Part 5
REMAINS OF FISH
Make a good white sauce, add pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg and juice of a lemon. Add then your remains of fish and a few pickled shrimps. Fill some shells with it and sprinkle over the top a good powdering of grated Gruyère cheese. Lay a pat of butter in the middle of each shell and put them in the oven. When they are colored a good golden brown, serve them decorated with parsley.
[_Mme. Lekent_.]
GOOD RISSOLES
Mince any cold meat, adding to a pound of it one-half pound of fresh lean pork, a chopped shallot and parsley, salt, pepper, a little nutmeg, and bind with an egg, both yolk and white. Form into balls, and dip them in flour, then color them in some butter, and when they are nicely browned pour into the butter a little stock or meat-juice and water. Let them gently cook in it for ten minutes, and serve.
[_Mme. Lekent_.]
CROQUETTES OF BOILED MEAT
I think that boiled meat when cold is often neglected as being tasteless, but, prepared as I will show you, it will deserve your approval.
Mince your boiled meat and put it into a thick white sauce well-spiced with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and let it remain for two hours. Then prepare your croquettes by rolling the mixture in white of egg and fine breadcrumbs. Put a piece of butter in the saucepan, sufficient to take all the croquettes, and let them brown in it for about ten minutes. A white sauce served with them is a good addition.
[_Mlle. A. Demeulemeester_.]
CARBONADES DONE WITH BEER
Cut the meat into slices that are thin rather than thick. Mince two big onions and fry them till brown; then fry the slices till they are colored on both sides. Pour on them first some beer, then a dash of vinegar, adding thyme, pepper, and salt, and throw in also a slice of crust of bread, which you have spread with mustard. Let this all simmer for three hours.
[_Mme. Segur_.]
WALLOON ENTRÉE
Make some toasted bread, either cut in rounds or in squares, and butter them. Cut some slices of salt beef, or, better still, ham, and put them on top; spread the meat with a good layer of grated cheese, and over that place another piece of buttered toast of corresponding shape. Melt some butter in a small saucepan and fry the rounds till they are golden-brown.
[_Mme. E. Maes_.]
SCRAPS OF MEAT
Your scraps of meat must be cut small or roughly minced; add to them a little sausage-meat, about a quarter as much, and a slice of white crumb bread that you have dipped in water or milk, and well drained. If eggs are not too dear, add two eggs, mixing them with the meat. Place the dish in the oven for half-an-hour--but it must be a slow oven--and take care that the meat does not become dry.
[_V. Verachtert_.]
FRICADELLE
For one pound of minced pork take one and one-half pounds of minced veal; cut three slices of white bread the thickness of nearly an inch, and crumble them up; two raw eggs, pepper and salt. Mix it all well, and place it in the oven for half-an-hour. If you eat this hot, serve it with a gravy sauce. If you wish for a supper-dish, put salad round the meat.
CHICORY AND HAM WITH CHEESE SAUCE
Cook the chicories gently in butter till they are done. Then take each one, and roll it in a slice of ham, and put them in a fireproof dish. Then make a very good white sauce of flour and butter and milk, adding cheese to flavor it strongly, and the yolk of an egg. Pour this sauce over the chicory, and place the dish in the oven. Let it turn brownish, and then serve it directly.
[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]
CROQUETTES OF VEAL
Make first of all a very thick white sauce of flour, milk, and butter, not forgetting also salt and pepper; when it is very thick add grated Gruyère cheese, in the proportion of a heaped teaspoonful of this to a breakfast-cupful of sauce. Take it off the fire, and stir in first of all the juice of a lemon, and then the yolk of an egg. Let it get cold. Then mince up finely your veal, or, indeed, any lean meat. Mix it well with the sauce, and make croquettes of it. Then roll each in the white of egg that you have left, and then in grated breadcrumbs, and fry in deep fat.
[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]
ENTRÉE (CROQUE-MONSIEUR)
Cut out some rounds of crumb of bread, of equal size, with a tin cutter; or, failing that, with a wine-glass. Butter all the rounds and sprinkle them with grated cheese--for preference with Gruyère. On half the number of rounds place a bit of ham cut to the same size. Put a lump of butter the weight of egg into a pan, and fry with the rounds in it, till they become golden. When they are a nice color, place one round dressed with cheese on a round dressed with ham, so as to have the golden bread both above and below. Serve them very hot, and garnished with fried parsley.
[_E. Defouck_.]
HOT-POT
Before putting in your meat, cook in the water a celery, four leeks, two onions, two turnips, two carrots; then add the meat, with pepper and salt, and stew gently for three hours. If you can put in a marrow-bone as well, that will give the soup a delicious flavor.
[_V. Verachtert_.]
