Part 2

Take half a red cabbage of medium size, chop it very finely and put it in a pan; add a little water, salt, and pepper, three or four potatoes cut in fine slices and five lumps of sugar. Let it all simmer for two hours with the lid on. Then take off the cover and let it reduce. Before serving it, add either a bit of fat pork or some gravy, with a dessert-spoonful of vinegar. Stir it well before sending it to table.

[_Mrs. Emelie Jones_.]

ASPARAGUS À L'ANVERS

Clean a bunch of asparagus and cook it in salt water for fifteen minutes. To do this successfully, tie the bunch round with some tape and place it upright in a pan of boiling water. Let the heads be above the water so that they will get cooked by the steam and will not be broken. Simmer in this way to prevent them moving much. Meanwhile, hard-boil three eggs and chop some parsley. Lay the asparagus on a dish and sprinkle parsley over it, place round the sides the eggs cut in halves long-ways, and serve as well a sauce-boat of melted butter.

[_Mrs. Emelie Jones_.]

COOKED LETTUCE

Very often you will find that you cannot use all your lettuces, that they have begun to bolt and are no good for salad. This is the moment to cook them. Discard any bad leaves and wash the others carefully. Boil them for twelve minutes, take them off the fire, drain them and dry them in a clean cloth so as to get rid of all the water. Mince them finely, then put them into a saucepan with a lump of butter, pepper and salt. Stir till they begin to turn color, then put in a thimbleful of flour melted in milk. Stir constantly, and if the vegetable becomes dry, moisten with more flour and milk. Let it simmer for quarter of an hour, and turn it out as a vegetable with meat.

STUFFED CAULIFLOWER

Pick over a fine cauliflower, and plunge it for a moment in boiling water. Look over it well again and remove any grit or insects. Put it head downwards in a pan when you have already placed a good slice of fat bacon at the bottom and sides. In the holes between the pan and the vegetable put a stuffing of minced meat, with breadcrumbs, yolks of eggs, mushrooms, seasoning of the usual kinds, in fact, a good forcemeat. Press this well in, and pour over it a thin gravy. Let it cook gently, and when the gravy on the top has disappeared put a dish on the top of the saucepan, turn it upside down and slip the cauliflower out. Serve very hot.

GOURMANDS' MUSHROOMS

There was a man in Ghent who loved mushrooms, but he could only eat them done in this fashion. If you said, "Monsieur, will you have them tossed in butter?" he would roar out, "No--do you take me for a Prussian? Let me have them properly cooked."

Melt in a pan a lump of butter the size of a tangerine orange and squeeze on it the juice of half a lemon. The way to get a great deal of juice from a lemon is to plunge it first of all for a few minutes, say five minutes, in boiling water. When the butter simmers, throw in a pound of picked small mushrooms, stir them constantly, do not let them get black. Then in three or four minutes they are well impregnated with butter, and the chief difficulty of the dish is over. Put the saucepan further on the fire, let it boil for a few minutes. Take out the mushrooms, drain them, sprinkle them with flour, moisten them with gravy, season with salt and pepper, put them back in the butter and stir in the yolk of an egg. Add also a little of the lemon juice that remains. While you are doing this you must get another person to cut and toast some bread and to butter it. Pour on to the bread the mushrooms (which are fit for the greatest saints to eat on Fridays), and serve them very hot.

POMMES CHÂTEAU

Take twenty potatoes, turn them with a knife into olive shape, boil them in salted water for five minutes; drain them and put them on a baking-tin with salt and butter or dripping. Cook them in a very hot oven for thirty minutes, moving them about from time to time. Sprinkle on a little chopped parsley before serving.

CHIPPED POTATOES

Take some long-shaped potatoes, peel them and smooth them with the knife. Cut them into very thin rounds.

