Part 7 (1/2)
_Left-over Sweet Potatoes_: Peel, slice thick, dip in melted b.u.t.ter, roll in sugar well seasoned with grated lemon peel, and nutmeg, lay in a pan so as not to touch and make very hot in the oven. This last estate is always better than the first.
_Potato b.a.l.l.s_: Mash boiled or baked sweet potatoes smooth, seasoning them well with salt, pepper, cinnamon, a little nutmeg, and melted b.u.t.ter. Bind with a well-beaten egg, flour the hands, and roll the mashed potato into b.a.l.l.s the size of large walnuts. Roll the b.a.l.l.s in fine crumbs or sifted cornmeal, drop in deep hot fat, fry crisp, drain, and use as a garnish to roast pork, roast fowl, or broiled ham.
_Bananas_: Bananas are far too unfamiliar in the kitchen. They can be cooked fifty ways--and in each be found excellent. The very best way I have yet found, is to peel, slice in half, lengthwise, lay in a dish with a cover, shake sugar over, add a little mace, lemon juice, lemon peel, and melted b.u.t.ter, then bake until soft--seven to fifteen minutes in a hot oven, according to the quant.i.ty in the dish. Or peel and slice, leave unseasoned, and lay in the pan bacon has been cooked in, first pouring away most of the fat. Cook five minutes in a hot oven, and send to table with hot bread, crisp bacon and coffee for breakfast. A thick slice of banana, along with a thick slice of tart apple, both very lightly seasoned, makes a fine stuffing for squabs. Half a banana delicately baked, and laid on a well-browned chop adds to looks and flavor.
_Baking Vegetables_: Paper bags taught me the ease and value of cooking vegetables in the oven rather than on top the stove. Less care is required, less water, rather less heat. Peas and lima beans, for example, after sh.e.l.ling, should be well washed, put in a pan with salt, seasoning and a little water, covered close, and baked in a hot oven half an hour to an hour. Green corn is never so well cooked, outside a paper bag, as by laying it on a rack in a covered pan, putting a little water underneath, covering close and setting the pan for nine minutes in a hot oven. It is sweeter and richer than even when put in cold unsalted water, brought to a boil, cooked one minute, then taken up. But however heat is applied, long cooking ruins it. Cook till the milk is set--not a second longer. Green peas should have several tender mint leaves put in with them, also sugar in proportion of a teaspoonful to half a pint of sh.e.l.led peas. Lima beans are better flavored if the b.u.t.ter is put with them along with the water. Use only enough to make steam--say two tablespoonfuls to a fair-sized pan. Spinach and beet greens also bake well, but require more water. Leave out salt, adding it after draining and chopping them. They take twenty to thirty minutes, according to age.
All manner of fruits, berries in especial, cook finely in the oven. Put in earthen or agate ware, with sugar, spices and a little water, cover close and cook half to three quarters of an hour, according to bulk.
Uncover then--if done take up, if not let cook uncovered as long as needed. Set the baking dishes always on rack or a grid-shelf, never on the oven bottom nor solid metal. Thus the danger of burning is minimized, also the need of stirring.
For _cauliflower au gratin_, cut the head into florets, lay them compactly in the baking dish, add a little water, with salt, pepper and b.u.t.ter. Bake covered until tender, then shake over the grated cheese, and set back in the oven three to five minutes. Tomatoes, peeled and whole except for cutting out the eyes, baked in a dish with a liberal seasoning of salt, pepper, and b.u.t.ter, a strewing of sugar and a little onion juice, look and taste wholly unlike stewed tomatoes, common or garden variety.
_Boiling with Bacon_: Get a pound of streaky bacon, cut square if possible, sc.r.a.pe and wash clean, put on in plenty of water, with a young onion, a little thyme and parsley, bring to a quick boil, throw in cold water, skim the pot clean, then let stand simmering for two to three hours. Add to it either greens--mustard, turnip, or dandelion or field salad, well washed and picked, let cook till very tender, then skim out, drain in a colander, lay in a hot dish with the square of bacon on top.
