The Right Kind Of Food

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Right Kind Of Food

ByA French Chef

La Cuisine

THE right kind .of food is simple but attractive, nourishing but never stodgy, well balanced certainly, but not so obviously so as to the company feel that it is studying for an examination upon the respective merits of proteins and carbohydrates, or becoming altogether too conscious of the alphabetic vitamins. Unless the menu begins with grape fruit, a fruit or tomato cocktail, or ends with dessert, it is nearly always wise as well as pleasant to have a sweet imo which a fruit enters largely. A French meal rarely ends without a compote of fruit. And there are compotes and compotes. Those in which the fruit is squashed and the syrup messy are to be avoided. Those in which the fruit 'keeps its shape in spite of being tender, and in which the syrup is clear, are to be encouraged. The secret, as usual, is care during the cooking. Made With Apples If, for example, you want to serve a dish of stewed apples, with cream, if you are feeling lavish, with a junket in a gay bowl, with a dish of hot rice, crisped in the oven, or with rice cream, you proceed as follows: Put three-quarters of a pint of water and three ounces of granulated

sugar into a saucepan, and bring it io the boil. Peel the apples, core them, ru>;l cut them into slices. Add the apple slices to the contents of the saucepan, and cook for about five minutes. They should then be tender and transparent, but unbroken. A shaving of lemon rind added to the syrup and removed when the fruit is cooked iri an improvement to many compotes.

Vanilla is pood with apricots (wa«h the pod. afterwards dry it, and put it away till next time). Orange-flowers water is delicious with goosebeiries, and if you want an especially good compote of these, scald th j m for two minutes in boiling water in an earthenware casserole after they haw ben topped and tailed. Make a syrup separately with six ounces of white sugar and a pint of water. When it has boiled for 10

minutes add a tablespoon of apricot jam and the gooseberries. Let them simmn till they are tender and serve very cold. Bananas do not need cooking, but it is best to plunge them into boiling water for a few seconds after they have been peeled. Drain them, «lice them, pour boiling syrup over them, and let them pet cold. Maraschino is a flavour with which they amalgamate very well. For a compote of oranges the syrup should be made partly with the juice from the pips boiled in water for about 10 minutes. The oranges are cut up or sliced, and sprinkled with chopped nuts or coconut. 1 ears like the flavour of cinnamon and doves. Apples may be flavoured with cinnamon, cloves, rose-water, orange-flower water or rum instead of lemon. Always when a compote i« finished and ready to be transferred to another dish, it is best to use a spoon instead of [touring it in. Milk jelly is an easily mada a*id attractive sweet that can be served with or without cooking. The .-.croud way is the most nourishing. Soak one ounce of powdered gelatine in a pint of milk for 12 hours or over night. Strain it, keeping the undissolved gelatine on one side. Add quarter of a pint of boiling water and 12 ounces of sugar to the milk, stir well, stir in the undissolved gelatine and mix thoroughly. Whisk three eggs and add them to the mixture, and add dually the strained juice of three lemons and the tinelv-grated rind of two. Strain into a wet mould and t-irn out when cold and set. Milk jelly ;nade the other way can be flavoured with coffee, strawberry, lemon or vanilla. Put one pint of milk, one ounce of wigar and half an ounce of gelatine "nti a double saucepan, and stir until it is all dissolved, but do not let the milk boil.» Let it cool, add the flavouring, strain into a wet mould and turn out wh«r set.