Heat the grease pretty hot, dry the slices of potato with a cloth, put them into the frying basket and plunge them into the fat. When they are colored, take the basket out, let the fat heat up again to a slightly higher temperature, and re-plunge the basket, so that the slices become quite crisp. Serve with coarse salt sprinkled over.

CHICORY À LA FERDINAND

Boil and chop in medium-sized pieces the chicory, mince up a few chives according to your taste and heat both the vegetables in some cream, adding salt and pepper. Pour on a dish and decorate with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

APPLES AND SAUSAGES

This dish comes from the French border of Belgium; it tastes better than you would think. Take a pound of beef sausages, and preferably use the small chipolata sausages. (What a delightful thing if the English would make other kinds of sausages as well as their beef and pork ones!) Fry then your sausages lightly in butter, look upon them as little beings for a few moments in purgatory before they are removed to heaven, among the apples. Keeping your sausages hot after they are fried, take a pound of brown pippin apples, pare them and core them. Cut them into neat rounds quarter of an inch thick, put them to cook in their liquor of the sausages (which you are keeping hot elsewhere), and add butter to moisten them. Let them simmer gently so as to keep their shape. Put the apple-rings in the center of the dish, place the sausages round them. This dish uses a good deal of butter, but you must not use anything else for frying.

STUFFED CHICORY

Make a mince of any cold white meat, such as veal, pork or chicken, and add to it some minced ham; sprinkle it with a thick white sauce. In the meantime the chicories should be cooking; tie each one round with a thread to keep them firm and boil them for ten minutes. When cooked, drain them well, open them lengthwise very carefully, and slip in a spoonful of the mince. Close them, keeping the leaves very neat, and, if necessary, tie them round again. Put them in a fire-proof dish with a lump of butter on each, and let them heat through. Serve them in their juice or with more of the white sauce, taking care to remove the threads.

[_Madame Limpens_.]

TOMATOES STUFFED WITH BEANS

Halve and empty the tomatoes, and put a few drops of vinegar in each. Cook your beans, whether French beans or haricots or flageolets, and stir them, when tender, into a good thick bechamel sauce. Let this get cold. Empty out the vinegar from the tomatoes and fill them with the mixture, pouring over the top some mayonnaise sauce and parsley.

[_Madame van Praet_.]

CABBAGE AND POTATOES

Boil the cabbages in salted water till tender. Chop them up. Brown an onion in butter, and add the cabbage, salt, pepper, and a little water. Slice some potatoes thickly, fry them, and serve the vegetable with cabbage in the center, and the fried potatoes laid round.

[_Mdlle. M. Schmidt, Antwerp_.]

SPINACH À LA BRACONNIÈRE

Cook two pounds of well-washed spinach; drain it, and pass it through a sieve; or, failing a sieve, chop it very finely with butter, pepper and salt. Do not add milk, but let it remain somewhat firm. Make a thick bechamel sauce, sufficient to take up a quarter of a pound of grated Gruyère, and, if you wish, stir in the yolk of a raw egg. Lay in a circular dish half a pound of minced ham, pour round it the thick white sauce, and round that again the hot spinach. This makes a pretty dish, and it is not costly.

[_Mme. Braconnière_.]

A DISH OF HARICOT BEANS

Put the haricots to soak for six hours in cold water. Boil them in water with one carrot, one onion, salt, two cloves, a good pinch of dried herbs. Drain off the liquor from the haricots. Chop up a shallot, and fry it in butter; add your haricots, with pepper and salt and tomato purée. Stir well, and serve with minced parsley scattered at the top.

[_Mme. Goffaux_.]

POTATOES IN THE BELGIAN MANNER

Take some slices of streaky bacon, about five inches long, and heat them in a pan. When the bacon is half-cooked, take it out of the pan and in the fat that remains behind fry some very finely-sliced onions till they are brown. When the onions are well browned, put them in a large pot, large enough for all the potatoes you wish to cook, adding pepper, salt, and a coffee-spoonful of sweet herbs dried and mixed, which in England replace the thyme and bay-leaves used in Belgium. Add sufficient water to cook the potatoes and your slices of bacon. Cook till tender.

