Part 35

Shell enough peas to make a quart without the pods. Lay the peas in cold water for a half hour; put over the fire in two quarts of boiling salted water and cook for half an hour, or until very tender, but not broken. Drain free of water, turn into a bowl and mash soft with two tablespoonfuls of butter and with salt to taste. Beat four eggs very light, add to them three gills of milk and a cupful of flour with which has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder and a half teaspoonful of salt. Stir the mashed peas by the great spoonful into this mixture and beat until you have a smooth, light green batter. Have your soapstone griddle very hot and drop your batter by the spoonful upon this. When done on one side turn and bake to a delicate brown. Serve very hot as a vegetable to accompany any kind of meat or poultry.

Green pea croquettes

Peas that are getting hard will do for these. Boil in just enough salted water to cover them well. While hot, run through the vegetable press. Beat to a smooth paste with a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour. Pepper and salt to taste, drop in a dash of onion juice; lastly, beat in a well-whipped egg. Stir in a vessel set within another of boiling water until hot all through, and set away until cold and stiff. Mold then into croquettes, dip in beaten egg and cracker-crumbs; leave on ice for half an hour before frying in boiling deep cottolene or other fat. Drain and serve very hot.

You may use canned peas if you can not get fresh.

PEPPERS

The large, green peppers, known to the green-grocer as “sweet peppers,” have grown rapidly into favor as a fresh vegetable, within the last decade. They must be seeded with the utmost care. A touch of the seeds against the green sides will ruin the latter for present use. Get hold of the inner stem and draw the clustered seeds through the opening at the stem end, without touching the inside walls.

Fried green peppers

Cut open lengthwise and extract all seeds and tough white fiber. Slice crosswise. Lay in cold salted water for ten minutes, then wipe dry. Melt four tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and sauté the sliced peppers in this. Lay about broiled steak or chops.

Stuffed peppers

Make a forcemeat of a tablespoonful of minced ham, one of minced chicken, three chopped mushrooms and a cupful of boiled rice. Make this paste wet by adding to it a chopped tomato and enough melted butter to make it of the right consistency for stuffing. Smooth the stem-ends, cut the blossom-ends from green peppers and take out the seeds and inside fibers. Lay the green shells for three minutes in salted boiling water, then plunge into iced water. Let them lie in this for fifteen minutes. Drain and wipe dry. Fill with the forcemeat, replace the tips, and stand the peppers, side by side, in a dripping-pan containing a quarter of an inch of soup stock. Cook for twenty minutes, basting twice with a little salad oil. When done, stand the peppers on a platter and pour a little salad oil about them.

Peppers stuffed with fish

Trim the stem-ends of your green peppers so that they will stand up. Cut off the tips and, with a small keen knife, extract the seeds and as much of the tough fiber as will come away. Mince white fish fine, moisten it with a white sauce, season and fill the peppers with this mixture. Stand in the oven long enough to heat through, and serve.

Scalloped peppers au gratin

Cut large green peppers in half, lengthwise, extract core and seeds and fill them with minced cold cooked fish, well seasoned, mixed with one-third its weight of fine bread crumbs. The mixture (forcemeat) must be wet with gravy or tomato sauce. Round the contents of the halved pepper in the shape of the missing other half, sprinkle with fine crumbs, and bake to a light brown.

You may use for these scallops of cold chicken, lean lamb or veal. See that you do not get the forcemeat too stiff.

Scalloped peppers on the half-shell

Halve the peppers lengthwise, remove seeds and membrane, and parboil for five minutes. When cold, fill the halves with minced roast beef and fine bread-crumbs moistened with tomato juice. Bake in a covered pan, basting every ten minutes. At the end of a half hour remove to a hot platter and serve with tomato sauce poured over and around the halved peppers.

Peppers and rice

(A Creole dish.)

Cook half a cupful of rice in plenty of boiling water, a little salt, for twenty minutes hard. Drain in a colander and set at the back of the range to dry off. Heap within a deep dish.

