For nut-cookery, a nut mill or food chopper of some kind is necessary. A tiny food chopper, which can be regulated to chop finely or coarsely as required, may be bought for 3s. at most food-reform stores. It also has an attachment which macerates the nuts so as to produce "nut butter." The larger size at 5s. is the more convenient for ordinary use. If only one machine can be afforded, the food chopper should be the one chosen, as it can also be used for vegetables, breadcrumbs, etc. The nut-mill proper flakes the nuts, it will not macerate them, and is useful for nuts only. But flaked nuts are a welcome and pretty addition to fruit salads, stewed fruits, etc. If the nuts to be milled or ground clog the machine, put them in a warm oven until they just begin to change colour. Then let them cool, and they will be found crisp and easy to work. But avoid doing this if possible, as it dries up the valuable nut oil.
These little fish are really not broiled at all, but that is the name of the nice and easy dish. Take a box of large sardines and drain off all the oil, and lay them on heavy brown paper while you make four slices of toast. Trim off the edges and cut them into strips, laying them in a row on a hot platter. Put the sardines into the oven and make them very hot, and lay one on each strip of toast and sprinkle them with lemon juice, and put sliced lemon and sprigs of parsley all around.
1 small head celery, 1 large onion, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 3 tablespoons coarsely chopped parsley, P.R. Barley malt meal, Mapleton's or P.R. almond or pine-kernel cream, 3 pints boiling water. Well wash the vegetables and slice them, and add them with the parsley to the boiling water. (The water should be distilled, if possible, and the cooking done in a large earthenware jar or casserole. See notes re casseroles in Chap. IV.) Simmer gently for 2 hours, or until quite soft. Then strain through a hair sieve. Do not rub the vegetables through the sieve to make a purée, simply strain and press all the juices out. The vegetable juices are all wanted, but not the fibre. To each pint of this vegetable broth allow 1 heaped tablespoon barley malt meal, 1 tablespoon nut cream, and 1/2 lb. tomatoes. Mix the meal to a thin paste with some of the cooled broth (from the pint). Put the rest of the pint in a saucepan or casserole and bring to the boil. Add the meal and boil for 10 minutes. Break up the tomatoes and cook slowly to a pulp (without water). Rub through a sieve. (The skin and pips are not to be forced through.) Add this pulp to the soup. Lastly mix the nut-cream to a thin cream by dripping slowly a little water or cool broth into it, stirring hard with a teaspoon all the time. Add this to the soup, re-heat, but do not boil, serve. This soup is rather irksome to make, but is intensely nourishing and easy of digestion. The pine-kernel cream is the more digestible of the two creams. Care should be taken not to cook these nut creams. If the soup is for an invalid care should also be taken that, while getting all the valuable vegetable juices, no skin or pips, etc., are included. The vegetable broth may be prepared a day in advance, but it will not keep for three days except in very cold weather. (When it is desired to keep soup it should be brought to the boil with the lid of the stockpot or casserole on, and put away without the lid being removed or the contents stirred.)
Yolk of 1 egg. 1/2 cup of olive-oil. 1 tablespoonful of lemon juice or vinegar. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. Pinch of red pepper.
Put the yolk of the egg into a very cold bowl; it is better to put the bowl, the egg, the oil, and the beater all on the ice a half-hour before you need them, for then the mayonnaise comes quicker. With a Dover egg-beater beat till the yolk is very light indeed; then have some one else begin to put in the oil, one drop at a time, till the mayonnaise becomes so thick it is difficult to turn the beater; then put in a drop or two of lemon or vinegar, and this will thin it so you can use the oil again; keep on doing this till you have nearly a cup of the dressing; if you need more oil than the rule calls for, use it, and toward the last add it two or three drops at a time. When you have enough, and it is stiff enough, put in the pepper and salt and it is done. Never use mustard except with lobster, as this will spoil the taste. Some salads, especially fruit and vegetable, need very thick mayonnaise, and then it is better to make it with lemon juice, while a fish salad, or one to use with meats, may be thinner, and then the vinegar will do; the lemon juice makes it thick. Always taste it before using it, to see if it is just right, and, if not, put in more salt, or whatever it needs. You will soon learn. Most people think mayonnaise is very difficult to make, but, really, it is as easy as baking potatoes, after you have once learned how. Every salad given before is just as nice with mayonnaise as with French dressing, and you can try each one both ways; then there are these, which are better with mayonnaise.
