Take half a pint of button mushrooms and, if fresh, peel them and throw them instantly into water made acid with lemon- juice, in order that they may not turn a bad colour. In the meantime slice up a good-sized Spanish onion, and fry the onion in a little butter. As soon as the onion is a little tender, chop up and add the mushrooms. Put all this into a stew-pan with a little butter sauce, or a little water can be added and then thickened with a little butter and flour. Let this simmer gently for nearly half an hour, add a little made mustard, pepper and salt and a dessertspoonful of vinegar. Before sending to table add half a dozen hard-boiled eggs; the whites should be cut into rings, and should be only put into the sauce long enough to get hot; the yolks should be kept separate, but must be warmed up in the sauce.
1 large Spanish onion, 1 teaspoonful of mixed herbs, 1/2 head of celery, 1-1/2 oz. butter, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, and pepper and salt to taste. Chop the onion up fine, and fry it brown in the butter, in the saucepan in which the soup is to be made, and add 5 pints of water. Prepare and cut into small pieces the carrot, turnip, and celery; add these, the nutmeg, herbs, and pepper and salt to the water, with the fried onions. When the vegetables are tender drain the liquid; return it to the saucepan, and boil the soup up.
comes in very handy in this way. Put 1 oz. butter in saucepan and shred into it very finely a large Spanish onion or an equal quantity white of small onions or leeks. Cover, and allow to sweat over gentle heat for 10 minutes. Some finely shred white celery along with the onions is a welcome addition, but is not indispensable. Pick and wash well 1/4 lb. yellow lentils and bring to boil in water to cover. Do the same with 3 ozs. rice. The lentils and rice may be boiled together, but are nicer done separately. Add to onion, &c., in saucepan, along with seasoning to taste of curry powder, &c. Some tomato pulp or chutney is very good. Mix lightly so as not to make it pasty. Remove from fire, add a beaten egg, and press into a plain buttered mould. Tie down with buttered paper and steam for one hour. Turn out and serve with tomato sauce. It may also be garnished with slices of hard-boiled egg, beetroot, fried tomatoes, &c.
Take one pint of cold chicken, duck or any poultry. Cut it into flakes and place it in a pudding dish which has been lined with a thin crust. On the layer of meat place a layer of sweet red peppers (seeds removed), cut in slices; next, a layer of thinly sliced sausage, and so on until the dish is full. Over this pour a glass of claret into which have been rubbed two tablespoons of flour. Cover with a thin crust of pastry, and bake.
Cut tomatoes and Spanish onions in slices, put into a pie-dish in alternate layers, add a little soaked tapioca, pepper and salt, and a little butter to taste. Put in sufficient water to make gravy, cover with wholemeal crust, bake 1-1/2 hours; eat with baked potatoes and bread.
Hard-boil six eggs, chop them, but not fine. Make a half pint of curry sauce. Put the chopped eggs over a bed of carefully boiled rice, cover with the curry sauce, garnish with strips of Spanish pepper and serve. This dish may be changed by using tomato sauce in place of the curry sauce.
The philosophy of a sauce, when understood, enables even an untrained cook to make a great variety of every day sauces from materials usually found in every household; to have them uniform, however, flavorings must be correctly blended, and measurements must be rigidly observed. Two level tablespoonfuls of butter or other fat, two level tablespoonfuls of flour, must be used to each half pint of liquid. If the yolks of eggs are added, omit one tablespoonful of flour or the sauce will be too thick. Tomato sauce should be flavored with onion, a little mace, and a suspicion of curry. Brown sauce may be simply seasoned with salt and pepper, flavored and colored with kitchen bouquet. Spanish sauce should also be flavored with mushrooms, or if you can afford it, a truffle, a little chopped ham, a tablespoonful of chives, shallot and garlic. Water sauce, drawn butter and simple sauce Hollandaise, when they are served with fish, must be flavored with a dash of tarragon vinegar, salt and pepper.
Small Spanish onions are perhaps best for this dish, but ordinary onions can be used. Cut the onions cross-ways after peeling them, so that they fall in rings, and remove the white core. Two Spanish or half a dozen ordinary onions will be sufficient. Fry these rings of onions in butter till they are tender, without browning them. Take them out of the frying-pan and put them aside. Add a spoonful of flour to the frying-pan, and make a paste with the butter, and then add sufficient milk so that when it is boiled and stirred up it makes a thick sauce; add pepper and salt, a little lemon-juice, and a small quantity of grated nutmeg. Put back the rings of onions into this, and let them simmer gently. Take half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, cut the eggs in halves, remove the yolks, and cut the whites into rings, like the onions, mixing these white egg-rings with the onions and sauce; make the whole hot and serve on a dish, using the hard-boiled half-yolks to garnish; sprinkle a little chopped parsley over the whole, and serve.
Wash well 1/4 lb. rice and put on to simmer slowly with 1-1/2 pints milk and water, a Spanish onion and 2 sticks of white celery. Blanch, chop up and pound well, or pass through a nut-mill 1/4 lb. almonds, and add to them by degrees another 1/2 pint milk. Put in saucepan along with some more milk and water to warm through, but do not boil. Remove the onion and celery from the rice (or if liked they may be cut small and left in), and strain the almonds through to that. See that it is quite hot before serving. NOTE.--For this and other soups which are wanted specially light and nourishing, Mapleton's Almond Meal will be found exceedingly useful. It is ready for use, so that there is no trouble blanching, pounding, &c.
