The Belgian Cookbook by - (read book txt) 📕

the fire and pour in some cream to make a good sauce. If you cannot use cream, take milk instead and stir with it the yolk of an egg. To thicken for use, add a pinch of sugar and some chopped parsley.

 

AUBERGINE OR EGG PLANT

This purple fruit is, like the tomato, always cooked as a vegetable. It is like the brinjal of the East. It is hardly necessary to give special recipes for the dressing of aubergines, for you can see their possibilities at a glance. They can be stuffed with white mince in a white sauce, when you would cut the fruit in half, remove some of the interior, fill up with mince and sauce, replace the top, and bake for twenty minutes, or simply cut in halves and stewed in stock, with pepper and salt they are good, or you can simmer them gently in water and when ready to serve, pour over them a white sauce as for vegetable marrow. If they are cheap in England the following entrée would be inexpensive and would look nice.

 

EGG PLANTS AS SOUFFLÉ

Wash the fruit, cut them lengthways, remove the inside. Fill each half with a mixture made of beaten egg, grated cheese, and some fine breadcrumbs, and a dash of mustard. Put the halves to bake for a quarter of an hour, or till the soufflé mixture has risen. When cooked place them in an oval dish with a border of rice turned out from a border mold.

 

POTATO CROQUETTES

Cook your potatoes, rub them through the sieve, add pepper and salt, two or three eggs, lightly beaten, mixing both yolks and whites, and according to the quantity you are making a little butter and milk. Work all well and let it get cold. Roll into croquettes, roll each in beaten egg, then in finely grated breadcrumbs, and let them cook in boiling fat or lard.

[_Madame Emelie Jones._]

 

PURÉE OF CHESTNUTS

Make a little slit in each chestnut, boil them till tender, then put them in another pan with cold water in it and replace them on the fire. Peel them one by one as you take them out, and rub them through a sieve, pounding them first to make it easier, add salt, a good lump of butter and a little milk to make a nice purée. This is very good to surround grilled chicken or turkey legs, or for a salmi of duck or hare.

 

HORS D’OEUVRES

The attractive “savory” of English dinner tables finds its counterpart apparently in egg and fish dishes served cold at the beginning of a meal, and therefore what we should call hors d’oeuvres.

 

POTATO DICE

Boil your potatoes and let them be of the firm, soapy kind, not the floury kind. When cooked, and cold, cut them into dice, and toss them in the following sauce:

Take equal quantities of salad oil and cream, a quarter of that amount of tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a few chopped capers. Mix very well, and pour it on the dice. You may vary this by using cream only, in which case omit the vinegar. Season with pepper, salt, celery seed, and instead of the capers take some pickled nasturtium seed, and let that, finely minced, remain in the sauce for an hour before using it.

 

ANCHOVIES

Fillets of these, put in a lattice work across mashed potato look very nice. Be sure you use good anchovies preserved in salt, and well washed and soaked to take away the greater part of the saltness; or, if you can make some toast butter it when cold, cut it into thin strips, and lay a fillet in the center. Fill up the sides of the toast with chopped hard-boiled yolk of egg.

 

ANCHOVY SANDWICHES

Cut some bread and butter, very thin, and in fingers. Chop some watercress, lay it on a finger, sprinkle a little Tarragon vinegar and water (equal quantities) over it, and then lay on a fillet of anchovy, cover with more cress and a finger of bread and butter. Put them in a pile under a plate to flatten and before serving trim the edges.

 

ANCHOVY ROUNDS

Make some toast, cut it in rounds, butter it when cold. Curl an anchovy round a stewed olive, and put it on the toast. Make a little border of yolk of egg boiled and chopped.

 

ANCHOVY BISCUITS

Made as you would make cheese biscuits, but using anchovy sauce instead to flavor them. If you make the pastry thin you can put some lettuce between two biscuits and press together with a little butter spread inside.

 

ANCHOVY PATTIES

Make some paste and roll it out thinly. Take a coffee cup and turning it upside down stamp out some rounds. Turn the cup the right way again, and put it on a round. Then you will see an edge of paste protruding all round. Turn this up with the end of a fork, which makes a pretty little edge. Do this with all, and fill the shallow cases then made with a good mayonnaise sauce in which you have put chopped celery and potato, and a small quantity of chopped gherkins. Lay three fillets of anchovy across each other to form a six-pointed star and season highly with cayenne pepper.

All the above recipes can be followed using sardines instead of anchovies, and indeed one can use them in many other ways, with eggs, with lettuce, with tomatoes. As anchovies are rather expensive to buy, I give a recipe for mock anchovies, which is easy to do, but it must be done six months before using the fish.

