Part 5
Turkish Mutton, locally termed _Etena Jarvat_: this is one of those dishes which may fairly be included in Brillat-Savarin’s _magistères restoratifs_. It is easy enough to chafe.
Cut half a pound of uncooked mutton (from the leg from choice, but not absolutely necessary) into medium dice. Put the meat into the Chafing Dish with salt, pepper and dripping, fat, oil, or butter, according to taste, but oil is preferable. When the meat turns brown, add half a pound of previously cooked and sliced French beans, also half a pint of water or bouillon (latter for choice) and a bunch of simples, either thyme or marjoram, or both. Simmer steadily for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. Carrots can be used instead of beans. Just before serving turn up the flame full, and let it come just to the boil.
Mutton Venison.
Mutton Venison is a compromise, and may be recommended as such. We live in an age of compromise, so why not bring it into our cookery? Make an extra strong decoction of bouillon from any good meat-juice, three tablespoons in quantity, mince into it an onion, and put in the pan with a tablespoonful of Worcester sauce, three drops of Tabasco, a glass of claret, a dessert-spoon of red-currant jelly (or guava or blackberry jelly), pepper and salt. When very hot put in about a pound of slices of cold cooked leg of mutton, lean, cut into strips. Let it simmer for twenty minutes. It is not a bit like venison, but distinctly good nevertheless.
Plump and Wallop.
“Wha’ll hire me? Wha’ll hire me? Wha’ll hire me? Three plumps and a wallop for ae bawbee.”
This advertisement, it is alleged, was addressed to the good people of Kirkmahoe, who were so poor that they could not afford to put any meat into their broth. A cobbler invested all his money in buying four sheep shanks, and when a neighbour wanted to make mutton broth, for the payment of one halfpenny the cobbler would “plump” one of the sheep shanks into the boiling water and give it a “wallop,” or whisk round. He then wrapped it in a cabbage leaf and took it home. This was called a “gustin bone,” and was supposed to give a rich “gust” to the broth.
Potatoes and Point.
A Boer recipe of much the same description was known in early Transvaal days (long before the War) as “Potatoes and Point.” The poor “Bijwoner” family was served all round with potatoes, and a red herring was hung up in the middle of the room. The elders were allowed to rub their potatoes on the herring, but the youngsters might only point theirs towards the delicacy at the end of a fork. The mere proximity of the highly-flavoured herring was supposed to give the potato a flavour.
Lots of quite worthy folk gorge themselves periodically and keep their children on the border-line of starvation. A certain exaggeratedly selfish family man of my acquaintance, who for economic reasons lived somewhere in the wilds of West Kensington, made it his unholy practice to dine once a month with a couple of boon companions of the same sex at the Carlton or Prince’s, and at the conclusion of a remarkable dinner was wont to blurt out: “By George, I wish I could afford to bring the wife and children here!”
Scouse.
Permit me now to suggest a trial of that very old and famous dish, Scouse. It is prepared in the following fashion: Get one pound of lean, dairy-fed pork, cooked and cold. Cut it into half-inch squares; sprinkle them with flour, salt, Paprika, and dip them lightly in French mustard. Put in the Chafing Dish three chopped onions, half a teaspoon of sugar, one wine-glass of vinegar, three cloves, a blade of mace and a bayleaf. Cover up and let it simmer, not boil, while the quantity of liquid is reduced by one half. Add the pork with half a pint of bouillon, and simmer for another ten minutes.
Young pork, like young veal, is always excellent, but it can be too young. A sucking pig with lacklustre eye and a lemon in its jaws is pathetic and none too appetising. Veal, in England at any rate, is often tasteless and somewhat dull. Not so very long ago, in Ireland, they used to kill newborn calves, bake them in an oven with potatoes, and call the dish “Staggering Bob.”
Kabobs.
Kabobs have probably come to us from India, via the Cape. This is an old Capetown-Malay recipe which is thoroughly reliable. Half a pound of cold veal; the same of lean ham, both cut into slices a quarter of an inch thick; three apples, and three onions. Cut the meat and the vegetables into rounds with a knife or cutter, about the size of a crown piece. Skewer them up on wooden (or, if you are a de Beers shareholder, on silver) skewers, in the following order: (1) a round of veal; (2) a round of apple; (3) a round of ham; (4) around of onion. Sprinkle them with pepper, salt and curry-powder. Put them in the Chafing Dish with a teacupful of bouillon and a walnut of butter; simmer steadily for twenty minutes, then thicken the gravy with a little flour, and serve either with boiled rice, or toast, or both.