Good mushrooms are only found in clear open fields where the air is pure and unconfined. Those that grow in low damp ground, or in shady places, are always poisonous. Mushrooms of the proper sort generally appear in August and September, after a heavy dew or a misty night. They may be known by their being of a pale pink or salmon colour on the gills or under side, while the top is of a dull pearl-coloured white; and by their growing only in open places. When they are a day old, or a few hours after they are gathered, the reddish colour changes to brown. The poisonous or false mushrooms are of various colours, sometimes of a bright yellow or scarlet all over; sometimes entirely of a chalky white stalk, top, and gills. It is easy to detect a bad mushroom if all are quite fresh; but after being gathered a few hours the colours change, so that unpractised persons frequently mistake them. It is said that if you boil an onion among mushrooms the onion will turn of a bluish black when there is a bad one among them. Of course, the whole should then be thrown into the fire. If in stirring mushrooms, the colour of the silver spoon is changed, it is also most prudent to destroy them all.
Fold a piece of strong cotton cloth (perhaps a foot square) from the opposite corners, so as to give it a triangular shape. On one side sew together the two edges, thus making a bag shaped like a "dunce's cap." Cut the cloth at the apex just enough to permit a short tin tube, somewhat like a tailor's thimble, to be pushed through. The tube for éclairs measures about three-fourths of an inch at the smallest opening; that for lady-fingers is three-eighths of an inch, and that for meringues and kisses, half an inch. The tubes for decorating with frosting are very small. Fill the bag with the mixture to be forced through, and gather the cloth together at the top with the left hand. Hold the point of the tube close to the pan on which the mixture is to be spread. Press the mixture out with the right hand. If the cakes are to be large use a good deal of pressure, but if to be small, very little will do. At first, it will be hard to get the shapes, but with a little practice it will seem comparatively easy.
Take four pounds of brisket, season with salt, pepper and ginger, add three tablespoons of tomatoes and an onion cut up. Cover with water in an iron pot and a close-fitting cover, put in oven and bake from three to four hours.
Take glazed paper of different colours, and cut it into squares of equal size, fringing two sides of each. Have ready, burnt almonds, chocolate nuts, and bonbons or sugar-plums of various sorts; and put one in each paper with a folded slip containing two lines of verse; or what will be much more amusing, a conundrum with the answer. Twist the coloured paper so as entirely to conceal their contents, leaving the fringe at each end. This is the most easy, but there are various ways of cutting and ornamenting these envelopes.
Boil some rice till it will press closely together. Fill some teacups with it, pressing the rice well down; then leave a hole in the middle and pour into each hole a small raw egg, yolk, and white. Set the tea-cups to cook in the oven, and when the eggs are just set and no more, press on them some more rice. Turn them out of the teacups, and if you have rubbed the inside of the cups with a little butter this will be easy, and sprinkle over the top of each mold plenty of chopped parsley. Do not forget salt and pepper to season the ingredients. [Pour la Patrie.]
2 cups of rich cheese, grated. Yolks of two eggs. 1/2 cup of milk. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. Saltspoonful of cayenne.
Make three nice slices of toast, cut off the crusts, and cut each piece in two. Butter these, and very quickly dip each one in boiling water, being careful not to soak them. Put these on a hot platter in the oven. Put the milk in a saucepan over the fire, being careful not to have one that is too hot, only moderate, and when it boils up put in the cheese and stir without stopping, until the cheese all melts and it looks smooth. Then put in the beaten yolks of the eggs and the seasoning, and pour at once over the toast and serve very hot. Many people like a saltspoonful of dry mustard mixed in with the pepper. You can also serve this rarebit on toasted and buttered crackers.
