=Mushroom Croquettes.=--Peel and trim half a pound of mushrooms,
chop the stalks and trimmings fine and rinse them in water. Simmer
the chopped trimmings for twenty minutes in milk to cover. Strain and
reserve the liquor; add cream or milk to make two cupfuls in all;
season with salt and pepper. Cut the caps into small pieces, and fry
in butter. Add two chopped hard-boiled eggs and a tablespoonful of the
sauce. Heat thoroughly, take from the fire, and add the yolks of two
raw eggs; cool, and shape into croquettes. Dip in the whites of two
eggs and crumbs, and fry in deep fat. Serve with the sauce.
=Stewed Mushrooms.=--Pound in a mortar a few bits of onion. Put in a
saucepan with two ounces of butter and two tablespoonfuls of oil. Brown
to a light colour, then add twelve mushrooms cut in slices. Stew slowly
for one hour; add a little salt and pepper and a good teaspoonful of
flour mixed smooth with water; boil for three minutes, and serve very
hot.
=Mushroom Pie.=--Take half a pound of butter beans, a quarter of a
pound of mushrooms, one pound of chestnuts, two onions, one hard-boiled
egg, one teacupful of tapioca (soaked overnight), some short-crust
pastry.
Fill a dish with alternate layers of the above ingredients; add
seasoning to taste. The onions and mushrooms to be fried, the chestnuts
boiled and peeled, the butter beans cooked the day before until quite
soft, and the egg cut into slices. Cover with the pastry made as
follows:
Half a pound of flour, half a pound of nut butter, mix with cold
water. Brush over with beaten egg, and bake.
_Gravy with the Pie._--Melt one ounce of butter in a saucepan, stir in
a tablespoonful of flour, and cook till a rich dark brown, stirring
all the time. Add half a pint of vegetable stock, and bring to the
boil. Before serving, add half a teaspoonful of marmite. Marmite is a
pure vegetable extract, to be had from the Marmite Extract Company, 59
Eastcheap, London, E.C.
=Mushroom Patties.=--Dried or fresh mushrooms, light pastry, milk,
seasoning, flour, and butter.
Put the mushrooms (if dried, they must be soaked overnight) with two
ounces of butter into a saucepan; simmer slowly till they shrink and
give out their juice; stir in an ounce of flour, add a cup of milk,
stir gently for five minutes, let it remain for half an hour, and
season with pepper and salt. Line patty-pans with pastry, fill with the
mushroom mixture, and bake.
=Mushrooms à la Provençale.=--Slice off that part of the tomato that
adheres to the stalk; scoop out the seeds without breaking the sides of
the fruit, and place them in a circular order in a sauté pan containing
about a gill of salad oil; next chop up half a bottle of mushrooms, a
little parsley, and four shallots; put these into a stewpan, season
with pepper and salt, and add a little chopped thyme; fry these for
about five minutes, then mix in three yolks of eggs; fill the tomatoes
with this preparation; shake some light-coloured raspings of bread over
them, and place them over a brisk fire, holding a red-hot salamander
over them for about ten minutes, by which time they will be done; dish
them up; pour some brown sauce round the base, and serve.
=Cream Mushrooms.=--Peel one pound of fresh mushrooms, cut off the
stalks. Beat up two ounces of butter in a sauté pan or a stewpan; put
in the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper, and cook over a moderate
fire for ten minutes, then add half a pint of cream or milk and cream.
Bake for about five minutes, and thicken with one ounce of butter
kneaded with half an ounce of flour. Dish up, and serve hot.
=Mushroom Omelette.=--Take three large mushrooms chopped finely, fry
lightly in three ounces of butter. Add three eggs, well beaten, yolks
and whites separately, and two tablespoonfuls of milk; season with
pepper and salt. Pour into the pan, and fry in hot butter. Fry well
both sides.
=Stuffed Mushrooms.=--Wash and chop finely the trimmings and stalks of
sixteen large fresh mushrooms, fry the trimmings in oil, and add half a
cupful of tomato sauce, with salt and red pepper to season. Add equal
parts of fresh bread-crumbs and grated Parmesan cheese until a smooth,
thick paste is formed. Season with minced parsley. Fill the mushroom
caps, and arrange on a baking dish. Sprinkle with crumbs and grated
cheese, moisten with olive oil, and bake for fifteen minutes. Sprinkle
with lemon juice and serve.
=Mushroom Rolls.=--Scoop out the crumb from small dinner rolls, cut in
half, and fill the cavity with mushroom mixture as follows:
Clean a quarter of a pound of button mushrooms, cut them small, stew
them in a small stewpan with one ounce of butter; season with pepper
and salt, and when the mushrooms are tender, stir in one ounce of flour
mixed to a smooth paste with a gill of cream or milk. Bring the mixture
to the boil for a minute or two, and use it just before it is cold.
=Curried Mushrooms.=--Fry a small chopped onion in butter, with a
teaspoonful each of flour and curry powder, add a cupful of stock,
and cook until thick, stirring constantly. Take from the fire, season
with salt and pepper and lemon juice, and strain over fried mushrooms
arranged on a buttered dish.
=Broiled Mushrooms.=--(1) Peel some large mushrooms. Broil on a
buttered gridiron, inside up. Season and serve on buttered toast.
Melted butter, mixed with minced parsley and chives, and seasoned with
salt and pepper, may be served separately if desired, or melted butter
and lemon juice.
