The Belgian Cookbook by - (read book txt) 📕

to allow the meat to cook gently by the side of the fire, allowing one and one-half hours for one and one-half pounds of meat. Ten minutes before serving add to the sauce a little meat-juice or Liebig. You may at the same time, if it is wished, cook potatoes with the meat for about twenty minutes. Serve it all in a large dish, the meat in the center and the potatoes round. The sauce is served separately, and without being passed through the sieve.

[_L. Verhaeghe._]

 

A USE FOR COLD MUTTON

Cut the mutton into neat pieces, take away all fat and skin. Fry in butter and add all sorts of vegetables in dice, with thyme, bay-leaves, and parsley. Let all this stew very gently for two hours; you must add more stock or water to prevent it getting dry. Keep the lid of the pan on and, half-an-hour before serving, put in peeled potatoes. This dish is served very liquid.

[_Mme. Spinette_.]

 

FLEMISH CARBONADES

Take four pounds of beef—there is a cut near the neck that is suitable for this recipe. Cut the meat in small pieces (square) and fry them in a pan. In another pan put a piece of refined fat and fry in it five big onions that you have finely chopped. When these are well browned, add to them the meat, sprinkling in also pepper, salt, mixed herbs. Cover all with water, and let it cook for an hour with the lid on. After an hour’s cooking, add half a glass of beer, a slice of crumb of bread with a light layer of mustard and three tablespoonfuls of best vinegar. Let it cook again for three quarters of an hour. If the sauce is not thick enough, add a little flour, taking care that it boils up again afterwards.

 

FISH

When there remains any cold fish, take away all skin and bones, mixing the flesh with salt, butter, pepper, and one or two raw eggs as you wish. Take some small fireproof cases and place in each some lemon-juice with a little melted butter and grated breadcrumbs. Bake the cases till the top of the fish is of a golden color.

 

REMAINS OF FISH

Make a good white sauce, add pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg and juice of a lemon. Add then your remains of fish and a few pickled shrimps. Fill some shells with it and sprinkle over the top a good powdering of grated Gruyère cheese. Lay a pat of butter in the middle of each shell and put them in the oven. When they are colored a good golden brown, serve them decorated with parsley.

[_Mme. Lekent_.]

 

GOOD RISSOLES

Mince any cold meat, adding to a pound of it one-half pound of fresh lean pork, a chopped shallot and parsley, salt, pepper, a little nutmeg, and bind with an egg, both yolk and white. Form into balls, and dip them in flour, then color them in some butter, and when they are nicely browned pour into the butter a little stock or meat-juice and water. Let them gently cook in it for ten minutes, and serve.

[_Mme. Lekent_.]

 

CROQUETTES OF BOILED MEAT

I think that boiled meat when cold is often neglected as being tasteless, but, prepared as I will show you, it will deserve your approval.

Mince your boiled meat and put it into a thick white sauce well-spiced with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and let it remain for two hours. Then prepare your croquettes by rolling the mixture in white of egg and fine breadcrumbs. Put a piece of butter in the saucepan, sufficient to take all the croquettes, and let them brown in it for about ten minutes. A white sauce served with them is a good addition.

[_Mlle. A. Demeulemeester_.]

 

CARBONADES DONE WITH BEER

Cut the meat into slices that are thin rather than thick. Mince two big onions and fry them till brown; then fry the slices till they are colored on both sides. Pour on them first some beer, then a dash of vinegar, adding thyme, pepper, and salt, and throw in also a slice of crust of bread, which you have spread with mustard. Let this all simmer for three hours.

[_Mme. Segur_.]

 

WALLOON ENTRÉE

Make some toasted bread, either cut in rounds or in squares, and butter them. Cut some slices of salt beef, or, better still, ham, and put them on top; spread the meat with a good layer of grated cheese, and over that place another piece of buttered toast of corresponding shape. Melt some butter in a small saucepan and fry the rounds till they are golden-brown.

[_Mme. E. Maes_.]

 

SCRAPS OF MEAT

Your scraps of meat must be cut small or roughly minced; add to them a little sausage-meat, about a quarter as much, and a slice of white crumb bread that you have dipped in water or milk, and well drained. If eggs are not too dear, add two eggs, mixing them with the meat. Place the dish in the oven for half-an-hour—but it must be a slow oven—and take care that the meat does not become dry.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

 

FRICADELLE

For one pound of minced pork take one and one-half pounds of minced veal; cut three slices of white bread the thickness of nearly an inch, and crumble them up; two raw eggs, pepper and salt. Mix it all well, and place it in the oven for half-an-hour. If you eat this hot, serve it with a gravy sauce. If you wish for a supper-dish, put salad round the meat.

