Part 31

A brown fricassee

Prepare as for ordinary fricassee. Fry half a pound of fat salt pork, sliced thin, in a pan; when they hiss and smoke, put in a large sliced onion and cook until it colors. Now dredge the pieces of chicken with flour and fry, a few pieces at a time, in the same fat, turning several times. When they begin to brown turn all into a pot with the shreds of pork and onion. Add a very small cupful of stock; cover closely and cook until done.

Have ready a brown roux, made by cooking together a great spoonful of butter with the same of browned flour. Stir in a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, and add to the gravy left in the pot after the chicken is dished. Cook two minutes and pour over the dished chicken. Set in the oven for three minutes before serving.

A pilau of chicken

Joint a tender broiler and leave for half an hour in a bath of salad oil and lemon juice. Drain, without wiping. Have ready three tablespoonfuls of butter, hissing hot, in a frying-pan. Fry a sliced onion in it, and then put in the chicken. Cook for ten minutes, turning often, and empty the contents of the pan into a pot with a broad bottom. Pour upon them a cupful of strained tomato sauce, and the same of weak stock—chicken or veal. Stew gently until the chicken is tender; take it up and keep in a hot colander set in the oven and covered closely. Drain off every drop of gravy, return to the fire and add three-quarters of a cupful of rice which has soaked for an hour in cold water. Cook fast until the rice is soft but not broken. Put the chicken back into the pot, mixing well with the rice, simmer three minutes and heap upon a heated platter. Sift Parmesan cheese thickly over all.

Boiled chicken stuffed with oysters

Prepare as usual for boiling or roasting, then fill body and craw with small oysters, which have been dipped in peppered and salted melted butter. Sew up in netting and boil twenty minutes to the pound if young, thirty minutes if old. Unwrap, wash over with butter and lemon juice; pour a few spoonfuls of oyster sauce upon them, the rest into a boat.

Chicken en casserole

Truss the chicken, which must be young and plump, as for roasting. Into a frying-pan on top of the range put two tablespoonfuls of butter, a sliced onion and carrot, a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme. When the vegetables are slightly browned put, with the chicken, into the casserole, add a pint of well-seasoned stock, cover the casserole and cook in the oven for three-quarters of an hour. After it has been in the oven for this length of time, drop in a dozen potato balls, or strips that have been cut from raw potatoes and sauté in hot butter, and a dozen French mushrooms. Season the gravy to taste, and leave the casserole uncovered that the chicken may brown. Ten minutes before taking from the oven, pour over the chicken two tablespoonfuls of sherry. When you take the chicken from the oven sprinkle it with minced parsley. Serve in the casserole.

Creamed stewed chicken

Cut up a fowl as for fricassee, and put over the fire in enough cold water to cover it well. Bring gradually to a gentle boil. When it begins to bubble, add a stalk of celery, some chopped parsley and two tablespoonfuls of minced onion, with a bay leaf. Simmer until tender before seasoning with salt and pepper.

Make a white roux in a frying-pan of two tablespoonfuls of butter cooked with the same quantity of flour. As soon as they are well mixed, stir into them, a teaspoonful at a time, a large cupful of strained and skimmed gravy from the pot. Have ready half a cup of cream, heated, with a pinch of soda. Add this to the thickened gravy also, very slowly, not to curdle the cream. Do not boil after the cream goes in. Arrange the chicken upon a broad platter; pour the creamed gravy over it, and garnish with dumplings cooked in the gravy left in the large pot, after the reserved cupful and the chicken are taken out.

Dumplings for chicken stew

Into a pint of flour sift a heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder, and a quarter-teaspoonful of salt, and sift the flour twice. Now rub in a tablespoonful of shortening and wet with enough milk to make a dough that can be rolled out. Roll and cut into rounds, and drop these into the boiling gravy. They should be done in ten minutes.

Mexican hot tamales (No. 1)

Boil a fowl until tender; salt while boiling. Chop very fine and season with plenty of cayenne pepper and a little garlic. Have ready a thick paste made of one cupful of corn-meal mixed with a little boiling water. Shape the meat into rolls the size of the little finger, and encase each in the corn-meal paste. Take the inner husks of Indian corn, cut off the ends, leaving the husks about six inches long, and wash them in boiling water.