Prepare your peppers as already directed. Slice as for frying in the usual way. When you take them from the cold salt and water, fry them in a great spoonful of butter. Lift them from the pan and chop rather coarsely. Add to the hot butter and peppers a teaspoonful of onion juice and two tablespoonfuls of stock. Boil up and pour upon the rice. Set in the oven, covered, for three minutes, and serve.

POKE STALKS

Cut as you would asparagus, when they are but a few inches high. They are then tender and succulent, and are thought by some imaginative vegetarians to resemble the “aristocrat” in flavor.

They are undeniably wholesome—also inexpensive.

Scrape the stalks and lay in cold water for an hour. Tie loosely together with a piece of soft twine, put over the fire with enough salted water to cover them, and boil until tender. Drain, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper and lay upon a platter on slices of buttered toast. Pour white sauce over all.

POTATOES

“The Tyrant Potato” is not assailed ignorantly, nor yet flippantly. After careful study of its properties, its works and its ways, the utmost concession that is now made to peculiar prejudice is in the declaration that, since people _will_ make potatoes nine-tenths of their vegetable diet, it is essential to the national digestion that the ninety-three parts of water and of starch contained in the tuber be cooked in such manner as shall render the esculent as palatable and as little hurtful as is practicable when the constituents are not to be ignored.

The above protest stands at the head of that section of the “NATIONAL COOK BOOK” which is headed “POTATOES.” I wrote it ten years ago, and am “of the same opinion still.”

Talk against it as we may, the potato holds its sway in defiance of chemistry and dietetics, and our Johns, one and all, insist upon its daily appearance. As one weary housewife said to me:

“If I give my fingers to be burned in the preparation of a half dozen vegetables and have not potatoes in the number, my culinary and housekeeping skill are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals—to my husband, at least. And I am so tired of the same old ways of cooking the same old potatoes!”

Her remark made me wonder why housekeepers adhere to the “same old ways.” Why not try new ones?

One hint may be acted upon with advantage to cook and to eaters.

One of the bugbears to the housewife is paring potatoes. It is not a pleasant task, and the necessity of performing it recurs with disagreeable frequency.

The housekeeper is wise if, while the potatoes are in the process of peeling, she pares and cooks more than enough for the repast for which they are intended, and by utilizing the cold left-overs does away with the necessity of peeling more of the tyrannical starch-and-water for the next meal.

A majority of the recipes herewith given are based upon the supposition that she has done this.

New potatoes with cream sauce

(Contributed)

Boil the potatoes in salted water until done. Drain and cover with a white sauce made as follows: Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan and when it begins to bubble add two tablespoonfuls of flour; let them cook for one minute, then add one pint of hot milk, season with salt and pepper and a half teaspoonful of chopped parsley.

Potatoes, boiled au natural

Wash, drop into boiling water slightly salted, and cook fast until a fork will pass easily into the largest. Turn off the water, throw in a handful of salt, and set the pot, uncovered, at the back or side of the range, to dry the potatoes “off.” Serve in their skins.

Boiled potatoes

Pare with a sharp knife, and as thin as possible. Much of the mealiness of the potato depends upon this. The scullion who slashes away chunks of her beloved edible really deprives it of its chief merit, and all its comeliness. Have a pot of boiling water ready, salt it slightly and boil fast until a fork pierces the largest readily. Throw off the water immediately, sprinkle with salt, and dry out as directed in last recipe.

Baked potatoes (No. 1)

Select fine potatoes of uniform size. Wash, wipe and bake until the largest yields to the pressure of thumb and finger. Serve wrapped in a hot napkin. If the eater will knead his potato skilfully between his fingers before breaking it open, he will find a mealy mass upon opening it. Never cut a baked potato. It makes it “soggy.”

Baked potatoes (No. 2)

Pare and parboil; then set in an open bakepan in the oven and bake about half an hour, basting freely with butter or dripping until you have a delicate brown “glaze” upon each.

These may be eaten as a separate dish, or as a garnish for roast beef.

