Vegetables For Hors d'Oeuvres

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 4

Vegetables For Hors d'Oeuvres

La Cuisine

There are many ways of preparing vegetables which are especial to the French. To enumerate onlv a few for horn d'oeuvres, there is fassun. i.e.. cabbage leaves stuffed with mincemeat and rice, fried in oil; tomatoes, stnHed with rice and meat, or with chopped olives and onions, or with foie-ura- or with fish, artichokes fried in oil. with a sauce of carrots and onions, cooked in white wine and olive oil. artichoke*, slutted with foie-gras and fried; artichokes, rolled in dough and fried, or made into croquettes, or baked with spinach, all different, and appetising ways of preparing this familiar vegetable. A Delicious Entree Onions stuffed with veal, make an tin ! common and very delicious entree. Method: Peel six very large Spanish onions. Put them in a pan of boiling water with a little salt, awl boil gently for three-quarter® of an hour. Drain in a colander, and then let the cold tap run on them for a minute, and leave them to drain thoroughly. Meanwhile, prepare this filling: Trim lib of veal cutlet, and cut it in small piecrs. a!«n. a lean rasher of bacon, and put them through the mincer. Add a sprig ot

ByA French Chef

pai'slcy. and thyme, and a small piece of lemon rind, all very tiiicly chopped. of tine breadciumlis. a sprinkling of -.ill and jH-pper. a well• benten egg, and ,1 t a ble-poonf ill of cream. Mix well. Ilemov e the centre of the onions, ami lill with this mixture. Put them in a fireproof di-h. pour some good stock round, and place a small piece of butter on each onion. Bake in a moderate oven. Ha>-te the onions at intervals with the stock and serve in a hot dish. Frenchmen Love Cress Amongst salads there is one in Paris which plays so important a role that one cannot take a meal in the restaurants of the capital without, the appearance of some leave®, at least, of this vegetable. I refer to cress, which at the very start, lends itself agreeably to the making of an excellent soup, the "Cressonnicre." which is composed in part, of grammes of cress leaves stewed in

lu.tter, and then moistened with a litre of consomme, the otlici part, of oilD grammes of ina-hcd potatoes, reduced to 11 puree. The whole is then pas-ed through a line sieve."and the proper thickne-s is given to the soup by the addition of two decilitres ami a half of IT.ilk \ 11.01 -el of but ter i- added, ami

carefully -tirrcd with a wooden s| a lid some minutes before i-erviug grammes of ha-hed cre-s leave- are added. This is a ileliciou- dir-h. refreshing. and excellent to wake the appclitc. ties- p os -e»-s 1 *s (I kiv so between pa rent hese-1 a great pharmaceutical interest. French mothers, for example, give it to 1 ne i r children. prepared iin follows: The cress it- cooked in milk and not -trained like the soup above mentioned. This is considered very nourishing, and is given to children in the early spring, as it supposed to clear the blood. The Persians nourish their babies almost exclusively with cress. The T?omans considered it a stimulant. and good for aching teeth and gums, and that it even made the hair grow! In Paris an incredible quantity of cress is consumed. There i- not a beefsteak or a roast fowl served without it-

bouquet of cress. a habit which <li«v not date from yesterday. In the chronicle* (if Louis XIII., the husband of Anne dAut l ii lic. they already -<■ r\<*«l chicken. 1111 ;i 11. din k, pigeon, |>heat-ant. or partridge nil a bed of crc-v. When cre<s i* Ui-i'd up. a -alad it inu-t not lie forgotten

that tin- tar-te of i~ in itself very I delicate. and. by |Uittinu in 100 much | it 10-cs all its savour, and if \on add too in mil oil. what ymi have left i~ a marss of sodden mid unappet iriiiiLr vicen r-t utV. To make a r-alad of crc-s don't sea~on until the very lu-t minute, n-ing just enough oil. so that each leaf *hall be rdijrhtly moiet. and a I'eiv <1 ioi of white wine vinegar and a pinch of r-alt. At the same time, nothing is better than fresh cress eaten with a L! l-ill. the I'liw being moistened only with the 'jravv. The lnwt cres* in Franec U the cress they call "Cresson de Fontaine." which irs gathered along the border* of the stream, but as this. i* only found in the belle saison. and there is never enough of it. there have been installed in the outskirts of Paris enormous "creevsonnieres," between C'hantillv and Senlis. where they cultivate it artificially. This i.s the cress which arrives at "Jlalles" (the Central Markets) every dav, bv hundreds of kilogs.