Wrap each tamale in a corn husk; throw two or three Mexican peppers into the liquor in which the chicken was boiled, and cook the tamales in it for fifteen minutes.

Mexican hot tamales (No. 2)

Boil a fowl until tender; strip the meat from the bones and chop fine. Mince half a pound of seeded raisins, and a half-cupful of stoned olives, with one young red pepper chopped “exceeding fine.” Mix all well together, and stir to a paste with two cupfuls of Indian meal; wet with scalding water, season with salt, onion juice and a teaspoonful of sugar. Add more boiling water until you can stir over the fire for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then add six hard-boiled eggs minced fine; meantime lay smooth the soft inner husks of green corn, and tear some into strips for tying; lay upon two of the husks as much of the paste mixture as they will contain, wrap them about it and tie each roll with the stripped husk; drop these rolls into boiling salted water, and boil them for one hour.

If well seasoned, these are very savory.

Chop suey

(A Chinese recipe)

One-half chicken (or quarter chicken and as much fresh pork, or you can make it all pork, but chicken is much better), one large onion, a handful of mushrooms, a stalk of celery, six Chinese potatoes, a bowl of rice, a small dessert dish of Chinese sauce (which answers for salt).

When the chicken is cleaned scrape the meat from the bones and cut into strips about one and a half inches long and one-half inch wide. If pork is used, cut the strips the same length. Slice the onions thin; soak the mushrooms ten minutes in water, then remove the stems; cut the celery into pieces one and a half inches long. Chinese potatoes require no cooking; simply wash and slice.

First put chicken (or chicken and pork, or pork) into a frying-pan with fat and fry until done, but not brown or hard. Then add the sliced onions and cook a little. Add mushrooms. Now pour enough sauce over the ingredients to make them brown. Then add some water and stew a few minutes. Add celery, and after a minute add the potatoes. Finally, add a little floured water to it, making gravy of the water which stewed it.

The Chinese potatoes, mushrooms and Chinese sauce can be procured at any Chinese grocery. If the rice is not cooked properly it will detract greatly from the good taste of the chop suey. Otherwise it is a very palatable dish.

To those who do not know how to serve it I will say: Put some rice into a bowl, then add as much chop suey as you want. Mix and pour in enough of the sauce that was used in cooking it. Tea is usually taken with this dish.

Canned chicken

Joint the chicken as for fricassee, cover with cold water, and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer until tender, but not broken. When done add salt to the liquor, boil all up once, then remove the chicken and pack in wide-mouthed jars. Pack in as tightly as possible. Stand the jars at the side of the range in a pan of boiling water, boil up the chicken liquor, fill the jars to overflowing with the scalding liquid and seal immediately.

GEESE

Roast goose

Draw, clean, singe and truss as you would prepare a turkey. Always put onion and a suspicion of sage in the stuffing. Lay upon the grating of your roaster; pour a cup of boiling water over him to cicatrice the skin and keep in the juices, and roast, covered, twenty minutes to the pound if of reasonable age. If of unreasonable, cook slowly, basting often with the liquor in the dripping-pan, at least half an hour for each obdurate pound. A goose is a most uncertain quantity.

At the last, wash with butter, pepper and salt him, and dredge with flour, then brown. Drain off and skim the fat from the gravy before you season the goose. Goose-grease is valuable in the domestic pharmacopœia, but neither palatable nor wholesome.

Thicken the gravy with browned flour, add the giblets minced very fine, boil up and it is ready.

Serve apple sauce with him.

Braised goslings

Clean and truss without stuffing. Prepare a bed for them by slicing a carrot, an onion, a turnip (all younglings, like the birds), also a pared apple, and cutting a stalk of celery into bits. With these cover the grating of your roaster; lay the birds upon them, dredge with salt, pepper and a little powdered sage, when you have poured a little boiling water over them from the kettle. Cover, and roast slowly fifteen minutes to the pound. Wash with butter, dredge with flour and brown.