HOCHE POT
One pound of fresh pork, one pound rump (flank) of beef, one pound rump of veal, two onions, one celery, four leeks, two or three carrots, two or three turnips, according to the size, a few Brussels sprouts, five or six potatoes, according to the number of persons. Let the water boil before putting in the meat, and cut all the vegetables in cubes of the same size, like cubes of sugar. Let simmer only, for three hours; it is delicious and makes a dinner.
[_V. Verachtert_.]
BOUCHÉES À LA REINE
Get some little cases from the pastry-cook of puff paste, which are to be filled with sweetbread cut in dice. It is a good plan to heat the cases before filling them.
The filling mixture. Cook the sweetbreads in water with pepper and salt, till done, skin them and cut in dice. Prepare a good bechamel sauce, seasoned with the juice of a lemon, and add to it a few mushrooms that have been fried in butter. Heat the dice of sweetbread in this sauce and fill the cases with it. Put them back in the oven to get quite hot.
HOCHE POT OF GHENT
Clean two big carrots and cut them into small pieces, the same for two turnips, four leeks, two celeries, and a good green cabbage, only using the pale leaves. Wash all these vegetables well in running water, two or three times, and put them on the fire in three and one-half pints of water. Add salt, and let it cook for an hour. At the end of this time, add a good piece of pork weighing perhaps three pounds--for choice let it be cutlets. You can also add a pig's trotter. Let it cook for another hour, taking care that the meat remains below the water. At the end of that time, and half-an-hour before you wish to eat it, add potatoes enough to be three for each person. Watch the cooking so as to see that the potatoes do not stick, and finish the seasoning with pepper and salt.
[_Georges Kerckaert_.]
CARBONADE OF FLANDERS
Cut your beef into small neat pieces. Mince some onions finely, and for five or six people you would add two bay-leaves, two cloves, pepper, salt; simmer gently for three hours in water, and at the end of that time bind the sauce with cornflour. Some people like the sauce to be thickened instead with mustard.
[_V. Verachtert._]
HEADLESS SPARROWS
Take two pounds of beef, which must be lean and cut in thin slices. Cut your slices of beef in pieces of five inches by three. Put in the middle of each piece a little square of very fat bacon, a sprig of parsley, pepper and salt. Roll up the slices and tie them round with a thread so that the seasoning remains inside. Melt in a pan a lump of butter the size of a very big egg. Let it get brown and then, after rolling the beef in flour, put them in the butter. Let them cook thus for five minutes, add half a pint of water, and let them simmer for two hours. Fill up with water if it becomes too dry. Before serving, take great care to remove the threads.
[_A Belgian at Droitwich._]
MUTTON STEW
Take two pounds of mutton, the breast or one of the inferior parts will do as well as a prime piece. Put in an earthenware pan a lump of butter as big as an egg, and let it color. Cut the mutton in pieces and let them color in the butter, adding salt and pepper, a few onions or shallots. When all is colored, add at least a pound of turnips, cut in slices, with about a pint of water. Let it boil up till the turnips are tender. Then add two and one-half or three pounds of potatoes; salt and pepper these, but in moderation, if the meat has been already salted and peppered. Add some thyme and bay-leaves, and let them all cook very gently till the potatoes are tender. When these are cooked, take out the pieces of meat, mix the turnips and potatoes, so as to make a uniform mixture; then place the meat on the top of the mixture, and serve it. _N.B._ It is necessary to watch the cooking of this dish very carefully, so that you can add a little water whenever it becomes necessary, for if one leaves the preparation a little too dry it quickly burns.
[_A Belgian at Droitwich._]
HOCHE POT GANTOIS
(For eight or nine persons)
Take one pound beef, one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; put them in with the meat, and see that they are first covered by the water. Let it boil for three to four hours, and three quarters of an hour before dishing, add some potatoes cut in pieces.
To dish: Place the meat in the center of a flat dish, and the vegetables around; serve the liquid in a soup-tureen. This dish should be eaten out of soup plates, as it is soup and meat course at one time.
CHINESE CORKS
Make a thick white sauce, and when it has grown a little cold, add the yolk of one egg, and a few drops of lemon-juice. Sprinkle in a slice of stale bread, and enough grated cheese to flavor it strongly, and leave it to cool for two hours. Then shape into small pieces like corks, dip them into the beaten whites of your egg, and then into grated breadcrumbs. Have ready some hot fat, or lard, and fry the cheese-balls in it till they are golden.
[_Mme. Limpens._]
LIMPENS CHEESE
Take a roll and, cutting it in slices, remove the crusts so that a round of crumbs remain. Butter each slice, and cover it well with grated cheese, building up the slices one on the top of the other. Boil a cupful of milk, with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg; when boiled, pour it over the bread till it is well soaked. Put them in the oven, for quarter of an hour, according to the heat of the oven and the quantity you have. You must pour its juice over it every now and then, and when the top is turning into a crust, serve it.