Stuffed potatoes

Bake eight large potatoes until done. Cut off the tops with a sharp knife and scoop out the insides with a small spoon. Set aside the skins for future use. With the back of a spoon mash the potatoes smooth, rub into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, a gill of cream, two teaspoonfuls of finely minced onion, a teaspoonful of minced parsley and salt and cayenne pepper to taste. When you have worked these ingredients to a smooth mass, beat in the stiffened whites of two eggs. Fill the empty potato skins with this creamy mixture, heaping it high. Stand the potato cases on end, side by side, in a baking-pan and set in the oven until the potato protruding from the tops is a delicate brown.

Potatoes on the half-shell

Bake large smooth potatoes, and cut each carefully in half lengthwise. Scrape out the insides, leaving the skins whole. Beat what you have taken out to a cream with melted butter, cream or milk, season with pepper and salt, and fill the “shells,” rounding the potato on top. Put a dot of butter upon each and brown lightly upon the upper grating of your oven.

Potato soufflé

Into two cupfuls of mashed potato work three cupfuls of hot milk in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been half melted. Beat out all the lumps until you have a smooth purée. Season with salt and pepper. Beat four eggs very light and whip them into the potato and milk. When thoroughly mixed pour into a deep greased pudding-dish and bake in a good oven until “set” and delicately browned.

Potato croquettes

Warm in a double boiler two cupfuls of mashed potatoes and stir into this two teaspoonfuls of butter and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Add enough milk to make the paste of the right consistency to handle easily. With lightly floured hands form into croquettes and set aside to cool. When cold, dip in beaten egg and roll in cracker-dust. Set in the ice-box for several hours longer and fry in deep cottolene or other fat.

Potato fritters

Peel and boil four large potatoes, and when they are cold cut into tiny bits. Make a batter of two eggs—beaten light—a cupful of milk and a cupful and one-half of flour sifted twice with a half teaspoonful of baking-powder. Now add the minced potatoes, mix well and season with salt. Drop this mixture by the spoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. When the fritters are done lift them out with a perforated spoon, and lay them in a hot colander to drain free of fat.

Scalloped potatoes

Put a layer of sliced cold-boiled potatoes in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, sprinkle with crumbs and bits of butter. Put in another layer of potatoes and more crumbs until the dish is full, having the topmost layer of the buttered crumbs. Moisten all by pouring carefully into the dish a cupful of well-seasoned white stock. Bake for twenty minutes.

Stewed potatoes (No. 1)

Peel, cut into neat, _small_ dice and lay in cold water for an hour. Put over the fire in boiling water, slightly salted, and cook tender. Turn off the water and pour in a large cupful of hot milk, in which you have stirred a pinch of soda. Boil one minute and stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour. Pepper and salt, add a tablespoonful of onion juice and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Simmer for another minute, and serve.

Stewed potatoes (No. 2)

Peel potatoes and cut them into neat squares. Lay in cold water for an hour, drain, and put them over the fire in salted boiling water. Stew until they are tender, but not soft. Turn into a colander to drain. Cook together in a saucepan a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and pour upon them a pint of weak beef stock. When you have a smooth, thick sauce, season with pepper, salt and a little onion juice, and mix with the potato dice.

Hashed and browned potatoes

Pare, cut _very_ small and evenly, and put into a saucepan with a finely minced onion and a stalk of celery chopped into tiny bits. Cover with salted boiling water and cook tender. Drain off the water, supplying its place with milk, heated with a pinch of soda. Bring to a bubble and stir in a large tablespoonful of butter, rubbed to a cream with one of flour. Pepper, salt, mix well—but taking care not to break the potatoes—take from the fire, stir and toss for a moment, then turn all into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle crumbs on the top and brown in a good oven.

Potatoes á la duchesse

Peel and boil enough potatoes to make a pint when mashed. Mix with them the yolk of an egg, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and the same quantity of cream. Turn this mixture upon a pastry-board and press it flat and smooth. With a sharp knife cut the potato paste into squares of uniform size. Slip a cake-turner under each square and transfer it carefully to a greased baking-pan. Set in a cold place to stiffen, then sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese, and bake in a quick oven to a delicate brown.

Potatoes á la Lyonnaise

Cut cold boiled potatoes into tiny dice of uniform size. Put two great spoonfuls of butter into the frying-pan and fry two sliced onions in this for three minutes. With a skimmer remove the onions and turn the potatoes into the hissing butter. Toss and stir with a fork that the dice may not become brown. When hot, add a teaspoonful of finely chopped parsley and cook a minute longer. Remove the potatoes from the pan with a perforated spoon, that the fat may drip from them. Serve very hot.

