LA BONNE CUISINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

LA BONNE CUISINE.

FOR GOOD SALADS. ; _____ ] ] IMAGINATION AND TASTE. (By A FRENCH CHEF.) ' Almost anybody can make a reason- j ably good salad. Anyone with a little imagination and taste can make a superb salad. Yet . . . the salad that one can I bear to eat is comparatively rare; and , the salad that one really enjoys is almost startling, because it is so unusual. Why? Who knows? But I think that the probable reasons are these. First, that few people seem to appreciate the difference between dressing a salad and smothering it with dressing. Second, that the importance of the initial preparation of the salad ingredients and the careful concoction of the dressing (when made at home) are imperfectly understood. Third, thp.t although an excellent salad may be composed of several different ingredients, this is no reason for assembling a hotch-potch of things which were never meant to mingle. Salads may be made with raw vegetables and greens, with cooked vegetables, with a mixture of raw and cooked vegetables, with vegetables and fruit, with fish, flesh or fowl mixed with cooked or raw vegetables. Salad greens should be fresh and crisp. Lettuce, curly endive, batavia, watercress, mustard ana cress, corn salad, chicory, cabbage hearts, very young sorrel, Of spinach or dandelion leaves, may all be used in their proper season. They all need careful looking over and washing and half an hour's very cokl bath—preferably with a little ice in the water—it helps them to regain any crispness they may have lost since they left the ground. After they are washed and bathed and before they are used they must be thoroughly dried. If you have a salad basket, put the dripping green stuff into it, and whirl it round so that the moisture flies from the leaves. If not, use a clean, dry cloth, but very gently. Salad greens ought not to be cut with a knife, but torn into convenient pieces with clean fingers. If a knife is used at all it should be of silver. Tomatoes are usually more welcome when they have shed their coats. This means that you must place them in hot water for two or three minutes. Peel them, and then let them stand on ice or in a very cold place for as long as possible to regain their firmness. Apples should be peeled and cut up with a silver knife just before they are to enter the salad. If this must be done earlier they will need to be covered with cold water, in order to keep their whiteness. The salad herbs which make such a variable addition to salads and their dressings are chervil, chives, tarragon, parsley and sometimes fennel. These are washed, dried and finely chopped.

Cabbage Salad.—Two cups shredded cabbage, threequarter of a cupful boiled mayonnaise, French dressing. Method: Wash cabbage, then mix with a French dressing to moisten and stand for one hour. Drain well. Mix with mayonnaise. Serve- with cold roast beef, pork or veal. Enough for three or four persons. Chicken and Cress Salad.—Two pound cold chickeu, 3 lettuces, l pint cooked green peas, pint mayonnaise, 1 beetroot, 8 hard-boiled eggs, parslev. Method: Cut chicken into dice. Halve and quarter eggs. Line individual glass plates with one or two lettuce leaves. Shred remainder of lettuces. Colour the mayonnaise a delicate pink to taste with juice from a boiled beetroot cooked in a little water till soft, then squeezed. Mix the chicken, lettuce, peas and mayonnaise lightly. Arrange in a dainty heap in each prepared plate. Decorate with quarters of pgg, mustard and cress, chopped beetroot and parsley. Allow about 3o« of chicken per head. Enough for 10 to 12 persons. A Xormandj Salad.—One cupful French dressing, 1 cuoful mayonnaise, 4 eggs, filets of anchovy, capers, ripe olives, 1 cupful sliced boiled potatoes, 1 cupful thin slices cooked beets, 1 halfcupful cut-up beans-, 2 small heads of lettuce. Method: Prepare French dressing and mayonnaise. Prepare vegetables. Cook and slice potatoes and beets. Ribbon the lettuce and boil it. Cook and cut up green beans. Boil four eggs hard. Chop two of the hard-boiled eggs finely. Add then to French dressing. Mix all together in a bowl. Season mixture first with fresh dressing, then add a little mayonaise. When your dish is full, smooth it down on top and cover with mayonnaise. Make a circle of capers around the edge. Place the filet of anchovies so as to make an eight or ten-pointed star. Fill a small circle in the centre with chopped black olives. Decorate with slices of hard-boiled eggs.