and drain again. Lay on a biscuit-board and cut into pieces about half
an inch long. Thicken a pint of chicken stock with a tablespoonful of
flour rubbed into one of butter. Stir into this a cupful of cold boiled
or roast chicken, chopped fine, and the cold macaroni. Last of all,
beat in slowly a whipped egg, remove from the fire, season to taste,
turn into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle crumbs over the top and bake
for half an hour.
Send around grated cheese with it. You may use veal if you have no
chicken.
Macaroni and tomatoes (very nice)
Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into inch-lengths, and boil in
salted water until tender. Drain, and put a layer of the macaroni in
the bottom of a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with pepper, salt, onion
juice and grated cheese, and cover all with a layer of stewed and
strained tomatoes that have been previously seasoned to taste. On these
goes another layer of macaroni, and so on until the dish is full. The
topmost layer must be of tomatoes sprinkled with crumbs and good-sized
bits of butter. Set in a hot oven, covered, for twenty minutes, and
then bake, uncovered, until the crumbs are well-browned.
Spaghetti with Swiss cheese
Break a half pound of spaghetti into bits not more than an inch and a
half in length, and boil in slightly salted water for twenty minutes.
Turn into a hot colander and set at the side of the range to drain.
Grate enough Swiss cheese to make a generous half cupful and turn into
a saucepan with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Stir well; add
the hot spaghetti, toss and stir for a minute, or just long enough to
melt the cheese; add a dash of paprika and serve in a hot dish.
Macaroni rissoles
Have ready a cupful of cold, boiled macaroni cut up small. Make a white
sauce by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour
and stirring into them a cupful of hot milk. Stir until thick, add
a large tablespoonful of grated cheese, and, gradually, the whipped
yolks of four eggs, beating all the time. Work the macaroni into the
sauce and set aside until the mixture is very cold. With floured hands
form into small balls—not quite as large in circumference as a silver
dollar—roll in beaten egg, then in fine cracker-crumbs, and set in the
ice-box for two hours. Fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.
Serve with tomato sauce.
Macaroni piquante
Break spaghetti into very small bits less than an inch in length. Boil
these for twenty minutes, or until tender, in salted water. Drain and
keep hot while you make the following sauce:
Cook together in a saucepan a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter
and browned flour, and when these are blended to a brown roux, pour
upon them a pint of beef stock, and stir until smooth. Now add four
tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup, six drops of Tabasco sauce, a
teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, a pinch of salt and a dash of paprika.
Turn the boiled spaghetti into this sauce, stir all together, and pour
the mixture into a greased pudding-dish. Sprinkle buttered crumbs and
grated cheese over the top and bake until brown.
Macaroni á la Napolitaine
Have a long fish kettle half full of boiling, salted water, and lay a
half pound of unbroken pipe-macaroni in this. Boil for twenty minutes
or until tender. Carefully drain the water from the kettle and slip
the macaroni gently upon a heated platter, where it may lie at full
length. Set the platter in the oven to keep warm while you make a sauce
by cooking together in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and one
of flour, and pouring upon them a pint of strained tomato liquor. Stir
to a smooth sauce, then season with onion juice, celery salt, pepper,
and four tablespoonfuls of Parmesan cheese. Pour this sauce over the
macaroni on the platter. When you serve, cut the mass with a sharp
knife into manageable lengths.
MUSHROOMS
It is a pity there should be such a popular dread of the poisonous
“toadstool” that his nutritious and innocuous brother—the edible
mushroom—is shunned by thousands of rational creatures. The most wary
need not fear this joy of the epicure when it is bought at market or
at a responsible grocer’s shop. Trustworthy dealers run no risks in
purchasing the wares from those whose business it is to cultivate and
sell them. Mushrooms bought under these circumstances are no more to be
feared than artichokes or Brussels sprouts. They form delicious entrées
and tempt the most jaded appetite.
Broiled mushrooms
Peel carefully with a small knife and cut off the stems. Lay the
mushrooms in a deep dish and pour melted butter over them. Remove
them gently to a greased gridiron and broil over clear coals until
delicately browned on both sides. Lay diamond-shaped slices of thin
buttered toast in a dish, and the mushrooms upon these, sprinkle with
pepper and salt and pour a little melted butter over all.
Fried mushrooms
Melt a great spoonful of butter in an agate frying-pan. Peel the
mushrooms and cut off their stems, scraping the latter. Lay the
mushrooms with their scraped stalks in the frying-pan and cook, turning
often, until done. Serve very hot.