Brigands’ Fowls.
Cold fowls lend themselves in a hundred ways to the kind attentions of Chaffinda. Mention of quite a few of these must urge the gastronomer to further experiments and discoveries. _Pollio à la Contrabandista_: this is the way brigands cook, or ought to cook, fowls. Cut a cold cooked fowl into neat joints. Put them into the Chafing Dish with four tablespoons of olive oil, and heat up until the meat is of a light brown colour, turning the pieces frequently. Then keep the flame lower and simmering all the time; add four tomatoes cut into quarters, two chopped green chillies, one shredded Spanish onion, one tablespoon of Worcester sauce, the same of mushroom ketchup, and four cloves. Let it simmer, closely covered, for at least fifteen minutes. It will then prove a most savoury mess.
Howtowdie.
From Spain to Bonnie Scotland! This is how to cook Howtowdie. Cut up a young fowl into handy joints. Put them into the Chafing Dish with two walnuts of butter, a cupful of bouillon, three sprigs of parsley, three small onions, salt and pepper. Simmer continuously until the bird is tender. When half cooked add another cupful of bouillon to make up for evaporation. When quite cooked put the fowl on to a hot dish, surround it with poached eggs, then thicken the gravy in the pan with a tablespoon of flour and a tablespoon of Worcester sauce; give it a smart boil up and pour it over the fowl. This Howtowdie is adapted from an excellent recipe in “The Scottish Cookery Book containing guid plain rules for makin’ guid plain meats suitable for sma’ purses, big families, and Scotch stomachs.”
Roman Fowl.
The preparation of Roman Fowl is simplicity itself. Pour four tablespoons of olive oil into the Chafing Dish with a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of Paprika, three cloves, and herbs to taste, but do not overdo the herbs. When the oil is sizzling put in all the limbs of a lightly boiled chicken, cut up. Cook it slowly, turning the meat so that all the flesh is equally cooked all over. When done it should be a delicate brown. Add half a cupful of tomato sauce and the same of bouillon, also three shredded onions. Simmer for eight minutes, then serve.
Creamed Chicken.
This is an American recipe, copied verbatim from an American Chafing-Dish cookery book. Two cups cold chicken cut into small pieces, one cup chicken stock, one cup milk or cream, two tablespoonfuls of butter, one heaping tablespoonful of flour, salt and pepper. Cook the butter and the flour together in the Chafing Dish; add the stock and milk and stir until smooth; put in the chicken, salt and pepper, and cook three minutes longer.
Other times, other manners. Contrast with the severe simplicity of the above the sort of thing that gratified the palates of our forebears. In the fourteenth century, Sacchetti says, a baked goose stuffed with garlic and quinces was esteemed an excellent dish in Italy, and when the Gonfalonier of Florence entertained a famous doctor he gave him the stomach of a calf, boiled partridges, and pickled sardines.
Old Samuel Pepys, too, had a nice taste in food as in music, and other things. His idea of “a fine dinner” was to this effect: “A dish of marrowbones, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, a dish of fowl; three pullets and a dozen of larks, all in a dish; a great tart, a neat’s tongue, a dish of anchovies, a dish of prawns, and cheese.”
For those who are curious in such things it is easy to find quaint recipes in old books. For instance, if you want to know how to bake a hedgehog in clay--and very good it is too--you have only to read Albert Smith’s “Christopher Tadpole” and you will know all about it. It is truly said that comparatively few people read Disraeli’s novels nowadays, but those who are culinarily inclined would do well to turn to the opening chapter of “Tancred,” where there is a delightful conversation between a grand old _maître de bouche_, “Papa Prevost,” and his pupil, the eminent chef, Leander. The pompous spirit of the culinary artist is delightfully caught and the gastronomic jargon wonderfully reproduced.
But gastronomy has never lacked its historians. Great painters have come to its aid, as witness the glowing canvases of Snyders, Teniers, Jordaens, Ruysdael, Jan Weenix, Melchior de Hondecoeter and Jan Fyt. Their pictures of still life, the poulterers’ shops, the heaped baskets of good cheer, the brilliant lobster, the callow lemon, the russet hare, and the lustrous plumage of the pheasant, have inspired the hand of the Masters, who must have appreciated all such culinary delicacies in order to have painted them with such loving-kindness.
