Part 6 (1/2)
_Baked Eggs_: These most nearly approximate the flavor of roasted ones.
Break fresh eggs at the small ends, drain away the whites, break down the sh.e.l.ls to deepish cups, each with a yolk at bottom, sprinkle yolks lightly with salt and pepper, add a bit of b.u.t.ter to each, then set sh.e.l.ls upright, close over the bottom of a pan, pop the pan into a hot oven, bake twenty minutes, and serve piping hot. This Mammy gave us to keep from wasting yolks when wedding or Christmas cake demanded many whites for frosting.
_Potato Egg Puffs_: Into a quart of rich and highly seasoned mashed potatoes, beat two eggs, then divide into equal portions--six or eight.
With lightly floured hands make each portion into a ball, set the b.a.l.l.s in a baking dish, then press into each a hard-boiled egg. Lay a bit of b.u.t.ter on each egg, and dredge lightly with salt and pepper. Bake in a quick oven until the potato is brown and light--it ought to rise up like a fat apple.
_Egg Dumplings_: Cousins-germane to the puffs but richer--will serve indeed for the meat course of a plain dinner. Mix the potato well with half its bulk of finely chopped cold meat, the leaner the better, bind with beaten eggs, then divide and roll each portion around a hard-boiled egg, lay the dumplings in a greased and floured pan, giving them plenty of room, pour around them a good gravy, or else a rich tomato sauce, then bake ten to twenty minutes in a hot oven.
_Egg Spread_: Spread a flat pan an inch deep with rich mashed potato, sprinkle with pepper and salt, then cover the top with eggs hard boiled, and cut in half. Set them yolk up. Put salt, pepper and b.u.t.ter on each yolk, and bake ten minutes in a warm oven. Or if soft eggs are preferred, make depressions in the potato with the back of a spoon, break an egg in each, dust with pepper and salt, add a dot of b.u.t.ter and bake five minutes. If the potatoes are wanted brown, bake them ten minutes after making the depressions, then put in the eggs and bake soft or hard at will.
_Poached Eggs_: These require a deep skillet, three parts full of water on the bubbling boil, which is slightly salted and well dashed with vinegar. Break all the eggs separately before putting one in. Slip them in, one after the other, quickly, taking care not to break yolks, keep the boiling hard, and use a knife or spoon to prevent the whites from cooking together. Take out in six to seven minutes, using a skimmer and draining well, trim rags off white, lay in a deep hot dish, and pour over real melted b.u.t.ter, made with b.u.t.ter, hot water, salt, pepper, lemon juice or vinegar, and a dash of tabasco. Send to table covered--a poached egg chilled has lost its charm. Or you may serve the eggs on squares of hot, well-b.u.t.tered toast, which have been sprinkled thickly with grated cheese, then set for a minute inside a hot oven. Served thus, pa.s.s the melted b.u.t.ter with them, as if poured over, they might be too rich for some palates.
_Egg Fours_: Cut hard-boiled eggs in four lengthwise, mix yolks with an equal bulk of sardines, drained, freed of skin and bone, and minced fine. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, or vinegar, and olive oil.
Add minced olives if you like. The mixture must be soft, but not too soft to shape well. Shape it into small ovals, using two spoons, and lay an oval in each quarter of the whites. Put very narrow strips of pimento on the ovals, then sprinkle them thickly with grated cheese--Edam is good for such use. Set in a baking dish and cook two to four minutes in a hot oven. If wanted extra tasty, as for a relish before dinner, set the fours on narrow strips of toast, spread with made mustard, well-mixed with finely minced very sour cuc.u.mber pickle.
Bacon sliced thin, fried crisp without scorching, and finely minced can take the place of sardines. Indeed, in making fours the widest lat.i.tude prevails--you can vary flavors and proportions almost infinitely. Onion, even a suspicion of garlic, tabasco, Cayenne vinegar, walnut catsup, or Worcester can be added. Capers mixed through the ma.s.s make it wonderfully piquant. But things which need to be crisply fresh, such as celery and lettuce, must be let severely alone.
_Stuffed Eggs_: Staple for picnics, and barbecues. Boil twenty minutes, throw instantly in cold water, and sh.e.l.l immediately. Halve, mash yolks while hot with a plentiful seasoning of b.u.t.ter, pepper, salt, a little onion juice, capers or bigger pickle finely minced, and pimentos cut small. Work the seasoning well through, then shape into b.a.l.l.s yolk-size, put each between two half-whites, and fasten together with a couple of tooth picks. Wrap each as finished in wax paper, and keep cool until needed. Here may be a good place to say that the quicker a hard-boiled egg is got out of its sh.e.l.l after chilling, the better and more delicate will be its flavor.
