=Escalloped Egg Plant.=--Boil a large egg plant until tender, peel and
mash, season with butter, pepper, and salt; add two hard-boiled eggs
chopped finely, and half an onion grated. Add two tablespoonfuls of
cream; serve on croûtons very hot.
=Caponata= (_A Sicilian Dish_).--Peel eight aubergines, cut them
into little pieces; sprinkle these pieces with salt to get rid of the
bitterness, and fry them. Cut up an onion, fry it lightly in oil, and
when it is yellow-brown add to it a head of celery well cleaned, and
also cut in pieces. When all this has cooked about three minutes, add
capers and olives stoned and cut up in quarters. Then add the purée you
have prepared from two pounds of tomatoes, with a little vinegar and a
little sugar, enough to make an acid-sweet sauce, cook it all together
for a short time, then add the fried egg plant to the mixture, and
serve up on a hot dish.
=Egg Plant Stuffed with Nuts.=--Boil an egg plant fruit until tender.
Split and scoop out the pulp. Add a cupful of chopped nuts to one
tablespoonful each of butter and bread-crumbs, salt and pepper to
season. Mix with two eggs well beaten, fill the shells, and bake for an
hour.
=Egg Plant Baked with Tomato Sauce.=--Cut a slice from the top of an
egg plant fruit and scoop out the pulp. Remove the seeds, and soak the
pulp in salted water for half an hour. Squeeze dry, chop three boiled
onions finely, and cook for twenty minutes with half the contents of a
can of tomatoes, adding a bay leaf, a clove, and two sprigs of parsley,
and a teaspoonful of sugar. Rub through a fine sieve. Soak a cupful of
bread-crumbs in milk, squeeze dry, and mix with the egg plant pulp, and
half of the tomato sauce. Add the yolks of two eggs, a tablespoonful of
butter, and salt and pepper to season. Mix thoroughly, fill the shell
of the egg plant, sprinkle with crumbs and bake for forty minutes,
basting with olive oil. Reheat the remainder of the purée; season with
salt and pepper, and add a little butter, then serve separately as a
sauce.
=Egg Plant à la Provence.=--Slice and soak two small egg plant fruits,
drain, and dip in oil, and broil. Put them into a saucepan which has
been rubbed with garlic, add a chopped onion, a tablespoonful of butter
or oil, a teaspoonful each of minced parsley and anchovy paste, a
cupful of stewed strained tomatoes, salt and pepper to season. Cook
until tender, and serve on toast or with macaroni.
=Stuffed Egg Plant.=--Boil an egg plant fruit till tender; remove from
the hull, being careful to save as many pieces of hull as you wish to
serve. Mix with the pulp one or two tomatoes, chopped nuts, toasted
rolled dry biscuit crumbs. Season with chopped onions, red and black
pepper, and salt. Fry in hot butter, fill the pieces of hull with this
mixture; sprinkle with dry biscuit crumbs and bits of butter, and bake
brown.
=Stuffed with Tomatoes.=--Parboil an egg plant fruit for ten minutes,
drain, cool, cut in two lengthwise. Scoop out the pulp and mix with a
cupful of chopped tomatoes, and minced green pepper free from seeds,
also a cupful of bread-crumbs. Season with salt, pepper, and melted
butter. Fill the shells, bind them together with tape, and bake,
basting frequently with melted butter and hot water. Take up on a hot
plate; remove the strings, and pour a hot tomato sauce around the egg
plant.
ENDIVE (_Cichorium Endivia._ Ord. _Compositæ_).
Though with care this excellent salad may be grown for a large part of
the year, yet we find that it has an incurable tendency to bolt in hot
weather, and, after all, if one has lettuce one can do without endive;
therefore in the small garden we prefer to grow it as an autumn and
winter crop, and it is this very lateness that makes endive so useful.
Endive should be sown in mid-July; this sowing may be followed by a
second about the 7th of August. As soon as the plants are large enough
to handle they must be pricked out nine inches apart, in a patch of
well-prepared ground, well watered in, and kept watered through dry
weather until rain shall have settled them in.
To be properly enjoyed, endive must be blanched for use; this is
effected by either tying the leaves together, as certain lettuces
are still treated, or flower-pots may be inverted over the plants, a
piece of slate or other covering ensuring perfect darkness. As soon as
blanched, endive must be used, as it soon rots after the process is
complete; therefore but few plants should be tied at a time, and tying
should be done weekly.
The first sowing may well be of curled endive, but the second should
certainly be of the Batavian or broad-leaved kind; this is hardier, and
stands winter cold and damp better.
In September, say about the 7th, the frame should be filled with
broad-leaved endive. The lights should be kept off as long as frosts
will allow, and the plants kept perfectly hardy. When the lights go on
the plants should be kept almost dry, little or no water being given.
The plants in the frame may easily be blanched by shaking clean straw
or hay over that part of the frame that is to be blanched. With this
treatment endive should certainly be in use at the turn of the year.
=Baked Endives.=--After trimming and washing some heads of endive put
them in salted water, with a few drops of lemon juice. Drain them,
pour a little white sauce into a buttered fireproof dish, then add
the endives with a little vegetable stock; the white sauce should be
sufficient to cover the endive. Then add grated Gruyère and Parmesan
cheese, bake, and serve.
FENNEL (_Fœniculum officinale. Umbelliferæ_).
Usually propagated by division of old plants in March. Plants should
stand in rows fifteen inches apart, the plants one foot in the row.
Any good rich garden soil will suit fennel, which is a perennial and
long-lived subject. The flowering heads should be removed as they
appear. Gather the youngest and freshest leaves for use as required.
It is a most delightful vegetable, very little known in this country.
It can be had at Italian greengrocers if not procurable elsewhere. It
can be cooked in stock, like celery and chicory, and served with any
rich sauce.
=Fennel Sauce.=--Pick the leaves from the stalks, wash them well, then
put them into boiling water, and boil until tender about three-quarters
of an hour, drain off the water, and chop them finely. Stir them into
half a pint of boiling white sauce, and simmer for ten minutes slowly.
GOOD KING HENRY (_Chenopodium Bonus-Henricus. Chenopodiaceæ_).
This is a perennial plant of easy culture. Sow in a seed bed early in
April, and as soon as large enough prick the seedlings out six inches
apart. When well grown plant out in permanent bed fifteen inches apart.
The leaves are used in the same way as spinach.
GOURDS (_Cucurbita. Cucurbitaceæ_).
Sow in hotbed early in April, and keep on growing in pots until the
end of May, when the plants may be hardened off and planted out in
sunny positions. It is well to take out a hole two feet square and fill
it with a rich compost for the roots to run in. The fruit should be
thinned if good examples are required, and the plants must have plenty
of water. Gourds may be trained over trellis or arbour.