=Boiled Salsify.=--Wash the salsify, put in clean water and scrape it,
being very careful to keep it under water or it will be a bad colour,
and immediately put into cold water to which two tablespoonfuls of
vinegar have been added, this will blanch it; be sure the salsify is
covered by the water. Put into a saucepan of boiling water with a
tablespoonful of salt for one hour, more or less, according to the
size of the roots. Place neatly on a drainer, and cover with good
white sauce (see Sauces). Or it may be served with maitre d’hotel,
Hollandaise, onion or Italian sauce. Be careful not to leave the
salsify exposed to the air or it will blacken.
=Stewed Salsify.=--Scrape about twenty heads of salsify, and cut them
into pieces about two inches long. Sprinkle them with salt, and steep
in water and milk. Cut a small onion, half a carrot, half a turnip, and
half a head of celery into small pieces; put these in a stewpan, cook
for twenty minutes. Mix one ounce of flour with a little milk and stir
in, fill up with one quart of water, stir and bring to boil. Put in the
salsify, and let it simmer gently until tender. Add one tablespoonful
of cream, one of chopped parsley, and a little lemon juice. Season with
pepper, grated nutmeg, and caster sugar. Reheat and arrange the salsify
neatly on a dish. Garnish with fried button mushrooms, pour over the
sauce, and serve hot.
=Escalloped Salsify.=--Press boiled salsify through a sieve, season
with salt, cayenne, butter, and celery salt, and moisten with milk.
Put into a buttered baking dish, cover with crumbs, dot with butter,
and bake, standing the dish in a pan of hot water until the salsify
is brown, or use sliced, boiled salsify alternately with cream, or
drawn-butter sauce and seasoning, and buttered crumbs; have sauce on
the top. Cover with crumbs wetted with cream, and bake brown.
=Escalloped Salsify and Celery.=--Put slices of cooked salsify in
layers into a buttered baking dish, season each layer with chopped
celery and cover with white sauce. Cover with butter and crumbs, and
bake for twenty minutes.
=Fried Salsify.=--Prepare according to directions given for boiled
salsify. Drain, press through a sieve, and add the yolks of three eggs
well beaten, and salt and pepper to season. Drop by spoonfuls on a
buttered griddle, fry brown, and serve with tomato sauce, or ketchup.
=Filleted Salsify.=--Cook some salsify until tender, slice it into
quarters, lengthways, and cut it into three-inch lengths. Dip in egg
and bread-crumbs, and fry crisp. Serve with parsley sauce and garnish
with slices of lemon and parsley.--SIDNEY H. BEARD, _Guide-book of The
Golden Age_.
=Salsify Cakes.=--Prepare according to directions given for boiled
salsify; drain and mash, shape into small flat cakes, and fry brown in
butter or dripping.
=Salsify Fritters.=--Make a batter of two eggs, half a cupful of
milk, a pinch of salt, and enough sifted flour to make it of a proper
consistency. Grate the roots of a bunch of salsify into the batter, and
fry by spoonfuls in deep fat, or mix mashed, cooked salsify with milk,
and add one or two beaten eggs; add flour if necessary to make a stiff
paste, and shape into small flat cakes. Fry brown in fat to cover.
=Salsify Sauté.=--Prepare a bunch of salsify according to directions
given for boiled salsify. Drain, cut into small pieces and sauté in
butter, with one tablespoonful of chopped mushrooms. Season with salt,
pepper, and minced chives, parsley, and a few drops of vinegar.
=Salsify à la Poulette.=--Prepare according to directions given for
boiled salsify, adding one tablespoonful each of salt and vinegar
to the water. Cook until tender. Drain, serve with poulette sauce.
Béchamel sauce may be used instead, or saucette cream mixed with melted
butter.
SAVOY CABBAGE. _See under_ Cabbage.
SCORZONERA (_Scorzonero hispanica. Compositæ_).
The culture of this vegetable is exactly the same as salsify; it has
perhaps the advantage of being rather hardier than the latter, but it
is not of such a fine flavour. Where one is grown the other is scarcely
required, and we ourselves now only grow salsify. It might perhaps be
used in Northern England if salsify does not do well.
Scorzonera is a Spanish variety of salsify, and the recipes under the
heading of Salsify apply equally to it.
SEAKALE (_Crambe maritima. Cruciferæ_).
This is a most valuable permanent crop, and in the opinion of some
ranks equal with asparagus on the table. In addition its magnificent
foliage makes it an object of beauty through the summer, and a
plantation of seakale may well mark the transition of the flower garden
to the vegetable ground.
Seakale may be grown from seed, but it is more expeditious to obtain
two-year-old plants from a nurseryman, or else early in March to
propagate plants by means of root cuttings. By the latter method pieces
of root four inches long are cut with a sharp knife. It is usual to
cut the top end level, and the lower end slanting, to obviate the
inconvenience of planting upside down. The root cuttings are then
planted where they are to stand, and will give a slight crop of kale
the following spring, as the first, or flowering, shoots must be
removed in any case.
The ground can hardly be too deeply dug or richly prepared for this
fine permanent crop. In March the plants should be put out either in
rows three feet apart, the plants six inches distant in the rows, or
else in clumps of five plants, a plant at each corner of a nine-inch
square, and one in the centre; the clumps should be thirty inches to
two feet apart. By “doubling” them, that is, arranging the clumps =W=
fashion, the rows thirty inches apart, and the clumps three feet in
the rows, ground will be economised. These are the best arrangements
for the small garden; but they are in the nature of a compromise, as
eighteen inches distance between the crowns will give much heavier
individual heads of seakale.
The after cultivation consists in keeping the ground clear of weeds,
giving a mulch in summer, and occasional dressings of salt or nitrate
in showery weather, say salt once, and nitrate three times in the
summer, and salt again in November and nitrate early in the year,
when the crowns are set to blanch. In the autumn the ground should be
cleared up, and all rotten leaves removed.
If it be desired to bring on seakale quickly, manure may be used to
force it into growth. This method does not improve the flavour, but
it is not such utter ruin as in the case of rhubarb. Boxes or pots
are laid over the crowns to be forced, and hot manure heaped around
and over to the depth of a good foot. But the cleanest and best way
to blanch seakale is to cover the crowns with clean dry ash from
the grates--not ash, be it understood, which has a careless cook’s
admixture of all sorts of rotting fish bones and other filth. A large
body of ashes will be required, so their accumulation must be set about
a long time previously. At first the depth of ash must be slight, say
six inches; then as the buds show signs of growth, it may be gradually
increased to fifteen inches at least. Seakale grown in rows should be
blanched in this way, or with a layer of ash six inches deep; then
when this is beginning to crack with the growing shoots, earth laid on
after the manner of earthing up celery. Whatever the method pursued,
seakale must be blanched in absolute darkness, or it will be bitter and
worthless for the table.
When the crop has been cut, a sprinkling of loose litter should be
shaken over the stems, which should be cut level with the ground, in
order to protect them from a too sudden acquaintance with our genial
English spring. Conical, flower-bearing buds must be removed from the
stocks, as the plants must not be allowed to flower. In May the shoots
must be thinned, one or at the most two stout shoots left on each
stem, all the rest rubbed out. This method will leave good fat buds in
autumn, whence will come correspondingly stout growth to be cut for use
next year.