Take the goslings up and keep hot while you make the gravy. Rub vegetables and liquor through a colander into a bowl. Set this in cold water to throw up the grease. Skim, thicken with browned flour, adding two teaspoonfuls of tomato catsup, boil up and serve.

Serve apple sauce and green peas, or Lima beans, with the goslings which are most eatable when half-grown.

Salmi of goose

Cut the remains of a roast goose into small pieces, about an inch long and half as wide. Have ready a gravy made by boiling down the bones and toughest scraps until you have a cupful of strong stock. Add to this a carrot, a young turnip, a tomato, an apple and a stalk of celery, all cut into dice, and the vegetables parboiled for ten minutes. Simmer in the gravy until you can run them through your vegetable press. Put in the meat and cook slowly until tender. Thicken with browned flour.

GAME

The lower one descends in the social scale the less appreciation is there of game of any variety. What the plebeian terms “wild things” play a small part upon his menu—indeed, are probably altogether absent from it. He turns with a shrug from jugged hare, broiled quail and roast partridge to feast upon what is known in his set as “plain roast and boiled.” It is the epicure and the man of refined and cultivated gastronomic tastes who can appreciate good game.

Just here it may be well to remark that game need not of necessity be “high.” Some persons profess to prefer it when it has been kept so long as to be a little offensive to the olfactory organs. Whether or not this be affectation is not for us to judge. Suffice it to say that the following recipes are for the preparation of well-seasoned game, and not for viands that bear a distressing resemblance to carrion.

Saddle of venison

Rub the meat thoroughly with melted butter, and wrap it in buttered paper. Put into a covered roaster with a little water in the bottom of the pan. Allow at least twenty minutes’ roasting to every pound of meat. Half an hour before the meat is done remove the cover and the paper, and cook, basting every ten minutes with butter and a little melted currant jelly. At the end of the half-hour transfer the venison to a hot platter; strain the drippings left in the pan, add to them a cupful of boiling water, a dash of nutmeg, salt, pepper, two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same quantity of currant jelly. When the butter and the jelly are melted, pour the sauce into a gravy-boat and send to the table with the venison.

The loin, the haunch and the leg of venison may be cooked in like manner, and may be served with propriety even at a “company dinner,” although the saddle, like Abou Ben Adhem’s name, “leads all the rest.”

Venison steak

It requires about three minutes more time to broil than beefsteak, even when tender. If doubtful, lay in olive oil and lemon juice for two hours before cooking. Drain without wiping, and broil over clear hot coals, turning often to avoid scorching.

Take up, lay upon a very hot dish, sprinkle with salt and paprika and spread on both sides a mixture of butter stirred up with currant jelly. Cover and leave over hot water five minutes before it goes to table.

Roast partridges

Select plump birds, pick and clean as you would chickens, washing them out quickly in cold water. To allow them to lie in the water injures their flavor. Tie the legs and wings closely to the sides and put the birds in a covered roaster with a cup of water under them. Rub with butter, dredge with flour and cook for half an hour. Now remove the cover of the roaster and baste the birds plentifully with melted butter. Replace the cover, cook for fifteen minutes longer, uncover and brown.

Woodcock

May be roasted according to the foregoing recipe, but as it is a smaller bird than the partridge, less time will be required in the cooking. The fashionable way of cooking woodcock is what is known as “with the trail.” To prepare the woodcock, wash them and remove the crops. Fold the legs and wings close to the body and bend the head forward so that the long bill may be run, skewer-wise, through the legs and wings, thus holding them in place. Put two slices of toast in the bottom of a large, deep fireproof soup-plate, and place two birds, side by side, upon this; put a lump of butter upon each, and invert a large saucer or small plate over them. Over the opening left about the edge of the saucer lay a strip of pastry, that all air may be excluded. Set in the oven for seven minutes, then make an incision in the pastry and allow the steam to escape. Cover this small hole with a bit of fresh pastry, return the birds to the oven and cook for half an hour. Pour melted butter over the woodcock, serve on the toast on which they were cooked, and garnish with strips of the browned pastry.

As some persons do not like the “trail,” it may be well to remark that drawn woodcock may be cooked according to this recipe.