Stewed mushrooms
Peel the mushrooms and simmer gently in salted water until tender. Ten
minutes should suffice. Drain and keep hot while you make a white sauce
of a half pint of milk thickened with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed
into one of butter. Turn the mushrooms into this and stir over the fire
until very hot. Season with salt, pepper, a dash of mace, and serve.
Baked mushrooms
Peel very large mushrooms and cut off their stems. Grease a shallow
pudding-dish and put a layer of mushrooms, under sides upward, into
this. Into each mushroom pour a few drops of melted butter. Do not put
more than two layers in the dish. Bake, closely covered, in a quick
oven until tender. This should be in about twenty minutes. When done,
remove the cover, pour melted butter over the mushrooms, and serve very
hot in the dish in which they were cooked.
Fricasseed mushrooms
Peel and remove the stems from large mushrooms. Make a forcemeat by
chopping the white meat of a cold roast chicken fine with a few small
mushrooms and moistening it with chicken stock. Grease a pudding-dish
and lay the large mushrooms, tops down, in this. Fill the mushrooms
and the space between them with the forcemeat. Sprinkle bits of butter
over all. Pour in enough of the chicken stock to make the contents of
the dish very moist, lay a few wafer-like slices of bacon on top of the
scallop, and bake, covered, in a hot oven for a quarter of an hour.
Uncover, and cook for five minutes longer. Serve in the dish in which
they were cooked.
ONIONS
A once-despised vegetable which now takes rank as a highly-respectable
edible upon good men’s—and women’s—tables. Delicate spinsters no
longer faint at fumes of boiled onions, and finical housewives have
forgotten the rusty joke about cooking onions in the middle of a
ten-acre lot. There are ways of extracting the coarser flavor that
once condemned them with dyspeptics. Cooks have learned that there
is as much difference between a well-done and a parboiled onion as
between half-cooked and mealy potatoes. Housewives and physicians now
appreciate the nutritive values of the esculent bulb, and prize it
for these as well as for the seasoning which nothing else supplies.
Onion juice is indispensable to the flavor of ragouts and soups, and
is obtained by grating, not chopping. The superiority of this mode of
getting the essence of the vegetable can not be rightly estimated by
one who has not tried it. Onion seasoning should be tasted, never seen.
Stewed young onions
Cut off the stalks, remove the skins and lay the onions in cold water
for half an hour. Put them over the fire in hot, salted water and cook
for twenty minutes. Drain off the water and return the onions to the
fire with a cupful of hot milk, in which has been dissolved a bit of
soda the size of a pea. Add a tablespoonful of flour and stew slowly
until the sauce is like thick cream.
Boiled onions
Peel and lay for an hour in cold water. Boil in two waters until
tender. Drain, sprinkle with pepper and salt; put into a deep
vegetable-dish and pour over them a great spoonful of melted butter.
Baked onions (No. 1)
Peel the onions and boil for ten minutes. Drain, arrange in a greased
pudding-dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour over all a white
sauce, to which a beaten egg has been added. Sprinkle with fine crumbs,
set in the oven and bake, covered, for twenty minutes, then uncover and
brown.
Baked onions (No. 2)
Cook tender in boiling water changed once after fifteen minutes; drain
and arrange, side by side, in a baking-pan. Melt a tablespoonful of
butter in a cupful of hot soup stock, season with salt and pepper and
pour over the onions. Cook in a hot oven until the onions are brown,
when they may be lifted with a perforated spoon and put into the
dish in which they are to be served. Put the pan of gravy on top of
the range, thicken the contents with browned flour and pour over the
onions. Serve very hot.
Savory onions
Select young onions for this dish. Lay the onions in a saucepan with
a very little salted water and simmer for ten minutes. Drain off the
water; pour over the onions a small cupful of beef stock and cook for
ten minutes longer. With a split spoon remove the onions to a hot dish,
while you thicken the gravy left in the pan with a heaping teaspoonful
of browned flour rubbed to a paste in the same quantity of butter. When
you have a smooth brown sauce season it with a teaspoonful, each, of
kitchen bouquet and tomato catsup, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour
this sauce over the onions.
Stuffed onions, creamed
Boil eight large onions gently until quite tender, but not broken.
Drain, and when cold, carefully remove the hearts or centers. Chop
three of these hearts fine and mix with them a cupful of minced ham and
season to taste. Moisten with rich cream and the beaten yolk of an egg.