Here is the foundation of a hearty and wholesome meal. The bacon by long boiling is in a measure emulsified, and calculated to nourish the most delicate stomach rather than to upset it. Serve two thin slices of it with each helping of greens. You should have plenty of Cayenne vinegar, very hot and sharp, hot corn bread, and cider or beer, to go along with it.
String beans, known to the south country as snaps, never come fully to their own, unless thus cooked with bacon. Even pork does not answer, though that is far and away better than boiling and b.u.t.tering or flooding with milk sauces. It is the same with cabbage. Wash well, halve or quarter, boil until very tender, drain and serve. Better cook as many as the pot will hold and the bacon season, since fried cabbage, which is chopped fine, and tossed in bacon fat with a seasoning of pepper, salt and vinegar, helps out wonderfully for either breakfast, luncheon or supper. Never throw away proper pot-liquor--it is a good and cheap subst.i.tute for soup on cold days. Heat, and drop into it crisp bread-crusts--if they are corn bread crusts made very brown, all the better. Pioneer folk throve on pot-liquor to such an extent they had a saying that it was sinful to have too much--pot-liquor and b.u.t.termilk at the same meal.
_Fruit Desserts_: Fruits have affinities the same as human beings.
Witness the excellent agreement of grape fruit and rum. Nothing else, not the finest liqueur, so brings out the flavor. But there are other fruits which, conjoined to the grape fruit, make it more than ever delicious. Strawberries for example. They must be fine and ripe. Wash well, pick, wash again, halve if very large, and mix well in a bowl with grape fruit pulp, freed of skin and seed, and broken to berry size. Add sugar in layers, then pour over a tumbler of rum, let stand six hours on ice, and serve with or without cream.
Strawberries mixed with ripe fresh pineapple, cut to berry size, and well sweetened, are worthy of sherry, the best in the cellar, and rather dry than sweet. Mixed with thin sliced oranges and bananas, use sound claret--but do not put it on until just before serving--let the mixed fruits stand only in sugar. Strawberries alone, go very well with claret and sugar--adding cream if you like. Cream, lightly sweetened, flavored with sherry or rum, or a liqueur, and whipped, gives the last touch of perfection to a dessert of mixed fruit, or to wine jelly, or a cup of after-dinner coffee, or afternoon chocolate.
A peach's first choice is brandy--it must be real, therefore costly.
Good whiskey answers, so does rum fairly. A good liqueur is better.
Sherry blends well if the fruit is very ripe and juicy. Peel and slice six hours before serving, pack down in sugar, add the liqueur, and let stand on ice until needed. Peaches cut small, mixed with California grapes, skinned and seeded, also with grape fruit pulp broken small, and drowned in sherry syrup, are surprisingly good. Make the sherry syrup by three parts filling a gla.s.s jar with the best lump sugar, pouring on it rather more wine than will cover it, adding the strained juice of a lemon, or orange, a few shreds of yellow peel, and a blade of mace, then setting in suns.h.i.+ne until the sugar dissolves. It should be almost like honey--no other sweetening is needed. A spoonful in after-dinner coffee makes it another beverage--just as a syrup made in the same way from rum, sugar and lemon juice, glorifies afternoon tea.
White grapes halved and seeded mixed with bananas cut small, and orange pulp, well sweetened and topped with whipped cream, either natural or ”laced” with sherry, make another easy dessert. Serve in tall footed gla.s.ses, set on your finest doilies in your prettiest plates. Lay a flower or a gay candy upon the plate--it adds enormously to the festive effect and very little to the trouble.
A spoonful of rich wine jelly, laid upon any sort of fresh fruit, to my thinking, makes it much better. Cream can be added also--but I do not care for it--indeed do not taste it, nor things creamed. Ripe, juicy cherries, pitted and mixed equally with banana cubes, then sweetened, make a dessert my soul loves to recall. Not caring to eat them I never make ice cream, frozen puddings, _mousses_, sherbets, nor many of the gelatine desserts. Hence I have experimented rather widely in the kingdom of fruits. This book is throughout very largely a record of experience--I hope it may have the more value through being special rather than universal.