_Fried Eggs_: Anybody, almost, can fry an egg wrong. It takes some skill to fry one exactly right. Have the frying pan covered with grease, hot, but not scorching, slip in the eggs, previously broken separately, taking pains not to break yolks, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, keep edges from running together, then when they have hardened underneath, dip hot grease over the tops, keeping on till the white sets. If the heat is right the eggs will not stick to the pan. Cook as hard as is desirable, take up with a cake-turner, and lay in a shallow pan, lined with soft clean paper. Keep hot while they drain--it takes a minute or so--then remove to a blazing hot dish, and serve. If ham goes with them lay it in the middle, with eggs all around it. Triangles of fried toast in between look and taste well at breakfast.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Soups, Salads, Relishes_]
_Vegetable Soup_: Cut into joints two fat chickens three parts grown, salt and pepper, and lay aside while you fry in a deep pot half a pound streaky bacon. Take out when crisp, put in the chicken, turning it so as to brown it all over. Put in a thick slice of ham, let it also brown a bit, do the same with four sliced onions--mild ones--then add two gallons cold water, half a teaspoonful salt, two pods red pepper, a dozen whole pepper corns, and two sprigs of parsley. Keep at a gentle boil for an hour, then put in two small heads of tender cabbage finely shredded, and six white potatoes, peeled and sliced a quarter-inch thick. Fifteen minutes later put in a quart of string beans, broken short, a pint of sh.e.l.led lima beans, a stalk of celery cut fine lengthwise, and a dozen tomatoes, peeled and sliced. Follow them in ten minutes with a pint of tender okra sliced--next add a little later the pulp from a dozen ears of green corn, slit lengthwise and sc.r.a.ped. Stir almost constantly with a long-handled skimmer, after the corn pulp is in. If the skimmer brings up chicken bones, throw them aside. Just before serving put in a large spoonful of b.u.t.ter, rolled in flour.
Taste, add salt if required. Serve very hot with corn hoe cake and cider just beginning to sparkle. If there is soup enough for everybody, nothing else will be wanted.
_Black Turtle Bean Soup_: Pick and wash clean, one quart black turtle beans, soak overnight in three quarts cold water, and put on to boil next morning in the soaking water. When it boils add three onions sliced, one carrot sc.r.a.ped and cut up, a stalk or so of celery, three sprigs of parsley, and one tomato, fresh or canned. Boil slowly four to five hours, until the beans are tender, filling up with cold water as that in the kettle wastes. When the beans are very soft, strain all through a fine collander, mas.h.i.+ng through beans and vegetables, add a quart of very good soup stock, also a bay leaf, and boil up hard half a minute before serving. Put into each soup plate a slice of lemon, a slice of hard-boiled egg, and a tablespoonful of sherry wine before adding the soup.
_Gumbo_: Cut a tender, fat chicken, nearly grown, into joints, season well with salt and pepper, and fry for ten minutes in the fat from half a pound of bacon, with two thick slices of ham. Then add two onions chopped fine, six large ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped, adding with them their juice, half a large pod of mild red pepper, cut small, a teaspoonful of minced thyme and parsley mixed, a pint of tender sliced okra, stemmed and cut lengthwise. Cook altogether, watching all the time, and stirring constantly to prevent scorching until everything is well-browned. Then add three quarts fresh-boiled water, on the full boil, set the pot where it will barely simmer, and cook an hour longer, taking the same pains against scorching. Rice to eat with the gumbo--it must never be cooked in the pot--needs to be washed until the water runs clear from it, drained, then tossed into a wide kettle of water on the bubbling boil, and cooked for twenty minutes. The water must be salted to taste. Drain the rice in a collander, set it after draining in the oven for a minute. The grains should stand out separate, but be very tender. Rice thus cooked, and served with plenty of b.u.t.ter, is excellent as a vegetable.
_Wedding Salad_: Roast unstuffed, three young tender turkeys, or six full grown chickens. Take the white meat only, cut it fine with shears, cutting across the grain, while hot. Let cool, then mix it with ten hearts of crisp celery cut in bits, two heads of tender white cabbage, finely chopped, rejecting hard stalks--use three heads if very small--and set in a cool place. For the dressing boil thirty fresh eggs twenty minutes, throw in cold water, sh.e.l.l, take out the yolks, saving the white for garnis.h.i.+ng, mash the yolks while hot very smooth with a pound and a half of best b.u.t.ter, season them well with salt, pepper, a little dry mustard, celery seed, and, if at hand, a dash of walnut catsup, but not enough to discolor. Add also a teaspoonful of sugar--this to blend flavors only. Add a little at a time enough warm vinegar to make as thick as cream. Chill, and pour over the salad, mix well through, then heap it in a big gla.s.s bowl, lined with partly white lettuce leaves, make a wreath of leaves around the top, and in serving, lay a larger lettuce leaf on each plate, filling it with the yellow-white salad.