[_E. Wainard_.]

TOMATOES AND SHRIMPS

Lay on a dish some sliced tomatoes, taking out the seeds, and sprinkle them over with picked shrimps. Then pour over all a good mayonnaise sauce. For the sauce: Take the yolk of an egg and mix it with two soup-spoonfuls of salad oil that you must pass in very gently and very little at a time. Melt a good pinch of salt in a teaspoonful of vinegar (tarragon vinegar, if you have it); add pepper and a small quantity of made mustard. In making this sauce be sure to stir it always the same way. It will take about half-an-hour to make it properly.

[_Paquerette_.]

FLEMISH ENDIVE

Choose twelve endives that are short and neat; cut off the outside leaves and pare the bottom; wash them in plenty of water, and cook them in simmering water for three minutes. Then take them from the water and place them in a well-buttered frying-pan, dust them with salt and also with a pinch of sugar. Add the juice of half a lemon, and rather less than a pint of water. Place the pan on the fire for two or three minutes to start the cooking, then cover it closely, and finish the cooking by placing it in the oven for fifty minutes. Take out the endives and put them in the vegetable-dish and pour over them the liquor in which they have been cooked. This liquor is improved by being reduced, and when off the fire, by having a small piece of butter added to it.

The above recipe can be used for chicory as well as for endive.

[_J. Kirckaert_.]

CAULIFLOWER AND SHRIMPS

Take a cauliflower and cut off the green part, and wash it several times in salted water. Boil it gently till cooked, taking care that it remains whole. Put it aside to cool, and when it is quite cold make a hole in the center down to the bottom. Pick some shrimps till you have half a pint of them, make a good mayonnaise and, taking half of it, mix it with the shrimps. Fill the hole in the cauliflower with the shrimps and sauce, and pour the rest of the sauce over the top of the cauliflower.

This dish is to be served very cold.

[_E. Defouck_.]

BELGIAN CARROTS

Clean well the carrots, cut them in dice, and wash them well. Put them on the fire with enough water to cover them, a bit of butter, an onion well minced, salt and pepper and a dessert-spoonful of powdered sugar. Place the dish in the oven for at least an hour, and, when you serve it, sprinkle over the carrots some minced parsley.

[_Gabrielle Janssens_.]

STUFFED TOMATOES

Take ten good tomatoes and cut off the tops, which are to serve as lids. Remove the insides, and fill with the following mixture: minced veal and ham, rather more veal than ham, mushrooms tossed in butter, a little breadcrumb, milk to render it moist, pepper and salt. Put on the covers and add on each one a scrap of butter. Bake them gently in a fireproof dish. The following excellent sauce is poured over them five minutes before taking them out of the oven: Use any stock that you have, preferably veal, adding the insides of the tomatoes, pepper and salt; pass this through the wire sieve. Make a _roux_--that is, melt some butter in a pan, adding flour little by little and stirring until it goes a brown color. Add to it then your tomatoes that have been through the sieve, and some more fried mushrooms. Pour this sauce over the whole and serve very hot.

[_Mme. van Praet_.]

RED CABBAGE

Mince the cabbage and put it in a pan with plenty of refined fat (clarified fat) and two or three large potatoes, pepper and salt. Add sufficient water to cover it, with a dash of vinegar and six dessert-spoonfuls of brown or moist sugar. Let it simmer for four hours, drain it and serve cold.

[_Mme. Segers_.]

VEGETABLE SALAD

The special point of this dish is that peas, beans, carrots in dice, are all cooked separately and when they are cold they are placed in a large dish without being mixed. Decorate with the hearts of lettuce round the edge and with slices of tomato, and pour over it, or hand with it, a good mayonnaise.

[_Mme. van Praet_.]