Fill the centers of the onions with the mixture, put a piece of butter
in the top of each, set side by side, in a deep dish, pour a little
milk about them and bake, covered, for twenty minutes. Then uncover,
sprinkle with buttered crumbs and bake ten minutes longer. Serve hot.
Scalloped onions
Parboil onions and drain. When cold, cut into bits. Put a thick layer
of these in the bottom of a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with salt
and pepper and dot with bits of butter. Cover with a very thin layer
of crumbs moistened with milk. Put in more seasoned onions and more
crumbs, and proceed in this way until the dish is full. Then pour in
carefully a little cream, cover and bake for half an hour; uncover and
brown.
Onion custard
Cook the onions tender in two waters; drain, and lay in a deep
pudding-dish. Thicken a pint of hot milk with a teaspoonful of
corn-starch rubbed into two teaspoonfuls of butter and gradually pour
this white sauce upon two beaten eggs. Season with pepper and salt and
pour the mixture about the onions. Bake until the custard is set.
GREEN PEAS
They lose sweetness with every hour—I might say with every minute—that
passes after they have been picked. The passage from garden to kitchen
and from pod to pot should be made as short as possible. As you shell
throw them into cold water, not holding them in the hand until they
are heated and moist. As soon as the last is shelled, drain and cook.
Boiled green peas
Shell and lay in cold water for ten minutes. Drain, turn into slightly
salted boiling water and cook for about twenty-five minutes, or until
very tender, but not broken. Drain in a colander, put into a dish, stir
into the peas a lump of butter, and sprinkle very lightly with salt and
pepper.
Green pea pancakes
Boil a pint of shelled peas, and mash while hot, adding a tablespoonful
of butter and salt and pepper to taste. Now beat in two whipped eggs, a
half pint of milk and five tablespoonfuls of prepared flour. Beat hard
and fry on a hot griddle. A soapstone griddle is best. Then they are
baked—not fried.
Green pea soufflé
Boil a pint of shelled peas until very tender, and mash with two
tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Beat three eggs light and stir into
them a pint of milk and the mashed peas. Season with salt and pepper,
beat hard and turn into a greased pudding-dish. Bake, covered, for
twenty minutes; uncover and brown. Serve this soufflé as soon as it is
removed from the oven.
Green pea fritters
Shell enough peas to make a quart without the pods. Lay the peas in
cold water for a half hour; put over the fire in two quarts of boiling
salted water and cook for half an hour, or until very tender, but not
broken. Drain free of water, turn into a bowl and mash soft with two
tablespoonfuls of butter and with salt to taste. Beat four eggs very
light, add to them three gills of milk and a cupful of flour with which
has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder and a half teaspoonful
of salt. Stir the mashed peas by the great spoonful into this
mixture and beat until you have a smooth, light green batter. Have your
soapstone griddle very hot and drop your batter by the spoonful upon
this. When done on one side turn and bake to a delicate brown. Serve
very hot as a vegetable to accompany any kind of meat or poultry.
[Illustration: TOAST AND ANCHOVIES GARNISHED WITH LEMON
STUFFED TOMATOES GARNISHED WITH RICE AND SHREDDED LEMON
GREEN PEAS GARNISHED WITH POTATOES]
Green pea croquettes
Peas that are getting hard will do for these. Boil in just enough
salted water to cover them well. While hot, run through the vegetable
press. Beat to a smooth paste with a tablespoonful of butter and two of
flour. Pepper and salt to taste, drop in a dash of onion juice; lastly,
beat in a well-whipped egg. Stir in a vessel set within another of
boiling water until hot all through, and set away until cold and stiff.
Mold then into croquettes, dip in beaten egg and cracker-crumbs; leave
on ice for half an hour before frying in boiling deep cottolene or
other fat. Drain and serve very hot.
You may use canned peas if you can not get fresh.
PEPPERS
The large, green peppers, known to the green-grocer as “sweet peppers,”
have grown rapidly into favor as a fresh vegetable, within the last
decade. They must be seeded with the utmost care. A touch of the seeds
against the green sides will ruin the latter for present use. Get hold
of the inner stem and draw the clustered seeds through the opening at
the stem end, without touching the inside walls.
Fried green peppers
Cut open lengthwise and extract all seeds and tough white fiber. Slice
crosswise. Lay in cold salted water for ten minutes, then wipe dry.
Melt four tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and sauté the sliced
peppers in this. Lay about broiled steak or chops.
