Perhaps this batch of suggestions would be incomplete with no
reference in it to the cooking of pigs' feet, and yet there's very
little variety in the methods of preparing them. The simplest is the
best, it seems to me, and that is dipping them in melted butter, then
in bread-crumbs, and broiling over a moderate fire. A piquant sauce is
by long odds the sauce par excellence to be served with them. Some
chefs de cuisine prepare them elaborately with truffles, to my mind,
however, there's an incongruity in a combination of pork and truffles.
But of course it's only a matter of taste, and it is more than
possible that there will be some who read this and deplore my poor
taste in devoting so much space to ways and means of cooking pork.
Well, to such I offer the suggestion that they call it a chapter on
porcine potentials, and pass on.
* * * * *
By all means let us be economical--truly economical. But let us never
make the grievous but common mistake of thinking that the buying of
cheap, downright cheap food is economy. To commit such an error in
judgment is to lay the cornerstone of more than one kind of
unhappiness. But you know that, too. And with so many inexpensive
viands as there are to be had, susceptible as they are of so many ways
of serving, one can, with the exercise of a little judgment in such
matters, have the appearance of "living high" when in reality one is
laying up money out of the weekly table allowance, if one has such an
institution in one's family. For myself, I have a great respect for a
housekeeper who keeps within her allowance week in and week out, year
after year. But for the one who cuts loose occasionally from all
allowance limits when there is a "good thing up" I have the sincerest
admiration and sympathy. It is with such a one that I always feel
tempted to outstay my welcome if I get the shadow of a chance to be so
ill bred. Such an ignoring of trammels of the financial sort is an
indication of truancy in other matters now and then that rather
appeals to me, to be very honest about it. But I don't recommend it to
you or to any one. Perhaps it hasn't a place here, but since it is
written it shall stand, labelled _En parenthèse_.
And we will talk of codfish--fresh codfish. This is a species of the
gadus family that is eligible for duty in a family of any class--high,
low, or middle. It may follow the soup at an unlimited course dinner
and not be out of its element or it may form the _pièce de
résistance_, or in fact the only piece of any kind at a dinner of
another sort and still be quite at home.