CHICORY

This excellent vegetable can be dressed either in a bechamel sauce, or with butter and lemon-juice. It is gently stewed, first of all, and it requires pepper and salt. The sauces can be varied with tomato, or with some of the good English bottled sauces stirred with the bechamel.

[_Mme. van Praet_.]

CAULIFLOWER À LA REINE ELIZABETH

Simmer the cauliflowers till tender. Prepare a mince of veal and pork, and season it well with a little spice. Butter a mold and fill it with alternate layers of mince and of cauliflower broken in small pieces. Fill a large saucepan three-quarters full of boiling water and place the mold in this; let it cook for one hour in this way over the fire; turn it out and pour a spinach sauce over it.

[_Mme. van Praet_.]

MUSHROOMS À LA SPINETTE

Make some puff pastry cases, wash and chop the mushrooms and toss them in butter to which you have added a slice of lemon. Make a bechamel sauce with cream, or, failing that, with thick tinned cream, and mix with the mushrooms. Heat the cases for a few minutes in the oven and fill them with the hot mixture.

[_Mme. Spinette_.]

DRESSED CAULIFLOWER

Simmer a cauliflower till it is tender. Pour out the liquor, and add to it a bit of butter, the size of a nut, rolled in flour, a pinch of nutmeg, a tablespoonful of Gruyère cheese and a little milk.

Bind the sauce with a little feculina flour. At the moment of serving, pour the sauce over the cauliflower, which you have placed upright on a dish. The nutmeg and the cheese are indispensable to this dish.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

(The best way to cook them)

Having cleaned and trimmed your sprouts, let them simmer in salted water, to which you have also added a little soda to preserve the color. Or, if you do not like to add soda, keep the pan firmly covered by the lid. When tender, take them out and let them drain, place them in another pan with a good lump of butter or fat; stir, so as to let the butter melt at once, and sprinkle in pepper and a tiny pinch of nutmeg.

[_Mdlle. Germaine Verstraete_.]

RAGOUT OF MUTTON

Fry the mutton very well. Then place in another pan sufficient water to cover your mutton, adding pepper, salt, a little nutmeg, a celery, and a few white turnips cut in pieces. When they are well cooked, add the meat and let all simmer for two hours.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

STEWED SHOULDER OF MUTTON

Put in a pan a large lump of butter or clarified fat, and place the shoulder in it. Add two big onions sliced, and a very large carrot also sliced, thyme, bay-leaf, two cloves, pepper and salt, and, if you like it, two garlic knobs. Let the shoulder simmer in this by the side of the fire for three hours. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve, and then add to it either a glass of good red wine or a little made mustard with a teaspoonful of brown sugar.

[_Mme. Segers_.]

SHOULDER OF MUTTON

Put a handful of dried white haricots to soak over-night and simmer them the following day for two hours with some salt. Rub your shoulder of mutton with a little bit of garlic before putting it in the oven to cook, and when it is done, serve with the haricots round it, to which have been added a pat or two of butter.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

MUTTON COLLOPS

Take some slices of roast or boiled leg of mutton, egg them, and roll in a mixture of breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and a little flower. Fry till the slices are brown on each side; serve with chipped potatoes.

SHOULDER OF MUTTON DRESSED LIKE KID

My readers have probably tasted a shoulder of kid dressed as mutton. Let them therefore try the converse of the dish, and, if they really take trouble with it, they will have a dinner of the most delicious. Put into a deep dish that will hold your shoulder of mutton the following mixture:

A cupful each of oil, vinegar, white wine, red wine, an onion stuffed with cloves, a bunch of herbs which must be fresh ones--thyme, parsley, marjoram, sage, a tiny bit of mint, a few bay-leaves--two medium carrots cut in slices. Put the shoulder of mutton in this mixture and keep it there for four days, turning it every now and then and pouring the mixture on it. On the fifth day take it out, and, if you care to take the trouble, you will improve it by larding the meat here and there. Put it to roast in front of a good fire, with your liquor, which serves to baste it with, in a pan beneath. If you cannot arrange to hang the mutton by a string to turn like a roasting jack, then bake it, and continually baste it. A small shoulder is most successful. For one of four pounds bake for fifty minutes.