Stuffed peppers
Make a forcemeat of a tablespoonful of minced ham, one of minced
chicken, three chopped mushrooms and a cupful of boiled rice. Make this
paste wet by adding to it a chopped tomato and enough melted butter to
make it of the right consistency for stuffing. Smooth the stem-ends,
cut the blossom-ends from green peppers and take out the seeds and
inside fibers. Lay the green shells for three minutes in salted boiling
water, then plunge into iced water. Let them lie in this for fifteen
minutes. Drain and wipe dry. Fill with the forcemeat, replace the tips,
and stand the peppers, side by side, in a dripping-pan containing a
quarter of an inch of soup stock. Cook for twenty minutes, basting
twice with a little salad oil. When done, stand the peppers on a
platter and pour a little salad oil about them.
Peppers stuffed with fish
Trim the stem-ends of your green peppers so that they will stand up.
Cut off the tips and, with a small keen knife, extract the seeds and
as much of the tough fiber as will come away. Mince white fish fine,
moisten it with a white sauce, season and fill the peppers with this
mixture. Stand in the oven long enough to heat through, and serve.
Scalloped peppers au gratin
Cut large green peppers in half, lengthwise, extract core and seeds
and fill them with minced cold cooked fish, well seasoned, mixed with
one-third its weight of fine bread crumbs. The mixture (forcemeat) must
be wet with gravy or tomato sauce. Round the contents of the halved
pepper in the shape of the missing other half, sprinkle with fine
crumbs, and bake to a light brown.
You may use for these scallops of cold chicken, lean lamb or veal. See
that you do not get the forcemeat too stiff.
Scalloped peppers on the half-shell
Halve the peppers lengthwise, remove seeds and membrane, and parboil
for five minutes. When cold, fill the halves with minced roast beef and
fine bread-crumbs moistened with tomato juice. Bake in a covered pan,
basting every ten minutes. At the end of a half hour remove to a hot
platter and serve with tomato sauce poured over and around the halved
peppers.
Peppers and rice
(A Creole dish.)
Cook half a cupful of rice in plenty of boiling water, a little salt,
for twenty minutes hard. Drain in a colander and set at the back of the
range to dry off. Heap within a deep dish.
Prepare your peppers as already directed. Slice as for frying in the
usual way. When you take them from the cold salt and water, fry them
in a great spoonful of butter. Lift them from the pan and chop rather
coarsely. Add to the hot butter and peppers a teaspoonful of onion
juice and two tablespoonfuls of stock. Boil up and pour upon the rice.
Set in the oven, covered, for three minutes, and serve.
POKE STALKS
Cut as you would asparagus, when they are but a few inches high. They
are then tender and succulent, and are thought by some imaginative
vegetarians to resemble the “aristocrat” in flavor.
They are undeniably wholesome—also inexpensive.
Scrape the stalks and lay in cold water for an hour. Tie loosely
together with a piece of soft twine, put over the fire with enough
salted water to cover them, and boil until tender. Drain, sprinkle
lightly with salt and pepper and lay upon a platter on slices of
buttered toast. Pour white sauce over all.
POTATOES
“The Tyrant Potato” is not assailed ignorantly, nor yet flippantly.
After careful study of its properties, its works and its ways, the
utmost concession that is now made to peculiar prejudice is in the
declaration that, since people _will_ make potatoes nine-tenths of
their vegetable diet, it is essential to the national digestion that
the ninety-three parts of water and of starch contained in the tuber be
cooked in such manner as shall render the esculent as palatable and as
little hurtful as is practicable when the constituents are not to be
ignored.
The above protest stands at the head of that section of the “NATIONAL
COOK BOOK” which is headed “POTATOES.” I wrote it ten years ago, and am
“of the same opinion still.”
Talk against it as we may, the potato holds its sway in defiance of
chemistry and dietetics, and our Johns, one and all, insist upon its
daily appearance. As one weary housewife said to me:
“If I give my fingers to be burned in the preparation of a half dozen
vegetables and have not potatoes in the number, my culinary and
housekeeping skill are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals—to my
husband, at least. And I am so tired of the same old ways of cooking
the same old potatoes!”
Her remark made me wonder why housekeepers adhere to the “same old
ways.” Why not try new ones?
One hint may be acted upon with advantage to cook and to eaters.
One of the bugbears to the housewife is paring potatoes. It is not
a pleasant task, and the necessity of performing it recurs with
disagreeable frequency.