 

CHICORY AND HAM WITH CHEESE SAUCE

Cook the chicories gently in butter till they are done. Then take each one, and roll it in a slice of ham, and put them in a fireproof dish. Then make a very good white sauce of flour and butter and milk, adding cheese to flavor it strongly, and the yolk of an egg. Pour this sauce over the chicory, and place the dish in the oven. Let it turn brownish, and then serve it directly.

[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]

 

CROQUETTES OF VEAL

Make first of all a very thick white sauce of flour, milk, and butter, not forgetting also salt and pepper; when it is very thick add grated Gruyère cheese, in the proportion of a heaped teaspoonful of this to a breakfast-cupful of sauce. Take it off the fire, and stir in first of all the juice of a lemon, and then the yolk of an egg. Let it get cold. Then mince up finely your veal, or, indeed, any lean meat. Mix it well with the sauce, and make croquettes of it. Then roll each in the white of egg that you have left, and then in grated breadcrumbs, and fry in deep fat.

[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]

 

ENTRÉE (CROQUE-MONSIEUR)

Cut out some rounds of crumb of bread, of equal size, with a tin cutter; or, failing that, with a wineglass. Butter all the rounds and sprinkle them with grated cheese—for preference with Gruyère. On half the number of rounds place a bit of ham cut to the same size. Put a lump of butter the weight of egg into a pan, and fry with the rounds in it, till they become golden. When they are a nice color, place one round dressed with cheese on a round dressed with ham, so as to have the golden bread both above and below. Serve them very hot, and garnished with fried parsley.

[_E. Defouck_.]

 

HOT-POT

Before putting in your meat, cook in the water a celery, four leeks, two onions, two turnips, two carrots; then add the meat, with pepper and salt, and stew gently for three hours. If you can put in a marrow-bone as well, that will give the soup a delicious flavor.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

 

HOCHE POT

One pound of fresh pork, one pound rump (flank) of beef, one pound rump of veal, two onions, one celery, four leeks, two or three carrots, two or three turnips, according to the size, a few Brussels sprouts, five or six potatoes, according to the number of persons. Let the water boil before putting in the meat, and cut all the vegetables in cubes of the same size, like cubes of sugar. Let simmer only, for three hours; it is delicious and makes a dinner.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

 

BOUCHÉES À LA REINE

Get some little cases from the pastry-cook of puff paste, which are to be filled with sweetbread cut in dice. It is a good plan to heat the cases before filling them.

The filling mixture. Cook the sweetbreads in water with pepper and salt, till done, skin them and cut in dice. Prepare a good bechamel sauce, seasoned with the juice of a lemon, and add to it a few mushrooms that have been fried in butter. Heat the dice of sweetbread in this sauce and fill the cases with it. Put them back in the oven to get quite hot.

 

HOCHE POT OF GHENT

Clean two big carrots and cut them into small pieces, the same for two turnips, four leeks, two celeries, and a good green cabbage, only using the pale leaves. Wash all these vegetables well in running water, two or three times, and put them on the fire in three and one-half pints of water. Add salt, and let it cook for an hour. At the end of this time, add a good piece of pork weighing perhaps three pounds—for choice let it be cutlets. You can also add a pig’s trotter. Let it cook for another hour, taking care that the meat remains below the water. At the end of that time, and half-an-hour before you wish to eat it, add potatoes enough to be three for each person. Watch the cooking so as to see that the potatoes do not stick, and finish the seasoning with pepper and salt.

[_Georges Kerckaert_.]

 

CARBONADE OF FLANDERS

Cut your beef into small neat pieces. Mince some onions finely, and for five or six people you would add two bay-leaves, two cloves, pepper, salt; simmer gently for three hours in water, and at the end of that time bind the sauce with cornflour. Some people like the sauce to be thickened instead with mustard.

[_V. Verachtert._]

 

HEADLESS SPARROWS

Take two pounds of beef, which must be lean and cut in thin slices. Cut your slices of beef in pieces of five inches by three. Put in the middle of each piece a little square of very fat bacon, a sprig of parsley, pepper and salt. Roll up the slices and tie them round with a thread so that the seasoning remains inside. Melt in a pan a lump of butter the size of a very big egg. Let it get brown and then, after rolling the beef in flour, put them in the butter. Let them cook thus for five minutes, add half a pint of water, and let them simmer for two hours. Fill up with water if it becomes too dry. Before serving, take great care to remove the threads.

[_A Belgian at Droitwich._]

 

MUTTON STEW

Take two pounds of mutton, the breast or one of the inferior parts will do as well as a prime piece. Put in an earthenware pan a lump of butter as big as an egg, and let it color. Cut the mutton in pieces and let them color in the butter, adding salt and pepper, a few onions or shallots. When all is colored, add at least a pound of turnips, cut in slices, with about a pint of water. Let it boil up till the turnips are tender. Then add two and one-half or three pounds of potatoes; salt and pepper these, but in moderation,