Savory potatoes

Heat in a double boiler a quart of milk and put into it three sliced onions. Boil for ten minutes, strain out the onions, return the milk to the fire, and stir into it two teaspoonfuls of butter rubbed into two of flour, and two teaspoonfuls of minced parsley. When the milk is as thick as cream, add to it two cupfuls of sliced cold boiled potatoes. Season with pepper and salt, and as soon as the potatoes are hot, pour all into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle bread-crumbs over the top and bake until brown.

Potatoes and corn

(A “left-over.”)

Cut the kernels from six ears of boiled corn. Cut eight cold boiled potatoes into small dice of uniform size. Put into a frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter and turn the potatoes and corn into this; salt and pepper. Fry, tossing and stirring constantly, for ten minutes.

Fried potato hash

Chop cold boiled potatoes, season with salt, pepper and onion juice. Have two tablespoonfuls of good dripping, hissing hot, in a frying-pan; put in the potatoes and pat smooth. Cook slowly, turning the frying-pan occasionally that they may brown evenly on the bottom. In about twenty minutes they should be nicely colored and crusted into a thick sheet. Reverse carefully upon a hot platter.

Brown creamed potatoes

Cut eight potatoes into small dice of uniform size, boil tender in salted water, drain and stir into a pint of milk which has been thickened with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter; season. Turn all into a deep dish and bake until brown.

Potatoes with cheese sauce

Boil a dozen potatoes and, while hot, mash soft with hot milk and melted butter, adding salt and white pepper to taste. Whip light and heap in the center of a fire-proof platter. Smooth the sides of the mound with a knife and carefully remove about a cupful of potato from the center of the mound, leaving a cavity in its place. Dip a feather or brush in the beaten white of an egg and wash the inside of the hollow and the top and sides of the mound with this. Now set in the oven to get very hot and to brown lightly. When done draw to the door of the oven and fill the hollow with the sauce—made according to the following recipe—sprinkle the potatoes and cheese with crumbs and return to the oven for five minutes before sending to the table.

Sauce for the above

Heat a cupful of milk with a generous pinch of soda; season with pepper, salt and onion juice, and thicken with a heaping tablespoonful of butter cooked to a roux with one of flour; cook one minute and add three large spoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese.

Mashed potatoes

Boil and mash white potatoes and whip to a cream with a cupful of hot milk and a tablespoonful of melted butter. Whip for fully five minutes with two forks, then pile upon a hot platter.

Potato hillock

Boil potatoes, dry at the back of the range, salting well, and rub through a vegetable press or colander upon a fire-proof platter. As they fall let them form a conical hillock in the middle of the platter. Grate cheese thickly over the hillock and brown lightly upon the upper grating of your oven.

Potatoes Parisienne

Parisienne potatoes are cut into small balls from raw potatoes with a French vegetable cutter or a round spoon. They may be either fried, or boiled and served with maître d’hôtel sauce.

French fried potatoes

Peel potatoes, cut into strips, and lay in iced water for at least an hour. Drain and pat dry between the folds of a clean dish-towel that should absorb every drop of moisture. Have ready a kettle of deep cottolene or other fat, heated gradually until it is boiling hot. Test this by dropping in a bit of the potato. It should rise to the top and brown immediately. Put in the potatoes, fry to a golden brown, drain, first in a hot colander, then shake in heated tissue paper before transferring to a hot dish lined with a napkin.

Saratoga chips

Peel the potatoes and proceed as directed in preceding recipe when you have cut them into slices as thin as shavings.

Potatoes au gratin

Slice potatoes thin and put in layers in a greased pudding-dish, sprinkling each layer with salt, pepper and bits of butter. When all are in, pour in a gill of hot water or hot milk, and sprinkle the top layer of potatoes thickly with cracker-crumbs mixed with salt and pepper and bits of butter. Bake, covered, for half an hour. Uncover and brown.