The housekeeper is wise if, while the potatoes are in the process of
peeling, she pares and cooks more than enough for the repast for which
they are intended, and by utilizing the cold left-overs does away with
the necessity of peeling more of the tyrannical starch-and-water for
the next meal.
A majority of the recipes herewith given are based upon the supposition
that she has done this.
New potatoes with cream sauce
(Contributed)
Boil the potatoes in salted water until done. Drain and cover with a
white sauce made as follows: Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a
saucepan and when it begins to bubble add two tablespoonfuls of flour;
let them cook for one minute, then add one pint of hot milk, season
with salt and pepper and a half teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
Potatoes, boiled au natural
Wash, drop into boiling water slightly salted, and cook fast until a
fork will pass easily into the largest. Turn off the water, throw in a
handful of salt, and set the pot, uncovered, at the back or side of the
range, to dry the potatoes “off.” Serve in their skins.
Boiled potatoes
Pare with a sharp knife, and as thin as possible. Much of the mealiness
of the potato depends upon this. The scullion who slashes away chunks
of her beloved edible really deprives it of its chief merit, and all
its comeliness. Have a pot of boiling water ready, salt it slightly and
boil fast until a fork pierces the largest readily. Throw off the water
immediately, sprinkle with salt, and dry out as directed in last recipe.
Baked potatoes (No. 1)
Select fine potatoes of uniform size. Wash, wipe and bake until the
largest yields to the pressure of thumb and finger. Serve wrapped in a
hot napkin. If the eater will knead his potato skilfully between his
fingers before breaking it open, he will find a mealy mass upon opening
it. Never cut a baked potato. It makes it “soggy.”
Baked potatoes (No. 2)
Pare and parboil; then set in an open bakepan in the oven and bake
about half an hour, basting freely with butter or dripping until you
have a delicate brown “glaze” upon each.
These may be eaten as a separate dish, or as a garnish for roast beef.
Stuffed potatoes
Bake eight large potatoes until done. Cut off the tops with a sharp
knife and scoop out the insides with a small spoon. Set aside the skins
for future use. With the back of a spoon mash the potatoes smooth,
rub into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, a gill of cream, two
teaspoonfuls of finely minced onion, a teaspoonful of minced parsley
and salt and cayenne pepper to taste. When you have worked these
ingredients to a smooth mass, beat in the stiffened whites of two eggs.
Fill the empty potato skins with this creamy mixture, heaping it high.
Stand the potato cases on end, side by side, in a baking-pan and set in
the oven until the potato protruding from the tops is a delicate brown.
Potatoes on the half-shell
Bake large smooth potatoes, and cut each carefully in half lengthwise.
Scrape out the insides, leaving the skins whole. Beat what you have
taken out to a cream with melted butter, cream or milk, season with
pepper and salt, and fill the “shells,” rounding the potato on top. Put
a dot of butter upon each and brown lightly upon the upper grating of
your oven.
Potato soufflé
Into two cupfuls of mashed potato work three cupfuls of hot milk in
which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been half melted. Beat out all
the lumps until you have a smooth purée. Season with salt and pepper.
Beat four eggs very light and whip them into the potato and milk. When
thoroughly mixed pour into a deep greased pudding-dish and bake in a
good oven until “set” and delicately browned.
Potato croquettes
Warm in a double boiler two cupfuls of mashed potatoes and stir into
this two teaspoonfuls of butter and the beaten yolks of two eggs.
Add enough milk to make the paste of the right consistency to handle
easily. With lightly floured hands form into croquettes and set aside
to cool. When cold, dip in beaten egg and roll in cracker-dust. Set in
the ice-box for several hours longer and fry in deep cottolene or other
fat.
Potato fritters
Peel and boil four large potatoes, and when they are cold cut into tiny
bits. Make a batter of two eggs—beaten light—a cupful of milk and a
cupful and one-half of flour sifted twice with a half teaspoonful of
baking-powder. Now add the minced potatoes, mix well and season with
salt. Drop this mixture by the spoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or
other fat. When the fritters are done lift them out with a perforated
spoon, and lay them in a hot colander to drain free of fat.
Scalloped potatoes
Put a layer of sliced cold-boiled potatoes in the bottom of a buttered
pudding-dish, sprinkle with crumbs and bits of butter. Put in another
layer of potatoes and more crumbs until the dish is full, having the
topmost layer of the buttered crumbs. Moisten all by pouring carefully
into the dish a cupful of well-seasoned white stock. Bake for twenty
minutes.
Stewed potatoes (No. 1)