Get hold of a sheep’s stomach. Grate the tripes and wash them several times with water. Cut the paunch into rectangular pieces and line them up carefully on a table. Cut the biggest guts into smaller pieces. Keep the smaller ones. Put the cut pieces of gut (3 or 4) on the rectangles of paunch spread out. Add a thin strip of cured ham, salt, pepper and parsley. Finally, the tripou is rolled up and attached with a small length of thin gut. Place onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes and a little dry white wine in a saucepot. Allow to simmer on a gentle heat for 6 to 8 hours watching the cooking. Serve very hot with steamed potatoes.
This is nothing to do with the gratinated onion soup popular in all the restaurants across France and highly prized by all night owls. Our cheese soup has character and you can find the recipe below.
Recipe
Blanch some cabbage leaves and preferably finish cooking them in meat stock (or consommé).
In a soup dish that goes into the oven, spread out pieces of soaked farmhouse bread in a single layer, sprinkle with grated gruyère cheese mixed with grated Laguiole or Cantal cheese and pour a ladle of stock over the top and a few cabbage leaves.
Repeat this process again, i.e. pieces of soaked bread, grated cheese, cabbage and stock, then a third time, your soup dish permitting and finish with a layer of pieces of soaked bread which will form a crust during cooking with the grated cheese sprinkled on top. Sprinkle with oil and allow to cook slowly in the oven.
Traditions
It has become a tradition to bring this soup to newly weds in their bridal suite. This is when it is cooked in a chamber pot for this purpose with an eye painted on the bottom!
Stuffed cabbage is one of the most appreciated and characteristic dishes of Le Rouergue.
Recipe
Choose a white cabbage or savoy cabbage. The second of the two is more tender and generally proves to be the most popular when preparing this dish.
Remove the outer leaves and blanch the cabbage for a few minutes. At the same time, prepare the stuffing by mixing some leftover finely minced meat, bread without the crusts, two whole eggs, Swiss chard leaves, garlic, chopped parsley, a bit of onion, salt and pepper.
Mix thoroughly. Place this stuffing in the centre of the cabbage and between each leaf. The cabbage then keeps its primitive size. Tie it up well to ensure the stuffing stays in place. In a cast iron pot, heat through in a bit a grease one onion and a few carrots cut into slices. Add the cabbage and one or two cloves of garlic. Allow to simmer away for a long time on a very low heat for close to two hours, making sure the cabbage doesn't catch on the bottom.
Alternative
An alternative to this dish was forwarded to us by someone from Le Ségala: blanch the cabbage leaves. Place some bacon in the bottom of the pot and line it with big cabbage leaves tightly fitted. In this casing, place lay alternate layers of soft, finely chopped cabbage and the stuffing. Then close the big leaves around this and place in the oven for approximately one hour (this can also be cooked in the fireplace). This makes a big, tasty loaf that can be served with cooked carrots and mushrooms (cepe mushrooms, chanterelle mushrooms or horn of plenty mushrooms). You can also cook this cabbage in individual portions. In this case, cut them and make up small packets with the same stuffing. Attach them with string and cook in a pot.
If you only have an oven then you can cook it like this but it is better when cooked on a skewer and for a chicken weighing approximately one kg, a good half hour is required after sealing it on a high heat. Cook in the oven for roughly the same time, but be careful to cook it on one side first for 10 to 12 minutes then on the other, and finish cooking it one the back. To check that your chicken is cooked, stick a fork in between the drumstick and the leg, take it off your roasting dish and let it run out onto a plate. If the juice is bloody, it needs to go back in the oven, if it runs clear, your chicken is cooked and not dry.
Proceed as follows for fried chicken. After cutting the chicken into eight, fry in the pan with hot oil and melted bacon and as soon as it browns, add the sliced onions which should also take on a slight colour, add salt and pepper, add three or four crushed garlic cloves, but heat them only.
Dampen with two glasses of dry white wine, colour the juice with a spoon of tomato concentrate or fresh tomato, a few thyme flavours and a bay leaf. Cover and allow to cook on the side for 20 minutes. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley.
These recipes are part of the "Cent et une recettes de cuisine aveyronnaise" (A hundred and one Aveyron recipes) by F. Decuq, except for the Aveyron-style stuffed cabbage which is taken from "La cuisine paysanne en Rouergue" (Country cooking in Rouergue) by Patricia Auger-Holderbach, éditions du Rouergue.
