Cookery in the Rough.

Bruce Herald, Volume IX, Issue 802, 12 May 1876, Page 7

Cookery in the Rough.

On the whole, probably most men, looking back upon lives more or less misspent, will acknowledge that their most enjoyable meals are those that have been eaten in the rough. There is a great deal of truth in the aphorism, that hunger is the best sauce ; severe exercise with occasional Ehort commons bring men into tip-top condition ; and there is always something stimulating in the primitive repast, improvised ai jtesfio,, or under canvas. Say you are out after deer or moose in the forests of the North American Dominion. It ia an object to cut down as much as possible the dead weight that is to be dragged along, so you have stinted yourself in the flour, the bacon, and the can meats that are intended to last you for ten days or a fortnight. It cannot greatly signify, asi you argue ; there ia a tire to be a superfluity of venison. Somehow, however, your hopes have not been realised, and day after day you have had most u,nacqountable ill-luck, Never was there such a scarcity of game in the memory of the oldest settler. The dee? that are left are diabolically wary. Mysterious currents of air breathe the secret of your presence to their listening ears, and as you are on the point of reaping the fruit of some patient stalk, a cracking

twig or a rustling leaf has given the alarm. You have gradually taken in your belt by half-a-dozen of holes or so until you look as lanky aa the skunks or the martens that occasionally go sneaking across your path. At last, in a supreme moment of bliss, a well-favored hmd drops to the rifle. In your heart you would sooner have secured her than the noblest antlered stag in the forest j for when you proceed to break her up her condition is prime, and there is a finger breadth of rich fat on the brisket. You make straight tracks for camp, with your half-breeds at your heels, all charged with the choicest morsels. Soon the fire is blazing cheerily beneath its screen of hemlock boughs ; aud you keep flinging on fresh logs from the pile that is ready stacked to your hand. Till the edge is taken off the wolfish appetites there is neither thought nor time for the niceties of sylvan cookery. Steaks sliced from the haunch are spitted on sticks and showed to the flames. But even with a hungry man, who is not to the manner bom, a little of such semi-Abysßinian fare goes a long way, and you begin to turn your attention to the entrees that by a natural inversion of things are to follow the pieces de resistance. You cut little squares of delicato flesh ; imprison the succulent essences by rapid exposure to the licking of the blaze ; and lay them down to cook themselves at leisure in the glowing beds you have scraped in the embers. If bread and salt are still lefb in your stores, a dinner like that is a feast for kings ; and even if it be followed by a suspicion of boa-constrictorist repletion, it makes the camp-fire yarns and the pipes that follow none the less enjoyable. And that is forest cookery in its most primitive shape. You have done for yourself — it is probable that you have not had the advantage of a course of instruction with only a hungry half" breed for aide, who has been brought up to appease his appetite in benighted ignorance. But if you have gone out on the hunting path with something of pomp and circumstance — if you are in a position to avail yourself of the services of experts of our rough-and-ready order you may literally revel in the lap of luxury as you recline, after the classical fashion of the ancients, on the carpet- colored earth, or on a couch of leaves. Gipsy cookery has long been celebrated. And small thanks to these Bedouins of civilisation, for they command the two great requirements of successful cuisine — admirable material and ample leisure. The food of the woods, fields, and poultry yards is before them, and they have no scruples aa to the times or- seasons op the manner of helping themselves. Pretty nearly anything that comes to hand, from a pheasant to field-mouse, is flung into a camp-kettle, a la Meg Merrilies, and the crones are told off to watch it simmering for the coming spread, while the active members of the tribe are levying contributions against the morrow. The zingari have their special dishes, too, on which they are said to pride themselves with reason, such as fricasees of rabbits and squirrels with dressing of mushrooms, or a hedgehg encased in clay, and then cooked subterraneously.

Indeed, the method of bud terraneous cooking is much in favor with semisavages all the world over, and marvellous results they achieve thereby. Some of the natives of India prepare elephants' feet much as the gypsies manipulate the hedgehog, in a simple oven of their own excavating. The hunters of the Western prairies, men who have learned some refinements of luxury in the frontier cities and trading posts, subject bison's humps to similar treatment. As for some of those natives of Hindustan, they seem ta bg born artists. It is more to their credit that in the homes of their youth they have been chiefly nourished on farinaceous food- and ghee, and that it is but seldom even in later life that they have held festival on a scraggy kid or some freshslaughtered mutton. But give them the most rudimentary education in a sahib's, service, and inspiration appears to come to them with their novel opportunities. You start for a tour in the hiils or a shikar expedition in the jungles, with a small retinue of attendants to look after yourselves and your animals. The teutß are pitched after a long day's march, and one might imagine that the dinners would be monotonous if plentiful. But tho variety of the menu your cooks prepare for you is astounding, and that without any butterie de cuisine to speak of. Tet the identical poultry furnish the staple that have been crowing cheerfully on their release from confinement a short hour or two before, with any venison or jungle fowls that may have been bagged on the march, and the inevitable mutton that ia naturally all leather and fibre. A kitchen range has been scooped out of the hardbaked soil, and the most unpromising materials ohange as by enchantment to dishes that are strangely good. It is a melancholy fact that most men have other things to attend to than the gratification of an appetite that has been healthfully stimulated by nature. But some compensation is to be found in the enjoyment of occasions ail the more appreciated from their rarity, wLen their appetites are SO stimulated.—' Pall Mall Gazette.'