_Sandwiches_: In sandwich making mind your _S's_. That is to say, have your knife sharp, your bread stale, your b.u.t.ter soft. Moreover the bread must be specially made--fine grained, firm, not crumbly, nor ragged. Cut off crusts for ordinary sandwiches--but if shaping them with cutters let it stay. Then you can cut to the paper-thinness requisite--otherwise that is impossible. Work at a roomy table spread with a clean old tablecloth over which put sheets of clean, thick paper.
Do your cutting on the papered surface--thus you save either turning your knife edges against a platter or sorely gas.h.i.+ng even an old cloth.
Keep fancy cutters all together and ready to your hand. Shape one kind of sandwiches all the same--thus you distinguish them easily. Make as many as your paper s.p.a.ce will hold, before stamping out any--this saves time and strength. Clear away the fragments from one making, before beginning another sort, thus avoiding possible taints and confusion. Lay your made sandwiches on a platter under a dry cloth with a double damp one on top of it. They will not dry out, and it is much easier than wrapping in oiled paper.
The nearer fillings approach the consistency of soft b.u.t.ter, the better. In making sardine sandwiches, boil the eggs hard, mash the yolks smooth while hot, softening them with either b.u.t.ter or salad dressing--French dressing of course. It is best made with lemon juice and very sharp vinegar for such use. Work into the eggs, the sardines freed of skin and bone after draining well, and mashed as fine as possible. A little of their oil may be added if the flavor is liked. But lemon juice is better. Rub the mixture smooth with the back of a stout wooden spoon, and pack close in a bowl so it shall not harden.
Pimento cheese needs to be softened with French dressing, until like creamed b.u.t.ter. The finer the pimento is ground the better. Spread evenly upon the b.u.t.tered bread, lay other b.u.t.tered bread upon it, and pile square. When the pile gets high enough, cut through into triangles or finger shapes, and lay under the damp cloth. Slice Swiss cheese very thin with a sharp knife, season lightly with salt and paprika, and lay between the b.u.t.tered slices. Lettuce dressed with oil and lemon juice and lightly sprinkled with Parmesan cheese makes a refres.h.i.+ng afternoon sandwich. Ham needs to be ground fine--it must be boiled well of course--seasoned lightly with made mustard, pepper, and lemon juice, softened a bit with clear oil or b.u.t.ter, and spread thin. Tongue must be treated the same way, else boiled very, very tender, skinned before slicing, and sliced paper-thin. Rounds of it inside shaped sandwiches are likely to surprise--and please--masculine palates.
For the shaped sandwich--leaf or star, or heart, or crescent, is the happy home, generally, of all the fifty-seven varieties of fancy sandwich fillings, sweet and sour, mushy and squshy, which make an honest mouthful of natural flavor, a thing of joy. Yet this is not saying novelty in sandwiches is undesirable. Contrariwise it is welcome as summer rain. In witness, here is a filling from the far Philippines, which albeit I have not tried it out yet, sounds to me enticing, and has further the vouching of a cook most excellent. Grate fine as much Edam or pineapple cheese as requisite, season well with paprika, add a few grains of black pepper, wet with sherry to the consistency of cream, and spread between b.u.t.tered bread. If it is nut bread so much the better.
Nut bread is made thus.
_Nut Bread for Sandwiches_: (Mrs. Petre.) Beat two eggs very light, with a scant teaspoonful salt, half cup sugar, and two cups milk. Sift four cups flour twice with four teaspoonfuls baking powder. Mix with eggs and milk, stir smooth, add one cup nuts finely chopped, let raise for twenty minutes, in a double pan, and bake in a moderately quick oven. Do not try to slice until perfectly cold--better wait till next day, keeping the bread where it will not dry out. Slice very thin, after b.u.t.tering.
Makes sandwiches of special excellence with any sort of good filling.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pickles, Preserves, Coffee, Tea, Chocolate_]
_Brine for Pickling_: Use rain water if possible and regular picking salt--it is coa.r.s.e and much stronger than cooking salt. Lacking rain water, soften other water by dissolving in it the day beforehand, a pinch of was.h.i.+ng soda--this neutralizes largely the mineral contents.