[_Mme. Limpens._]
CHEESE SOUFFLÉ
Take two good soup-spoonfuls of flour, and mix it with half a teacupful of milk; melt a lump of butter, the size of a filbert, and add that, then enough grated cheese to your taste, and the yolks of four eggs. Add at the last the whites of the four eggs, beaten stiffly; pepper and salt. Butter a mold, put in your mixture, and let it cook for one hour in a saucepan, surrounded with boiling water, and the lid on. Then turn out the soufflé, and serve with a mushroom sauce. The sauce is a good white sauce, to which you add already cooked mushrooms. Clean them first of all, chop them, and cook them till tender in butter; and their own juice; then throw them into the sauce, and pour it over your soufflé.
[_Mme. Vandervalle._]
CHEESE CROQUETTES
Make a thick bechamel sauce, and be sure that you cook it for ten minutes, constantly stirring. Add, till well flavored, some Gruyère and Parmesan cheese, mixed and grated. Let it all get cold. Then roll this mixture into the shape of carrots; roll them in finely-grated breadcrumbs, and fry them in hot lard or refined fat. Lay them on a hot dish, and, at the thicker end of each carrot stick in a sprig of parsley to look like the stalk.
[_Mme. van Marcke de Lunessen._]
CHEESE FONDANTS
For twelve fondants make a white sauce with two soupspoons of flour and milk. Add to it the yolks of three eggs. Stir in four ounces of mixed Gruyère cheese, and Parmesan, grated very finely. Add at the end the juice of half a lemon, and a dust of cayenne. Let it all grow cold. Then make little balls with this paste and roll them in breadcrumbs. Throw them in a pan of boiling fat, where they must remain till they are a good golden color. Drain them, keeping them hot, and serve quickly.
[_Madame Emelie Jones_]
CHEESE SOUFFLÉ
Grate half a pound of Gruyère cheese. Mix in a cup of milk a dessert-spoonful of flour; beat four whole eggs, and add first the cheese, and then the flour and milk mixture. Season with pepper and salt, and put all into a mold. Let it cook in a saucepan of boiling water for an hour and a half. Then at the end of this time put it in the oven for half an hour.
[_Madame Emelie Jones_.]
POTATOES AND CHEESE
Wash some raw potatoes, peel them, cut them into very thin round slices. Take a dish which will stand the oven, and be nice enough to go on the table, and put in it a layer of the slices sprinkled with pepper, salt, a little flour, and plenty of grated Gruyère. Continue in this way, finishing with a layer of cheese, and a little flour. Put the dish in the oven, which must not be a very hot one, and cook gently.
For a medium pie dish you will find that half an hour will be sufficient to cook the potatoes.
[_Madame Emelie Jones_.]
YORK HAM, SWEETBREADS, MADEIRA SAUCE
Heat the ham in a double saucepan (bain marie). Boil the sweetbreads, blanch them and let them fry in some butter.
Take flour and butter and melt them to a thick sauce, adding a tumbler of water and Liebig which will turn your sauce brown. Fry half a pound of mushrooms in butter and when brown, add them and the liquor to your sauce with a good glass of madeira or sherry. Place your ham in the middle of the dish, surround it with the sweetbreads, and pour over all the Madeira sauce.
[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]
HAM WITH MADEIRA SAUCE
Cook some macaroni or spaghetti, with salt and pepper. Make a brown sauce, using plenty of butter, for this dish requires a great deal of sauce, and add to your "roux" some tomatoes in purée (stewed and run through a sieve), a little meat extract, some fried mushrooms, a few drops of good brandy or madeira to your taste. Let your slices of ham heat in this sauce, and when ready, place them in the middle of a flat dish, put the mushrooms or spaghetti round, and put the sauce, very hot, over the ham.
[_Madame Spinette._]
A DIFFICULT DISH OF EGGS
And yet this is only fried eggs after all! Put some oil on to heat; if you have not oil use butter, but oil is the best. When the bluish steam rises it is hot enough. Break an egg into a little flat dish, tip up the frying pan at the handle side, and slip the egg into it, then with a wooden spoon turn the egg over on itself; that is, roll the white of it over the yolk as it slips into the pan. If you cannot manage this, let the egg heat for a second, and then roll the white over the yolk with a wooden spoon. Do each egg in this way, and as soon as one is done let it drain and keep warm by the fire. When all are done put them in a circle, in a dish, and pour round them a very hot sauce, either made with tomatoes, or flavored with vinegar and mustard.