Yesterday’s Pheasant.
“If partridge had the woodcock’s thighs, ’Twould be the noblest bird that flies; If woodcock had the partridge breast, ’Twould be the best bird ever drest.”
Yesterday’s Pheasant can be made into a most tempting dish by cutting up the remains into convenient chunks, omitting the bones. Put one tablespoon of butter in the Dish, add a tablespoon of flour, and keep on stirring till the mixture is smooth and light brown. Add a glass of claret, a tablespoon of Worcester sauce, pepper and salt, and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Now put in the chunks of pheasant, and simmer for eight minutes. An excellent accompaniment to this is chestnut and celery salad.
Any game bird may be treated in like manner, save always the woodcock, that little epitome of all that is toothsome and delicate. A curious thing about the woodcock is its extraordinarily rapid digestion. A single bird has been known to consume in a night more earthworms than half filled a moderate-sized flowerpot.
Few people know the different expressions for flocks of birds. Here are some of them: a building of rooks, a bevy of quails, a watch of nightingales, a cast of hawks, a nide of pheasants, a muster of peacocks, a plump of wildfowl, a flock of geese, a pack of grouse, a chattering of choughs, a stand of plovers, and a wisp of snipe.
A woman I know had a very good cook, who was also a plain cook--or rather, a plain-spoken cook. She had been in the place many years, and much was forgiven her. The mistress, visiting the kitchen, inspected a turkey, and remarked that it was a very thin bird. “Just you wait, M’m, till I’ve stuffed it with chestnuts,” said the cook, “you won’t know it then. It’ll be quite another thing. Just like you, M’m, when you has your di’monds on.”
I do not advise the fabrication of elaborate entrées in the Chafing Dish. They can be and have been done, but I mistrust them and find ample scope for ingenuity, inventiveness, and novelty in the cates I have already described, without venturing into the fields of fancy. Vol-au-Vent, for instance, or Brains à la Poulette, or Spanish Cream Pudding are all within the range of feasibility, but I leave the recipes to those less timorous than myself. In fact, in this case, I am at one with the waiter in the “Bab Ballads” who hurled the most awful threat in culinary literature at his flighty sweetheart:
“Flirtez toujours, ma belle, si tu oses, Je me vengerai ainsi, ma chère: Je lui dirai d’quoi on compose Vol-au-Vent à la Financière!”
The good things of this life are mostly plain and wholesome (with a few delightful exceptions), and we can all qualify to live in Bengodi, Boccaccio’s country of content, where they tie up the vines with sausages, where you may buy a fat goose for a penny, and have the giblets thrown in into the bargain. In this place there is a mountain of Parmesan cheese, and the people’s employment is making cheese-cakes and macaroons. There is also a river which runs Malmsey wine of the very best quality.
There are no cheap excursions to Bengodi. We have to tramp there on foot--and earn our bread on the road as we travel thither.
“Will a man give a penny to fill his belly with hay? Or can you persuade the turtle-dove to live upon carrion like the crow?”
JOHN BUNYAN (“Pilgrim’s Progress”).
The first vegetarian was probably Nebuchadnezzar, and he has many followers. With the utmost love and respect for all vegetables, without exception, I refuse to accept them as the staff of life, or indeed as anything more than a delicious aid thereto. It is possible that the internal economy of certain very worthy folk may be more easily conducted on a vegetarian basis, and indeed every man is at liberty to feed as suits him best; but as a matter of preference, predilection and experience, I decline to follow his example. If they are content to let me go my way unmolested, I have no desire to interfere with their tastes. But no proselytising, please!
Here in England, although we shine in our roasts, our beef, our chops, and maybe a few other trifles, we are woefully and culpably ignorant of vegetable cookery. The average British cook has but one idea with vegetables. She cooks them in water, with lumps of coarse soda, which she thinks makes them soft and keeps their colour. As a matter of fact, this process, especially the soda, practically destroys their health-giving properties. Vegetables want the kindliest care, the most delicate handling, the most knowledgeable treatment. Otherwise they become mere parodies of their better selves. What could be more terrible, more depressing, than the usual slab of wet cabbage doled out at the average London restaurant? It is an insult to the cabbage, to the guest, and to the Art of Cookery. And it is so easy to cook it decently--even in a Chafing Dish.