Broiled quail

Pick and draw the birds, and remove the heads and feet. Wipe out the bodies with a wet cloth, split down the back and lay open upon a gridiron. Broil on both sides, taking care that the delicate flesh is not dried into tastelessness. Lay the quail upon slices of buttered toast, put a lump of butter upon each, and sprinkle with butter and salt. Set in the oven until the butter melts, then send to the table.

Roasted quail

Clean and wash in two waters. The second should have a teaspoonful of baking-soda dissolved in it. Rinse with clear water and wipe the inside of each bird with a soft linen cloth. Put within the body of each a single fine oyster, bind legs and wings down with fine soft cotton. Have ready thin slices of fat salt pork, two for each bird. Cover the breasts with these, binding with soft string; lay upon the grating of the roaster, pour a little boiling water from the kettle upon each, and roast from twenty to twenty-five minutes. Five minutes before you take them up, remove the pork, wash with butter, dredge with flour and brown.

Cut rounds of stale bread, toast and butter them; soak with gravy from the pan, and lay a bird upon each.

You may omit the oysters and fill the birds instead with a forcemeat of seasoned crumbs. Chopped oysters also make a good stuffing, while some prefer to roast them uncovered and without the pork covering.

RABBITS AND HARES

In America “hare” and “rabbit” are interchangeable terms. The wild rabbit of the Middle States and New England is the “old hare” of the South, and one with the “Br’er Rabbit” of negro folk-lore. Hence I shall use the names indifferently in the recipes dealing with the wily _coureur du bois_ of both regions.

Barbecued rabbit

Wash the cleaned and beheaded rabbit thoroughly, and cut it open all along the under side of the body. Make deep incisions across the backbone that the heat may penetrate to the center of the flesh. Spread the hare open on a gridiron and broil, turning frequently. When done, transfer to a hot platter, rub with butter, cover and keep warm in the oven while you make the sauce that is to accompany the game.

In a small saucepan melt three tablespoonfuls of butter, and stir into it two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a teaspoonful of French mustard and a teaspoonful of minced parsley. When very hot pour this sauce over the rabbit. Let it stand covered in a hot dish five minutes before serving.

Roast rabbit

Leave the heads on in cleaning them. Stuff the bodies with a forcemeat of fat salt pork, minced onion and fine crumbs, well seasoned with pepper and salt. Sew them up with fine thread and lay upon thin slices of pork covering the grating of the roaster. Lay other slices of pork over them, pour over all a cupful of stock and roast one hour. Remove the pork then, wash with butter, dredge with flour and brown.

Drain off the gravy, lay the bits of bacon about the rabbit in the dish; thicken the gravy with browned floor. Boil up, add a tablespoonful of tomato catsup and a glass of claret, and take from the fire.

Casserole of rabbit

Skin, clean and cut up as for fricassee. Make two pieces of each back. Fry a dozen slices of fat salt pork in a frying-pan, then two sliced onions to a pale brown. Strain the fat back into the pan, keeping the shreds of onion and pork in a bowl by themselves. Pepper, salt and dredge with flour the jointed hare and fry, a few pieces at a time, in the same fat. Have ready parboiled about two dozen potato balls and half as many baby onions, with half a cupful of button mushrooms, canned or fresh. When the meat is well seared on both sides, lay some in the casserole, then six potato balls and two or three onions with a few mushrooms. Strew the chopped salt pork over them, season with pepper and dredge with browned flour. Proceed in this order until the casserole is full. Cover with cold stock or gravy, put on the cover, filling in the cracks where it joins the casserole with flour paste; and cook slowly three hours before opening it. If tender, then drain off the gravy carefully not to disturb the various layers. Put into a saucepan, thicken with browned flour; season with tomato catsup and salt and pepper if needed. Boil one minute; stir in a tablespoonful of tart jelly and the same of lemon juice; return to the casserole; replace the cover and leave in an open oven for five minutes before serving.

Stewed rabbits

Clean and joint as for the casserole, cutting each joint and halving the backs. Proceed in the same way, also, to fry the pork, onion and meat when you have peppered, salted and floured this last.