 

MOCK ANCHOVIES

When sprats are cheap, buy a good quantity, what in England you would call a peck. Do not either wipe or wash them. Take four ounces of saltpeter, a pound of bay salt, two pounds of common coarse salt, and pound them well, then add a little cochineal to color it, pound and mix very well. Take a stone jar and put in it a layer of the mixture and a layer of the sprats, on each layer of fish adding three or four bay leaves and a few whole peppercorns. Fill up the jar and press it all down very firmly. Cover with a stone cover, and let them stand for six months before you use them.

 

CUCUMBER À LA LAEKEN

Take a cucumber and cut it in pieces two inches long, then peel away the dark green skin for one inch, leaving the other inch as it was. Set up each piece on end, scoop it out till nearly the bottom and fill up with bits of cold salmon or lobster in mayonnaise sauce. Cold turbot or any other delicate fish will do equally well or a small turret of whipped cream, slightly salted, should be piled on top. This dish never fails to please.

 

HERRING AND MAYONNAISE

Take some salt herring, a half for each person, and soak them for a day in water. Skin them, cut them open lengthwise, take out the backbone, and put them to soak in vinegar. Then before serving them let them lie for a few minutes in milk, and putting them on a dish pour over them a good mayonnaise sauce. [_Mlle. Oclhaye._]

 

SWEET DRINKS AND CORDIALS. ORGEAT

Blanch first of all half a pound of sweet almonds and three ounces of bitter, turn them into cold water for a few minutes; then you must pound them very fine in a stone mortar, if you have a marble one so much the better, and do it in a cool place.

You must add a little milk occasionally to prevent the paste from becoming oily, then add three quarts of fresh milk, stirring it in slowly, sweeten to your taste, and then putting all into a saucepan clean as a chalice, bring it to the boil.

Boil for ten minutes, and then stir till cold, strain it through finest muslin, and then add two good glasses of brandy. Bottle and keep in a dark place.

 

HAWTHORN CORDIAL

When the hawthorn is in full bloom, pick a basketful of the blooms. Take them home, and put the white petals into a large glass bottle, taking care that you put in no leaves or stalks. When the bottle is filled to the top do not press it down, but pour in gently as much good French Brandy as it will hold. Cork and let it stand for three months, then you can strain it off. This is good as a cordial, and if you find it too strong, add water, or sweeten it with sugar.

 

DUTCH NOYEAU

Peel finely the rinds of five large lemons, or of six small ones, then throw on it a pound of loaf sugar that you have freshly pounded, two ounces of bitter almonds, chopped and pounded; mix these with two quarts of the best Schnappes or Hollands, and add six tablespoonfuls of boiling milk.

Fill your jars with this, cover it close, and put it in a passage or hall, where people can shake it every day.

Leave it there for three weeks, and strain it through some blotting paper into another bottle. It will be ready to drink.

 

LAVENDER WATER

Take a large bottle, and put in it twelve ounces of the best spirits of wine, one essence of ambergris, twopennyworth of musk, and three drachms of oil of lavender.

Cork it tightly, put in a dark place, and shake it every day for a month. This is really lavender spirit, as no water is used.

 

HOT BURGUNDY

Take half a pint of good Burgundy wine, put it to boil with two cloves, and a dust of mixed spice, sweeten to taste with some powdered sugar. If you like add a quarter of the quantity of water to the wine before boiling.

 

CRÊME DE POISSON À LA ROI ALBERT

Take a fresh raw whiting, fillet it, and pass the flesh through a wire sieve.

For a small dish take four ounces of the fish, mix them lightly with four tablespoonfuls of very thick cream, adding pepper and salt. Fill an oval ring mold, and steam gently for twenty minutes, under buttered paper.

Have some marine crayfish boiled, shell the tails, cut them in pieces, removing the black line inside. Cut three truffles into thick slices, heat them and the crayfish in some ordinary white sauce, enriched with the yolk of a raw egg, pepper and salt, and one dessertspoonful of tarragon vinegar. This must not be allowed to boil. When the cream is turned out into a hot silver dish, pour the ragout into the center, and put a hot lid on.

This dish, and that on page 86-87, has been composed by a Scotch lady in honor of the King of the Belgians. Not every cook can manage the cream, but the proportions are exact, and so is the time.

[_Mrs. Alex. Stuart._]

 

FISH AND CUSTARD

Boil up the trimmings of your fish with milk, pepper and salt. Strain it and add the yolks of eggs till you get a good custard. Pour the custard into a mold, and lay in it your fish, which must already be parboiled. If you have cold fish, flake it, and mix it with the custard. Put the mold in a double saucepan. Steam it for three quarters of an hour. Turn it out, and garnish with strips of lemon peel, and if you have it, sprigs of fennel.

 

HAKE AND POTATOES

Hake, which is not one of the most delicate fish, can be made excellent if stewed in the following sauce: A quart of milk to which you have added a dessertspoonful of