LA BONNE CUISINE

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 5 (Supplement)

LA BONNE CUISINE

PARIS. Curry is admittedly net a diah for ovary day in the week, except perhaps during a prolonged heat wave, when we might And It ae deairable ae do people who live in hot climates. But ao many things can bo eurriad, and there are ao many variotiea of ourry that it ia worth while allowing it to made fairly frequent appearances. CURRIES can be very hot, medium or mild. They can l>e motet or dry. They can be made with fresh meat or with cooked meat, with thicken, turkey or rabbit, with fish, vegetables or eggs. A lamb's head can be turned into a delicious curry for about three people. A pound of fish can be made into a curry for four. Uae fish stock with a little milk instead of water. For nieniu without meat, you can curry haricot beans, cauliflowers or lentils. You can poach eggs and #erve them with a curry sauce, or make a good dish for a warm day with hardboiled egg* and cold curried rice. Here is a curry of fresh meat for four people. The proportions given should result in a medium curry, but if you want to make it hotter, it k simple to add a little more curry powder. Cut one pound of lean meat or mutton into small, neat pieces. Peel and core a large cooking «pple. Cut it up finely and pound it in a mortar. Peel and

chop two large onions, pound half of them, too, and reserve the other half. If a mortar i* unavailable, the chopping must be finer still. Mix the pounded apple and onion thoroughly with a tablespoonful of curry powder and half a teaspoonful of salt, and stir in enough milk to make a thin paste. You will need about half a pint of milk altogether, and if you can use buttermilk for. a third of the quantity the curry will be better still. Heat two ounces of butter, margarine or good l>eef dripping in a saucepan and brown the re*tt of the onions in thi*. Then take them out and put them on one side. Stir the paste of curry powder, onion and apple into the fat in the pan, stir in the rest of the fresh milk gradually, add the meat, buttermilk and browned onions. Bring to the boil and cook quickly for ten minutes, then simmer very gently for half an hour. Stir in a little lemon juice just before serving. They All Need Rice At Accompaniment All curries need a rice accompaniment. The rice should be <renerous in quantity, piping hot and with the grains well separated. The French use rice from their own colonies, which is very good indeed, but in my humble opinion nothing beats Patna. unless your prefer the unpolished kinds. Allow about 4oz for two or three people.

The whole secret of well separated rice lies in washing the rice in cold water after, as well as before, it is cooked in plenty of boiling, malted water. When it haa its second cold bath (which removes the superfluous starch that makes the grain stick together), it is gently reheated on a dish in or above the oven, or in a pan at the side of the fire. When you want to make cooked meat or poultry into curry, you make a good curry sauce. Divide the meat into neat pieces and reheat it gently in the sauce. The rice and other additions are as before. To make the sauce, peel and chop from three to five onions and one or two apples. Melt about an ounce of butter or dripping in a saucepan and fry the onions and apple in this till brown. Try Mandarin As A Dessert French dealers sell a curious variety of the mandarin, which possesses the strange virtue of being sweet and bitter at the same time. It is the Chinese variety, preserved in sugar or "eau-de-vie"' that makes such a delicious dessert. For instance, a delightful petit four can be made from a compound of mandarin confiture, powdered sugar and sweet almonds stirred into the white of an egg. this to be served with orange ice. First pound together 200 grammes of • almonds, the skins having first been : removed. Then add half a pound of sugar uiid the whites of four eggs. While