Potato omelet

Make an omelet in the usual way; have ready by the time it is done, and lay upon it, this mixture, then fold down:

Cook one small minced onion in one tablespoonful of dripping until yellow, add one cupful of cold boiled potatoes, chopped fine, and cook until slightly colored, stirring frequently. Shake into it a little pepper and salt and one teaspoonful of finely minced parsley.

Set into the oven to keep warm until the omelet is ready.

Potato dumplings (No. 1)

Grate ten or twelve large raw potatoes. Put the grated pulp into a muslin bag and press out the juice. Turn into a bowl and add one-third as much boiled potato that has been run through a vegetable press. Salt to taste and beat in a raw egg until you have a smooth, creamy paste. Make into dumplings with well-floured hands, and roll each in flour to prevent them from sticking together while they are boiling.

Have a pot of water at a hard boil, drop in the dumplings and cook from ten to twelve minutes. Test by taking one out and cutting in two to see if it is done in the center. Take up with a skimmer and serve at once, as they soon get heavy.

Serve them with any kind of roast meat, or alone with gravy.

Potato dumplings (No. 2)

Peel medium-sized potatoes that have been partly boiled (not quite soft). When cold, grate; to three parts of the potatoes take one part of grated wheat bread, and add small squares of wheat bread browned in butter, then crushed into crumbs.

To each pint of the above add two eggs, well-beaten, two ounces of melted butter and nutmeg to suit taste. Mix all thoroughly and form into round dumplings the size of an egg, or larger, as preferred. Roll in flour and boil in salted water until dry inside, or about fifteen minutes.

Serve with roast meats.

Always use mealy potatoes.

Potato balls (“Kartoffelklösse”)

(A German recipe.)

Peel, boil and mash potatoes; put aside to cool.

Three cupfuls of potatoes, one cupful of bread, two eggs, well-beaten, separately; pepper, salt and nutmeg to taste, and some chopped parsley that has been heated in butter. The bread should be prepared as for croutons, crusts removed, cut in squares, browned in butter in the oven, then crushed. The mixture should be very stiff. Mold into small balls and drop into boiling, well-salted water; keep water boiling for fifteen minutes, when the klösse should be about twice the original size and done to the center. They may be served with bread-crumbs browned in butter, placed on the top of each dumpling, or with tomato sauce. With chopped meat filling the center of the dumplings they can also be varied. If too moist, use flour or bread-crumbs in molding. A good cook has the knack of dropping from the spoon without molding, but this is hard to do. The klösse should be the size of small apples when finished. Americans very often use a trifle of baking-powder to insure lightness in these. Germans depend on good beating.

SWEET POTATOES

Boiled sweet potatoes

Wash and cook in boiling water until soft. Set in a moderate oven for ten minutes to keep them from being watery.

Baked sweet potatoes

They are seldom cooked in any other way at the South, where they are native to the soil, and at their best estate.

Wash and wipe and bake in a good oven until tender.

Glazed sweet potatoes

Parboil in their skins, peel and lay in a bake-pan. Cook, basting often with butter, until they are a golden brown.

Scallop of sweet potatoes and bacon

This is a good “left-over” when you have a little cold corned ham and some cold boiled or baked sweet potatoes. Mince the meat—the fatter the better—and put a layer in the bottom of a bake-dish. Cover with sweet potato dice, pepper, and put in more bacon. When all the materials are used up, cover with crumbs; add enough milk to wet the crumbs, cover and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.

Sweet potatoes au gratin

Parboil the potatoes, peel and slice while hot. Butter a deep dish well; put in a layer of potatoes, sprinkle with sugar, salt, pepper, and dot with butter; then a stratum of fine crumbs; season in the same way, leaving out the sugar. The uppermost layer should be of crumbs and well buttered. Pour in four tablespoonfuls of warm water to generate steam, cover closely and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.

This is an especially nice dish for a family dinner, and always liked by children.

Buttered sweet potatoes

Boil sweet potatoes and peel them. Lay in a deep dish and upon each potato put a teaspoonful of butter. Set in the oven and heat until the butter sizzles about the edge of the dish. Then send to the table.

Sweet potato croquettes