_Fruit Salad_: Wash well a very ripe juicy pineapple, let dry, then shred with a fork, holding the crown in the left hand firmly, while you pull away sections with the fork in the right. Thus you avoid taking any of the hard center. Peel the sections delicately after they are separated, and cut them in long thin slivers, with the grain. Arrange these slivers star-shape upon lettuce leaves in the plates, lay a very narrow slip of pimento--sweet red pepper,--between each two of them, then fill in the points of the stars with grape-fruit pulp, freed of skin and seed, and broken into convenient sized bits. Lay more pimento strips upon it. Set on ice till ready to serve, then drench with sweet French dressing.
_Sweet French Dressing_: Mix well a scant teaspoonful of granulated sugar, the same of dry mustard, half a teaspoonful salt, as much black pepper and paprika mixed, put in the bottom of a deep small bowl, and stir for two minutes. Wet with claret vinegar, adding it gradually, and stirring smooth. Make as thick as cream. Add twenty drops tabasco, twenty drops onion juice, the strained juice of half a lemon, and half a teaspoonful of brandy, rum or whiskey. Mix well, then add, tablespoonful at a time, a gill of salad oil, stirring hard between spoonfuls. Put in more vinegar, more oil--the seasoning suffices for half a pint of dressing. Stir till it thickens--it should be like an emulsion when poured upon the salad. Keep on ice. The oil and vinegar will separate, but the dressing can be brought back by stirring hard.
_Banana and Celery Salad_: Chill heart celery and very ripe bananas, slice thin crosswise, mingling the rounds well. Pile on lettuce leaves, and cover with French dressing, into which finely grated cheese has been scantly stirred. This dressing with cheese is fine for tender Romaine, also for almost any sort of cooked vegetable used as salad.
_Red and White Salad_: Make cups from lettuce hearts, fasten them to the plate, with a drop of melted b.u.t.ter, fill lightly with grape-fruit pulp, and set a tiny red beet, boiled tender, in the middle. Have a very sharp French dressing made with oil lemon juice and Tarragon vinegar. Pa.s.s with this cheese straws, or toasted cracker sprinkled lightly with Parmesan cheese.
_Pineapple Salad_: Pare and core a very ripe, sweet pineapple, cut in slices crosswise, lay the slices in a bowl, with a sprinkle of sugar, half a cup rum or sherry, all the juice shed in cutting up, and a grate of nutmeg. Let stand till morning, cool, but not on ice. Make rosettes of small lettuce leaves in the plates, lay a slice of pineapple on each, fill the hole in the center with pink pimento cheese. Make the cheese into a ball the size of a marble, and stick in it a tiny sprig of celery top. Put a little of the syrup from the bowl in each plate, then finish with very sharp French dressing. Make the pimento cheese by grinding fine half a can of pimento, and mixing it through two cakes of cream cheese, softening the cheese with French dressing, and seasoning it to taste.
_Cold Slaw_: (V. Moroso.) Shave very fine half a medium sized head of tender cabbage, put in a bowl, and cover with this dressing. Melt over hot water a heaping tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter, with two tablespoonfuls sugar, a saltspoon of pepper, a teaspoonful of salt, dash of red pepper, and scant teaspoonful dry mustard. Mix smooth, then add gradually four tablespoonfuls vinegar, mix well, then put in the yolk of a raw egg, beating it in hard. Cook till creamy, but not too thick. Take from fire, and add if you like, two tablespoonfuls cream, but it is not essential--the dressing is good without it.
_Tomato Soy_: Take one gallon solid, ripe tomatoes, peeled and sliced, or four canfuls put up in gla.s.s, put in a preserving kettle with a quart of sliced onions, two tablespoonfuls salt, as much moist sugar, teaspoonful black pepper, saltspoon paprika, four hearts of celery cut fine, a tablespoonful of pounded cloves, alspice, mace, grated nutmeg, and cinnamon mixed. Stir well together and cook slowly, taking care not to burn, until reduced one-half. Dry mustard or mustard seed can be added, but many palates do not relish them. After boiling down add a quart of very sharp vinegar, stir well through, skim if froth rises, bottle hot, and seal. This keeps a long time in a dark cool place.
_Table Mustard_: Mix well together two tablespoonfuls dry mustard, scant teaspoon sugar, half a teaspoon salt. Wet smooth, to a very stiff paste with boiling water, then add either a teaspoon of onion juice, or a clove of garlic mashed, stir well through, add little by little, a tablespoonful olive oil, then thin, with very sharp vinegar, added gradually so as not to lump nor curdle, to the consistency of thin cream. Put in a gla.s.s jar, seal tight and let stand a week. A month is better--indeed, the mustard improves with age if not permitted to dry up.