LA BONNE CUISINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 201, 26 August 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

LA BONNE CUISINE.

SETTING THE TABLE.'

SERVING FOOD DAINTILY.

(By A FRENCH CHEF.)

With a tasty meal, an attractive table cloth and table decorations help a lot. A table set with new, attractive things can look so lovely, with a candle centre piece, lace mats (these are snippets of real lace under glass frames), and the long-stemmed coloured wine glasses that look enchanting. Green is better than the yellow. Blue glasses don't make much effect, and red are apt to be just a little bit vulgar, although ruby glasses arc attractive 011 a creamy-white dinner cloth. Don't forget to put a posy or a fresh flower for each guest, and it is always best to serve a vegetable as a separate course. "Creamed spinach with "fleurons," in other words, tiny pieces of pastry, is a very good vegetable to choose, and salad is served with almost everything. It has, as a matter of fact, taken the place of the old-fashioned "two vegetables." One reason for this is that hostesses like to eliminate the fattening potato as much as possible.

Linen table sets arc expensive to buy, so many women make their own. lu'om a piece of guaranteed fast dye coloured linen, say, green, you will cut a square and four smaller squares. Then hemstitch them all and you will have a beautiful centre-square and four mats, or a tea cloth and four table napkins. Left-over pieces of the coloured linen can be used, too, to make false hems on all-white linen cloth. Have flowers and cruets to match the coloured hems and you will get a really charming effect. An Informal Dinner. Here is a menu for a little informal dinner. After a plain soup, "boiled stuffed steak" is an appetising dish, and it is made as follows: — Choose a thinly-cut piece, of steak, beat it, season it, and cut it into pieces, so that each person has a roll. Make some stuffing with breadcrumbs, chopped parsley,, chopped ham and chopped onion. Season and moisten with a little milk. Spread this over the meat, roll up and tie. Brown the rolls on both sides in a little dripping, put in a casserole with some stock, and cook in a moderate oven till done. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour and add some tomato sauce, ketchup or some other flavouring, and serve. Or "veau roulc aux tomatcs" is an appetising disli. This is how you prepare it:—Cut lib of veal cutlet into thin strips, about 4in long and 2in wide. Chop finely a small rasher of bacon. Mix with it three tablespoonfuls of fine breadcrumbs, season with salt, pepper and a tiny pinch of grated nutmeg. Add a sprig of parsley, finely chopped, a pinch of sweet herbs, a few drops of onion juice and a little grated lemon rind. Bind to a paste with beaten egg. Spread this on the pieces of cutlet, roll up and tie securely. Slice an onion, fry it in a little butter, add a teacupful of stock. Put in the veal rolls and simmer until tender. Place on a hot dish, slice lib of tomatoes, skim the gravy in the pan, add the tomatoes, cook until tender, rub through a sieve,*and serve round the rolls. The rolls should be stuffed overnight. For a sweet, there is always that charming standby, a fruit compote. And a "compote" can be made out of almost any fruit, looks nice when served in pretty glass dishes—a glass dish for each guest —and is delicious when eaten with cream. Or "bananas a la Creole"' are always delicious: pull down a section of the skin of each banana, loosen the pulp from the skin, remove all coarse threads that adhere to the pulp, and return the pulp to the skin hi its original position. Lay the fruit thus prepared on a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven until the skins are blackened and the pulp softened. Remove pulp from the skin without injury to the shape, bend in half circle and place 011 a dish, sprinkl" with powdered sugar and finely-chopped blanched pistochio nuts, and serve as a dessert dish.