A mouli in my cooking life

"An excellent invention for the rapid sieving of soups, purées and so on." Elizabeth David

I grew up in a time before food processors and mixers. We did things by hand mostly.

We had soup at home often, but it was not a smooth soup, unless it came out of a tin. In fact, now that I think of it, maybe my mother didn't actually cook soups. We had runny stews that could have been termed soups, but I think that most of the actual soups that we had were indeed from a tin. I wonder why? And mashed potatoes, were just that - mashed with a potato masher. Anything else puréed was unknown, although I suppose there was always a sieve. But then I started going to France on my exchange trips.

My first encounter with the French was staying in the little village of Meung-sur-Loire, downriver from Orléans. My exchange friend, Simone - or Monette as she was called - lived with her parents, she was an only child, and her dog Boulot - a kind of golden retriever I think - in a small apartment in the Mairie - the town hall, for her father was the town clerk. It was a beautiful village on the River Loire and there was a beautiful little park at the back of the town hall.

Every evening Madame would make soup. The main meal of the day for the French is lunch and for dinner we would have something simple like soup, or eggs. Usually soup. The soup was made by gently softening the vegetables - whatever was to hand - in butter, liquid was added - and when cooked all of it was put through a mouli-légumes. Hey presto a delicious, smooth and appetising soup, eaten of course with crusty French baguettes. I seem to remember chervil being a frequent flavourer too. Why can't you get that here? It was one of those French food revelations, which has stayed with me always. And Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking contains many recipes which absolutely replicated the soups I remembered.

I can't quite remember when I bought my own mouli-légumes. Was it on one of those early trips, or on the camping holiday we had with our university friends a year or so after finishing university? Whenever it was I have it still, although I am about to throw it out because it looks a bit like this:

It was not made of stainless steel and so over the years it has gone a bit rusty. Every time I used it I scrubbed the rust off, but a little always lingered and you could just taste it in the food. I tried to replace it with classy looking designer potato ricers from Alessi and suchlike. But none of them worked. The bit that was supposed to press down on the disc didn't contact the disc so nothing went through. Useless. So last year when we were in France I bought the genuine article from a hypermarket - this time in stainless steel - and yes it works. It is shiny and new like this:

You can't really see it properly from this photograph I suppose. In the bottom of the implement you place a disc with holes - I have two different discs with smaller and larger holes - my original had three - a much coarser one as well. On top of this disc you clamp the thing you can see - it slots in, you clip it in place, place it over a bowl, using the fold out little legs to hold it in place, and then you put your veggies or fruit in it and turn the handle. All is forced through giving you your smooth purée. Well not all - for here is the cunning thing - the coarse fibrous stuff stays behind. Which is why Julia Child preferred the mouli to a food processor.

Of course if you want to be lazy and quick you can now use that food processor or a stick blender - and I do frequently but there are some things for which I always return to my mouli-légumes. It would be very good for fish soup though.

For it is so much more versatile than a soup maker. The other thing I learnt to do with it in France was to make pommes de terre purées - the equivalent of our mashed potatoes. But oh so much classier. So smooth - no lumps, and very buttery. And when I am allowed to have mashed potatoes (David doesn't like them) I use my mouli - well when I want to impress anyway.

And taking the hint from this process, when my children were babies I would make their baby food with the mouli. Everything went into it. I even remember putting sauerkraut and potatoes and a bit of sausage through it once for my oldest son, and he lapped it up! The mistake I made with my first son was that all the food he had was home-made with the help of the mouli, so when we travelled to New Zealand, where I was planning to use commercially made baby food in jars, he refused it. So I ended up sieving apricots and potatoes in the kitchenettes of the hotels in which we stayed. I did not make the same mistake with my second son, who had the occasional commercial pulp.

And my last essential use, and probably the main reason I hang on to it, is for making marmalade. Which I am doing this week as you know. When the fruit has been cooked and softened and the pips removed but before I have added the peel, I put it through the mouli. It's brilliant. The fruit and its juice all goes through, the pips have already been removed, but all the tough membranes from the oranges stays in the mouli. Alas this was the main reason my former mouli went rusty - from the acid in the oranges. I'm hoping my current one will survive.

It's such a simple thing that I thought that it had probably been around for centuries. But no. It was invented in 1931 and patented and manufactured by a Frenchman called Jean Mantelet in 1932. He sold millions in the first few years of production, and, as I said, they are still commonly found in the kitchen equipment aisle in the hypermarket. The company went on to make other gadgets. I had two of them - a cheese grater (shown below) and a parsley chopper.

The cheese grater worked in a similar fashion to the mouli-légumes. Although this time there was a cylinder with grating holes that you turned around whilst pressing down on the cheese with a sort of clamp. The parsley chopper worked the same way, though this time the cylinder had spikes that chopped the parsley. It was more mincing than chopping really. They were good, but not that brilliant so I didn't use them much. I just use a grater for cheese - or the food processor for Parmesan, and I have learnt to chop parsley by hand. In 1956 the company became Moulinex - its current name which was created from Moulin Express - the name it had given to an electric coffee grinder. For it now also makes electric gadgets including food processors. In 1978 Jean Mantelet was ione of the top 25 richest people in France. I suspect he is dead now. Still it goes to show does it not that you can make a fortune out of something so everyday? Probably because, I'm guessing, virtually every household in France has a mouli-légumes of some kind.

And before I leave this post - another fond memory of my holidays in France - which led to me purchasing another French gadget - the salad shaker.

I have one of these too, looking pretty much like this one. Madame would put her lettuce in the shaker, go outside to the balcony at the end of the kitchen/dining room and swing the shaker over the edge from side to side thus ridding the leaves of water. I can see her still. I use mine every time I wash salad greens. I just go outside the back door and swing it though. It's very effective. However, as one of our oldest friends demonstrated on a holiday when the kitchen of the house we were staying in was not that well equipped - you can also put your wet salad leaves in a tea towel. Gather it up and swing that vigorously around and you get the same effect.

I do miss France.