Then pack in a saucepan, pour in enough stock (or butter and water) barely to cover it; season with salt, pepper, sweet herbs and onion juice; cover closely and stew slowly for two hours, or until tender. Drain the gravy into another saucepan, setting that containing the meat, covered, in a larger vessel of boiling water. Thicken the gravy with a big lump of butter worked up with browned flour, a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce and one of kitchen bouquet; pour back upon the meat and let all stand together in boiling water for five minutes.

Belgian hares

May be cooked in any of the ways described in recipes for preparing wild hares for table use.

Wild turkey

Clean and truss as you would a tame turkey, but wet the stuffing with melted butter, and while roasting the bird must be basted freely with butter. Six or seven times are not too much. The flesh, while sweet and peculiarly “gamy,” is drier than that of his domesticated brother.

As it is impossible to determine his age before shooting him, there are even chances that he will be tougher than if fattened for the table. Should this prove to be the case, steam him over boiling water for an hour before putting him into the roaster.

Send currant or grape jelly around with him instead of cranberry, and add a little lemon juice to the thickened gravy. Garnish him with “link” sausages, boiled and then fried.

Roast grouse

Here again we have dry birds. Clean, rinse out well with soda and water, then with pure water; wipe inside and out, and cover with thin slices of corned ham—more fat than lean. Bind criss-cross with soft twine or narrow tape, pour a cup of boiling water over them, and roast forty minutes, basting with the gravy in the pan three times. Take off the bacon, wash the birds with butter, dredge with flour and brown while you make the gravy.

Thicken this with browned flour, add the juice of half a lemon, boil up, pour in a small glass of claret and serve. Garnish with the ham and whole olives.

Braised wild pigeons

Clean, wash carefully; put an olive in the body of each and bind legs and wings neatly to the sides of the birds.

Fry six or eight slices of fat salt pork in the frying-pan until crisp, but not burned. Strain the fat back, lay in the pigeons and roll over and over in the boiling grease until seared on all sides. Take them up and keep hot. Add a spoonful of butter to the hot fat, and when it hisses, fry a large onion, sliced, in it. Lay the pigeons upon the grating of the roaster, pour the boiling fat and onion over them; add a cupful of weak stock; cover closely and cook steadily for three-quarters of an hour. Test the birds with a skewer or fork, and if tender wash with butter, dredge and brown. Remove to a hot dish and make the gravy.

Thicken with a brown roux, and season to taste; stir in a dozen stoned olives. “Pimolas” are nice if you can get them. If you can get fresh mushrooms, fry or broil a dozen and lay about the pigeons when they are dished.

Pass currant jelly with them.

Stewed wild pigeons

Wash well, when you have cleaned them, rinsing out with soda and water, and leave in salt and water for an hour. Chop fat corned pork fine, season with onion juice and paprika, and put a teaspoonful into the body of each bird. Truss neatly, winding the body about with soft thread, and put into a saucepan. Cover with cold water and simmer gently until tender. Take up then and lay in a fire-proof dish. Wash with butter beaten to a cream with lemon juice, onion juice and finely minced parsley. Cover and set in the oven over hot water.

Thicken the gravy with browned flour, beat in a great spoonful of currant jelly, add two dozen champignons cut into halves, boil one minute, return the pigeons to the gravy and simmer ten minutes.

SQUIRRELS

The large gray squirrel of the Southern and Middle States is reckoned by many epicures as superior to rabbits or hares in richness and delicacy of flavor. The small red roisterer who chatters in groves and coppice, and devours the eggs and young of songbirds, is secured from trapper and gunner by his worthlessness as an article of food. There is so little of him and that little is so juiceless that powder and shot would be wasted upon him.

His gray cousin-german is so toothsome when properly cooked, one wonders that there are not preserves of them near all our large towns. They are easily raised, hardy and, with little care, multiply rapidly.

Broiled squirrels

Skin, clean and lay in a marinade of salad oil and lemon juice for one hour. Drain, but do not wipe. Lay upon a gridiron, wide open, ribs downward. Broil over clear coals, turning as they begin to drip. When done, remove to a hot water dish, wash with butter creamed with lemon juice and seasoned with pepper and salt. Cover and let them stand five minutes before serving.

Stewed squirrels