Again, the average British household knows and uses only a very limited range of vegetables, ignoring, wilfully or otherwise, scores of edible delights, easily grown and easily cooked, but with the inbred laziness of crass conservatism, totally overlooked, because, forsooth, “the greengrocer does not keep it!” The greengrocer, on the other hand, scorns the inquirer after such strange green meats, because “they are never asked for”; and so, between the two, we are relegated to the same dull round of vegetable monotony.
Household cookery knows nothing of the Aubergine, or Egg-plant, of which there are fourteen edible varieties, most of which can easily be grown in this country, although the rich purple kinds are best suited to our climate. Then there is Salsify, which is amenable to a dozen different treatments; as the vegetable oyster it is duly honoured in America, but we know it not. The Good King Harry is only known in Lincolnshire. The leaves served as cabbage are excellent, and the tender young shoots are as delicate as asparagus. The Cardoon, Scornzonera, Celeriac, Chicory, Buck’s Horn, Chervil, Jew’s Mallow, Lovage, Purslane, Rampion, Scurvy-Grass and Valerian, are only a selection from a list thrice as long.
It is useless, however, to lift up one thin quavering voice of protest in a wilderness of deaf greengrocers. I must e’en deal with the common vegetables of commerce, others being unprocurable, and their cultivation a counsel of perfection.
One naturally begins with potatoes, though the reason of their position in the hierarchy of the garden is occult. Sir Walter Raleigh, good man and true, has much to answer for. Tobacco _and_ potatoes! I believe it to be a fact that throughout the length and breadth of Ireland there is no memorial to Raleigh. This seems a distinct omission. But then, neither is there a statue to Lord Verulam!
Between the primitive tuber, baked in the ashes, and _Pommes à la Réjane_, there lies the whole gamut of culinary ingenuity. They are the extremes of sophistication and the opposite. But it must suffice here to give a few only of the simplest recipes, well within Chaffinda’s modest capability, and in their very ingenuousness fit alike for the delectation of Prince or Pauper.
Mary’s Potatoes.
The first method is called Mary’s Potatoes for want of a better name. Slice up half a dozen cold cooked potatoes. Put them in the Chafing Dish with a walnut of butter and a cupful of milk; let them simmer for five minutes, then add the juice of half a lemon, a teaspoon of chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes more.
Potato Uglies.
Cut up half a dozen cold cooked potatoes into quarter-inch slices. Put four slices of fat bacon into the Chafing Dish, and hot up until the fat begins to smoke; then drop in the potatoes, add pepper and salt, and cook for five minutes. Drain before serving.
Sala’s Potatoes.
Cut four potatoes in slices as large as a halfpenny, but twice as thick. Put two tablespoonsful of butter in the Chafing Dish, and a dozen delicate little onions cut into dice. Hot up the onions and butter till the former turn a golden brown, then add the potatoes and a teaspoon of chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. Keep stirring, and when the onions are deep yellow, which should be in about eight minutes, the dish is ready.
Fried Potatoes.
Boil half a dozen potatoes in their skins. Peel them when hot, cut them in quarters, roll them in bread-crumbs, and then fry them for seven minutes in two tablespoons of sizzling butter. Sprinkle chopped parsley on them before serving.
The tomato or love-apple is a perennial joy to the eye, whether cooked or uncooked, ripe or unripe. Its form and colour are alike exquisite, and its flavour altogether a thing apart. Our grandfathers knew little or nothing about it, apart from sauce, and it has been left to our generation fully to appreciate its possibilities. It is the more strange because it has been a staple article of food in mid and southern Europe since time immemorial. It has even been suggested that Eve’s apple, Paris’ apple, Nausicaa’s apple, and the apples of Hesperides were all really tomatoes! As _pommes d’amour_, _pomi di mori_, _Liebesäpfel_, _Paradiesäpfel_, or tomatoes, they are nowadays honoured and appreciated by all right lovers of the good things of the earth. They are both fruit and vegetable, and it is very difficult to spoil them in cooking. They are best of all when grilled as an accompaniment to chops (Mr. Pickwick, it will be remembered, enjoyed them in the form of sauce), but the following is a very simple and honest way of preparing them.