ROAST RUMP OF BEEF, BORDELAISE SAUCE

Take three pounds of the rump of beef, put it into a pretty deep pan upon one onion, one sliced carrot, some thyme, and a bay-leaf, three table-spoonfuls of dripping, salt, and pepper. Put it on the top of the fire, and when it comes fully to the boil, put it to the side, and allow it to simmer nicely for an hour and a half. Dress it on a dish and serve the sauce separately.

ROASTED FILLET OF BEEF

About three pounds of fillet of beef roasted in a good hot oven for forty minutes; let it be rather underdone. Take three turnips, four good-sized carrots, cut them into jardinière slices. Cook them separately in salted water, drain them and add salt, pepper, a tiny pinch of sugar and one dessert-spoonful of butter. Dress the fillet on a long dish with the garniture of carrots and turnips, and some artichoke-bottoms cooked in water and finished with butter, also add some potatoes _château_. Be sure the dish is very hot. Put a little water, or, for choice, clear stock, upon the roasting-dish and pour it over the fillet.

BEEF À LA BOURGUIGNONNE

Braise three pounds of beef upon twenty little onions, ten mushrooms, and two glasses of red wine, salt, pepper, thyme and bay-leaf; cook for one and one-half hours with not too hot a fire. After that, place the beef on an oval dish; keep it hot; stir two tablespoonfuls of demi-glaze into the vegetables and let it boil up. Cut some slices of the beef, and strain the sauce over all.

OX-TONGUE À LA BOURGEOISE

Braise a tongue with two glasses of Madeira, one carrot, one onion, thyme, bay-leaf, for two hours. Take seven tomatoes cut in pieces, four carrots cut in two and three in four, about one-half inch long, ten smallish onions, and braise them all together; then add two large table-spoonfuls of demi-glaze, some salt and pepper. Serve all very hot on an oval dish.

Braised tongue eats very well with spinach, carrots or sorrel.

BEEF À LA MODE

Take the raw beef, either rump-steak or fillet, and brown it in the pan in some butter. Then add a little boiling water. Add then six or eight chopped shallots, the hearts of two celeries chopped, a few small and whole carrots, pepper, salt, two cloves. Before serving, bind the sauce with a little flour and pour all over the meat.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

BOEUF À LA FLAMANDE

For this national dish that part of the animal called the "spiering" is used, which is cut from near the neck. What is called fresh silverside in England answers very well. Cut the beef into slices about half-an-inch thick and divide the slices into four pieces. This you can do with a piece of four pounds. For a piece of four pounds, cook first of all four large fried onions in fat. Put the beef in the hot fat when the onions are colored, and sauté it; that is, keep moving the meat about gently. Take the meat out and place it on a dish. Add to the fat two dessert-spoonsful of flour and let it cook gently for five minutes, adding a good pint of water. Pass the sauce through a tammy, over the onions, and put the meat back in it, and it ought to cover them. Then add a dessert-spoonful of good vinegar and a strong bunch of herbs. Stew for an hour, take off the fat and remove the bunch of herbs. Heat up again and serve.

CARETAKER'S BEEF

The real name of this dish is _Miroton de la Concierge_, and it is currently held that only _concierges_ can do it to perfection. Put a handful of minced onion to fry in butter; when it is nearly cooked, but not quite, add a dessert-spoonful of flour, and stir it till all is well colored. Pour on it a little gravy, or meat-juice of some kind, and let it simmer for ten minutes after it begins to steam again. Then take your beef, which must be cold, and cut in small slices; throw them in and let it all cook for a quarter of an hour, only simmering, and constantly stirring it, so that though it becomes considerably reduced it does not stick to the pan.

BLANKENBERG BEEF