(2) Fry separately in melted butter large fresh mushrooms whole, and
fresh mushrooms chopped. Add cream or milk to the minced mushrooms,
using enough to cover, and simmer for ten minutes. Spread the minced
mixture on buttered toast, and lay a large broiled mushroom on each
piece. Season with salt and pepper, and if desired, a little grated
nutmeg or lemon juice.
=Baked Mushrooms.=--Peel a dozen large mushrooms, put into a buttered
dripping-pan, inside up, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dot with
butter, and pour over two-thirds of a cupful of cream. Bake for ten
minutes in a hot oven and serve on toast, with some gravy poured over.
The cream may be omitted and two tablespoonfuls of butter used instead.
=Scalloped Mushroom.=--Mince some mushrooms rather finely, peel and
chop a shallot, melt an ounce of butter and fry it; then add half a
gill of tomato sauce, two tablespoonfuls of cream, some bread-crumbs
and chopped parsley, and a tablespoonful of sherry, with seasoning to
taste. Butter some shells, when the mixture is thoroughly hot pour it
into the shells, cover with bread-crumbs and sprinkle with chopped
parsley; divide about an ounce and a half of butter into little bits,
and put them on to the tops of the filled shells; bake in a very hot
oven, so as to brown the surface; dish up in the shells.--_Mrs. B. C.
Stephenson’s recipe._
MUSTARD (_Sinapis alba._ Ord. _Cruciferæ_).
Exactly the same treatment is required for this as for cress. Mustard
germinates more quickly than the latter, therefore sow it three days
after the accompanying cress.
ONION (_Allium cepa._ Ord. _Liliaceæ_).
There is no vegetable, except the potato, more continually in demand
in the kitchen than this admirable bulb. It is indispensable in soups,
stews, sauces, salads, stuffing, while in its native simplicity,
braised, boiled, or fried, it delights many a heart on a cold winter’s
day.
The ground that is to carry onions must be deeply trenched and richly
manured. This should be done as early in the winter as possible, as the
onion must be sown early in the year, and the ground is all the better
for being mellowed by frost. A moderate dressing of kainit may be dug
into the top spit at the same time that the good stuff from the stable
goes into the bottom of the trench.
The ground should be levelled down and a dressing of soot sprinkled
over the surface and raked in, and in February or March, as early,
indeed, as the season permits, the seed must go in. Choose a dry day
when the soil is almost dusty, tread the ground firm, and draw shallow
drills across it, a foot apart. The seed must be sown very thinly and
evenly, and the drills covered over by means of the rake. This being
done the gardener should perform a sort of step dance over the entire
bed, treading the ground as firm as possible; indeed, some pass the
garden roller over it, but this is an unsafe practice, as if the ground
be the least bit damp, earth will stick to the roller, and with it the
precious seeds. The bed should be lightly finished with the rake, and
left as tidy and smooth as a billiard table.
With the growth of the onions will come an innumerable crop of weeds.
In theory these should be hand-weeded, but there is no objection to
using the Dutch hoe, once. The hoe must be carefully used, and must not
drive deeply into the soil, for the onions must not be loosened. All
subsequent weeding must be done by hand.
As soon as the onions are well up, a sprinkling of soot should be
administered every two or three weeks. This not only serves as an
invaluable manure, but helps to keep the onion grub at bay. One cannot
blame the grub for being fond of onions, but one does not desire his
presence, as he may easily ruin the entire crop. In showery weather
occasional slight top-dressings of nitrate may be given with advantage,
say about once a month.
The onions will need to be thinned in May and again during June, and
very useful these thinnings are in the salad bowl. The second thinning
need not be done all at once, but the bed may be systematically used
from as onions are required; be this as it may, by the first week in
July there should be a good four inches between each bulb.
About the beginning of September knock the stems down with a rake
handle, to induce the bulbs to ripen off, and harvest them in a
perfectly dry condition a fortnight later. They should lie on the
tool-shed floor, spread out to thoroughly dry off, for a couple of days
before being bunched and stored.
There are many good sorts of onions; for the spring sowing a sound,
good-keeping bulb is required; Rousham Park Hero, Ailsa Craig, or
James’s Long-keeping are all good sorts, but on the whole we prefer the
first for the small garden; it yields a sound bulb of good size and
quality.
At the same time as the main crop is sown in early spring, a small
breadth of the onion bed may usefully be devoted to pickling onions.
For this purpose choose such a variety as Silverskin. The seed must
be sown thickly and broadcast; the little bulbs should stand cheek by
jowl. Hand-weeding alone should be their portion, and they will be
ready to harvest in July.
In order to obtain early bulbs of large size, a sowing of a special
variety of onion may be made in the open early in August. For this
purpose the Tripoli onion or its like is preferred. There is none
better than the Trebons onion; it is a most excellent, mild-flavoured
bulb, and will keep far into the winter.
The bed chosen for this sowing should be open, dry, and exposed to
air and sun. The plants will stand in it through an ordinary English
winter, and in early March they should be planted with the trowel in
the onion bed, in rows a foot apart, and six inches between each plant.
Nitrate and soot should be their portion as for the spring-sown onions,
and in July they will give a fine harvest.
If the autumn-sown onions are a failure, as sometimes happens, it is
worth the gardener’s while to sow a box of seed of Trebons or of a main
crop variety in the hotbed in March, or earlier if possible. These
plants will be put out in April, as advised above, and should give an
abundant reward to the careful gardener.