Fried Tomatoes.
Cut three tomatoes in halves. Pepper and salt them and coat the cut surfaces with bread-crumbs. Put two tablespoons of butter in the Chafing Dish, and when sizzling add the tomatoes and cook them thoroughly for eight minutes.
The Jerusalem artichoke should not be devoted solely to soup. It is an excellent adjunct to meats, and fully repays a little careful attention.
Fried Artichoke Chips.
Wash and peel the outer skin of a pound of artichokes, then with a very sharp knife peel them into ribbons (as one would peel an apple); then put them lightly in a cloth to dry. Hot up two tablespoons of olive oil in the Chafer to smoking-point. Put in the artichokes, letting them fry until they rustle when stirred with a fork. Pour off the oil and strain them. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Braised Artichokes.
Wash and peel a pound of artichokes and put them aside in a basin of cold water. Melt a walnut of butter in the Chafing Dish; add the artichokes after drying them well. Let them brown well in the butter; add pepper and salt and stir them frequently, letting them simmer for twelve minutes.
Spinach Purée.
Have your spinach thoroughly well washed in several waters till it is perfectly clean. Boil a pint of water in the Chafing Dish, salt it and put in the spinach. Boil it for ten minutes. Take out the spinach and strain it. Pour cold water over it to take away the bitter taste; strain again. Put a walnut of butter in the dish, add the spinach and half a cupful of milk. Mix up well with a wooden spoon. Heat for five minutes.
There are about twenty-five different kinds of edible mushrooms. The popular test of peeling is unreliable, because some poisonous mushrooms peel easily, and some harmless kinds do not. An authority on mushrooms (Mr. E. Kay Robinson) says: “If a mushroom of any kind which has been gathered from an open space is brittle and compact in texture, and not brightly coloured, nor peculiar in taste or unpleasant in smell, and neither exudes a milky juice when bruised, nor changes colour when exposed to the air, you may eat it without fear.”
Consequently, when you go mushroom-gathering you must bear in mind nearly as many things as when you address your ball on the tee. I always buy my mushrooms, and go to a good shop; then, I think, you are fairly safe.
The onion is a sure poison detector. Put an onion in a dish of mushrooms. If it does not change colour the mushrooms are all right. If it blushes black with shame at its contiguity, they are all wrong. A silver spoon acts in the same way and gets black in contact with toadstools or the like. Verily, evil communications corrupt good manners--even in onions.
Stewed Mushrooms.
Flood the Chafing Dish with really good olive oil. Put in a teaspoonful of Paprika and a pinch of salt. Drop in the mushrooms, after having stalked and peeled them, black part uppermost. Cover up, and listen to the appetising sizzling for seven minutes. They should then be done to a turn.
Mushrooms used to be dried, powdered, and used as a flavouring in the eighteenth century. Cook-books of that period speak of the condiment as “Cook’s Snuff.” The great and justly esteemed Grimod de la Reynière said that it ought always to be on the dining-table together with pepper and salt. Here is a hint for the modern purveyors of table delicacies.
In Sir Henry Layard’s Essay on “Renaissance Cookery,” he says: “Amongst vegetables, the thistle (Cardo) was esteemed a delicacy, and was generally served with fruit at the end of the dinner. The thorny thistles with well-grown white stalks are the best.” The Cardo includes the artichoke, but that the name was usually applied to the common thistle is shown by the quaint remark of Romoli in his “Singolare Dottrina,” that “it should not be eaten with milk, which it has the property of curdling, and consequently the process would take place in your stomach, but it should be eaten with pepper, which does not generate wind, and clears the liver; and such is the reason why donkeys, who eat largely of this, have better stomachs than men.”
Dr. Thudichum, an eminent authority on dietetics, does not agree with these conclusions, which are nevertheless illuminating, and do not detract from the merits of the nettle as a food-stuff.
Welsh Leeks.
Boil half a dozen leeks in a pint of water. Drain them well, and cut each leek into two-inch lengths; squeeze a lemon over them, pepper and salt them well. Set them aside. Make half a dozen croûtons of toast and put the leeks on them. Replace them in the Chafing Dish, pouring over each croûton a liberal dose of Sauce Robert. Heat up and serve on a very hot plate. Sauce Robert (Escoffier brand) can be bought ready made at the Stores.
French Beans.