he sees in the market in Athens: “I shall not speak of the mushrooms, the asparagus and that infinite variety of vegetables that are renewed every day at the market.”
Spring is the time when the market-garden belt offers us its most delicious things: the famous Eysines potato, the Macau artichoke, Blaye asparagus, the sand-grown carrot and of course broad beans, baby turnips and peas that are easy to shell on newspaper around the table with the children.
We are going to prepare a ragoût. The term is not much used on restaurant menus, and yet it is an old word meaning to give flavour, to awaken the appetite. It is a fricassée of vegetables, but if you reheat it the next day it becomes a galimafrée, and then it is not appetising.
Take carrot, broad bean, artichoke, peas, asparagus, potato, baby turnip, spring onion, and peel, pare, cut, shell, slice, set aside.
You will have sliced your small onions to melt them gently in your casserole in duck fat. Make a light roux and, when the onions have turned golden, add stock, preferably chicken. Then add your vegetables in order of cooking time, each in its own way, but please stop with the al dente vegetables!
For the asparagus, only the tips! You will make a velouté the next day with the rest.
So: carrots, new potatoes, asparagus tips, small broad beans, artichokes (hearts only, of course, cut in 6) and for our turnips waiting beside the casserole, cut them bearing in mind that each vegetable should be about the same size. Sauté them in a frying pan with butter to soften them and, at the end of cooking, a little sugar to caramelise them. And into the casserole they go!
Check the seasoning, the level of the stock, the cooking of the vegetables, the aromas the preparation gives off; it should smell wonderful. Spring is here!
Ah yes, my friends say to me, and the lardons?
Optional! But if you really have guests and want to put on a show, then yes: the milk-fed Pauillac lamb shoulder from Campet at the Capucins, to be roasted in the oven for 4 hours, very gently. Finger-licking good!
Long live spring!
