I've been in Paris with work for the last week and was lucky enough to spend the weekend with a friend, Paula, who's living there over the summer. She is a far better cook than I can ever hope to be, so I had been looking forwards to spending the weekend at her flat, hunting around food markets, poking around butchers and cooking in the evenings. I arrived at hers later than intended on the Saturday, so her local market had closed, but her fridge was full of things she'd found earlier that morning, and she'd already partly decided what we were going to eat for dinner. On that note I should mention that this post is mostly due to her; praise or, indeeed, criticism, needn't be steeped upon me.
Anyway, on with the food. We had some lovely artichokes, broad beans and petit pois, which we cooked up in what is a classic Roman style; the artichokes slowly cooked with some onions and white wine, the beans and peas added at the end, providing a soupy side dish of beautiful summer greens, with a little mint added at the end to lift the whole thing. We decided to eat this with escalope of veal, largely because we rarely have it when back in Britain, lightly flavoured with thyme. It combined to provide a beautifully light, refreshing dinner on a warm Parisian evening. A nice glass of white wine and some crusty baguette to mop up the pan juices are pretty essential here. These vegetables would go beautifully with chicken, pork, veal, or maybe even a fairly robust piece of grilled fish, too.
Serves two
2 veal escalopes
6 medium size artichokes
a large handful of broad beans
a slightly smaller handful of petit pois
a large onion
5 sprigs of mint
1 sprig of thyme
If you're cooking pork or veal escalope, take your meat one piece at a time, place it in a freezer bag, and bash it with a rolling bin until it's about half a centimetre thick. Place in a dish, pour over a decent slug of olive oil, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, add some herbs if you feel so inclined (we added a little fresh thyme to our veal) and put to one side while you sort out the vegetables.
Having removed the tough outer leaves, halve the artichokes, removing the choke, and shove into cold water so they don't go brown. Pod the broad beans and petit pois. If you're over-keen, have very large broad beans, or have Paula bossing you around, you may want to shell the podded broad beans, too. This is a lot of effort, but the dish is much the better for it.
Peel and thinly slice a large onion, and throw it into a large frying pan, for which you have a lid, with a glug of olive oil over a medium heat. Soften until sweet and tender, but try not to colour them too much. When you get to this point, add the artichokes and a bay leaf, stir, and cook for a few minutes. Turn the artichokes, and cook for a few minutes more.
Pour in a generous glass of white wine, stir everything around, and place a lid on the pan. Check the artichokes after about fifteen minutes to check how they're getting on. You want them to be soft, but not falling apart. If they're not ready, leave them for another five minutes and check again. If they are ready, throw in the beans and peas, and cook for a couple of minutes. Handily, this is about the time it takes to cook the veal.
Get a frying pan hot and add the veal to the pan. You definitely want to make sure you don't overcook it, so turn it after twenty to thirty seconds to make sure each side is nicely seared before it's had chance to cook through. As a rough guide, let all the pink disappear on the outside edge of the escalope, which should leave a slight blush in the centre. Failing that, it will at least still be extremely moist and tender even if it isn't slightly rare in the middle. Plate up the veal, stir a handful of chopped mint through the vegetables, and serve them at the table with some crusty bread on the side.