COUNTRY EGGS
Make a white sauce thickly mixed with onions, such as you would eat in England with a leg of mutton, but do not forget a little seasoning of mace. Make a high mold of mashed potatoes, and then scoop it out from the top, leaving the bottom and high sides of the vegetable. While your sauce is kept by the fire (the potatoes also), boil six eggs for two minutes, shell them, and you will find the whites just set and no more. Pour the onion sauce into the potato, and drop in the whole eggs and serve very hot.
FRENCH EGGS
Put a lump of butter the size of an egg in a fireproof dish, mixing in when it is melted some breadcrumbs, a chopped leek, the inside of three tomatoes, pepper and salt. Let it cook for three or four minutes in the oven, then stir in the yolks of two eggs, and let it make a custard.
Then break on the top of this custard as many eggs as you wish; sprinkle with pepper and salt. Let it remain in the oven till these last are beginning to set. Take out the dish, and pass over the top the salamander, or the shovel, red hot, and serve at once. I have seen this dish with the two extra whites of eggs beaten and placed in a pile on the top, and slightly browned by the shovel.
OEUFS CELESTES
(Hommage à Sir Edward Grey)
Gently boil a quantity of the very best green peas in good gravy; as the gravy becomes reduced, add, instead, butter. Do not forget to have put a lump of sugar in every pint of gravy. When the peas are done break on them the required number of fresh eggs, with pepper and salt. Place all in a double saucepan, till the eggs are just done. It is a pity that in England there are no cooking pots made, which will hold fire on the top, so that a dish, such as this, becomes easily done in a few minutes.
PETITES CAISSES À LA FURNES
Take a small Ostend rabbit, steep it in water as usual, and boil it gently in some white stock, with a good many peppercorns. When it is cold chop the meat up into small dice; add to it about a quarter of the amount of ham, and the whites of two hard-boiled eggs, all cut to the same size.
Moisten the salpicon with a good white sauce made with cream, a little lemon juice, pepper and salt.
The little paper cases must have a ring of cress arranged, about a quarter of an inch thick; the salpicon, put in carefully with a small spoon, will hold it in place.
Fill the cases to the level of the cress leaves, and decorate with a Belgian flag made as follows:
Make some aspic jelly with gelatine, tarragon vinegar, and a little sherry. Color one portion with paprika or coralline, pepper; a second part with the sieved yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, and the remainder with rinsed pickled walnuts, also passed through a wire sieve. Pour the red jelly into a small mold with straight sides; when it is almost set pour in the yellow aspic, and when that is cold pour in the black. When the jelly is quite cold, turn it out, slice it, and cut it into pieces of suitable size. If you make too much aspic it can decorate any cold dish or salad. The walnut squash looks black at night.
[_Margaret Strail, or Mrs. A. Stuart._]
FLEMISH CARROTS
Take some young carrots, wash and brush them as tenderly as you would an infant, then simmer them till tender in with pepper and salt. When cooked, draw them to the side of the fire and pour in some cream to make a good sauce. If you cannot use cream, take milk instead and stir with it the yolk of an egg. To thicken for use, add a pinch of sugar and some chopped parsley.
AUBERGINE OR EGG PLANT
This purple fruit is, like the tomato, always cooked as a vegetable. It is like the brinjal of the East. It is hardly necessary to give special recipes for the dressing of aubergines, for you can see their possibilities at a glance. They can be stuffed with white mince in a white sauce, when you would cut the fruit in half, remove some of the interior, fill up with mince and sauce, replace the top, and bake for twenty minutes, or simply cut in halves and stewed in stock, with pepper and salt they are good, or you can simmer them gently in water and when ready to serve, pour over them a white sauce as for vegetable marrow. If they are cheap in England the following entrée would be inexpensive and would look nice.
EGG PLANTS AS SOUFFLÉ
Wash the fruit, cut them lengthways, remove the inside. Fill each half with a mixture made of beaten egg, grated cheese, and some fine breadcrumbs, and a dash of mustard. Put the halves to bake for a quarter of an hour, or till the soufflé mixture has risen. When cooked place them in an oval dish with a border of rice turned out from a border mold.
POTATO CROQUETTES
Cook your potatoes, rub them through the sieve, add pepper and salt, two or three eggs, lightly beaten, mixing both yolks and whites, and according to the quantity you are making a little butter and milk. Work all well and let it get cold. Roll into croquettes, roll each in beaten egg, then in finely grated breadcrumbs, and let them cook in boiling fat or lard.
[_Madame Emelie Jones._]
PURÉE OF CHESTNUTS
Make a little slit in each chestnut, boil them till tender, then put them in another pan with cold water in it and replace them on the fire. Peel them one by one as you take them out, and rub them through a sieve, pounding them first to make it easier, add salt, a good lump of butter and a little milk to make a nice purée. This is very good to surround grilled chicken or turkey legs, or for a salmi of duck or hare.
HORS D'OEUVRES