Holiday Cooking Ideas From “Elizabeth”

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28480, 9 January 1958, Page 2

Holiday Cooking Ideas From “Elizabeth”

When everyone else is in holiday mood, it seems harder work than usual for the cook, yet her output has to be the same or greater than at other times. A little judicious help from packaged foods makes the task easier and the results need not be in any way stereotyped either. Make up a gingerbread mix for instance, top it with pineapple sauce and serve it hot for the most popular hot pudding of the week. Or if a little something special in the cold sweet line is required quickly, make up a madeira mix and turn it into grapefruit and strawberry casket. Or for a birthday cake when the Christmas cake is still about and everyone is tired of fruit cake, get a packet each of chocolate and plain white cake mixes and make the sherry layer cake below.

Hot Gingerbread with pineapple sauce. Make and bake the gingerbread according to instructions. For the sauce, 1 tin crushed pineapple. juice and grated rind of 1 orange, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon sugar, J cup water, 1 tablespoon cornflour. Mix all ingredients well and stir over low heat until boiling. Cook for two minutes. Serve over the hot pudding. Grapefruit and strawberry casket. Bake a madeira cake mix in an oblong tin. When cold, cut an oblong from the top. Cut some of the piece removed into thin narrow strips. Thicken one tin of grapefruit segments with arrowroot and sweeten to taste. Halve strawberries and stir through the cooled mixture. Turn into the centre of the cake and lay cake strips across. Pipe stars of cream on the strips. Sherry layer cake. Make up both chocolate and plain cake according to instructions, but bake in larger area tins than specified. When cooked and cooled, split both cakes through the centre, making two chocolate and two white layers. With sherry butter cream, sandwich back together alternating chocolate and white. To make the filling, beat 4 tablespoons of butter until creamy, then beat in icing sugar and sherry until the mixture is fluffy

and well flavoured. Dust the top of the cake with icing sugar, or use some of the filling to top it and sorinkle with chopped toasted almonds. CURRIED FISH When luck and the catch is good, fish is starring on many a menu at the present moment and many a housewife must include frying fish on her holiday programme. Escape from the frying pan sometimes by baking the fish fillets in browned butter, by baking it whole either stuffed with breadcrumb seasoning, or plain with onions and tomatoes. Or for a change, make a fish curry. Uncooked fish is used here, but if there is left-over cold fish to be used up, that will do equally well if the sauce is cooked first and the fish just added in time to heat through.

Curried Fish. 3oz butter, 3 onions, 3 tomatoes, a clove of garlic. 1 teaspoon salt, 3 teaspoons curry powder, 1 breakfast cup water. ls-21b fish. Cooked rice. Melt 3oz butter and in it fry 3 sliced onions until tender but do not allow to brown too much. Add 3 teaspoons of curry powder and mix through together with 1 teaspoon of salt. Peel and chop tomatoes and add. together with very finely chopped garlic. Cook until browning, then stir in 1 cup of water. If uncooked fish is being used, add the fish, cover and cook gently for 15 to 20 minutes or until the fish is cooked. If cooked fish is to be used, simmer the sauce for 15 minutes, then add fish and heat through in the curry sauce. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and turn out on to a hot dish. Pile plain boiled rice in a border round the dish and garnish the top with finely-chopped hard-boiled egg and chopped parsley. Serve with chutney BRAIN FRITTERS

So many of us are cooking at this time of the year with only top-of-the-stove facilities that more frying-pan meals will probably be cooked during the next few weeks than in the rest of the months put together. If you are looking for a change, what about brain fritters and bacon? It makes an easy and delicious meal, and since brains are available in frozen packages, they are readily available in most places. These are cooked with crumbed stale white bread so the recipe may be made up with the ordinary things that are available in holiday homes or camps.

Brain Fritters and Bacon: jib bacon, 1 package frozen brains. 1 egg, salt and pepper, fine white breadcrumbs, a little butter.

Cut the rhind from the bacon rashers, cut into halves and fry. Lift out the bacon, leaving the fat in the pan. (Keep the bacon hot, or if that is tricky as it so often is if the cooking is being done on a primus, return the bacon to the pan to warm through after the fritters are cooked.) Place the brains on in a saucepan covered with water and bring to the boil.) Add a little salt and qook gently about 20 minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water.

Beat one egg. Finely crumb some stale white bread. Dip the brains first in egg, then roll in the breadcrumbs. Add a good piece of butter to the bacon drippings and make very hot. Fry the fritters on all sides until well browned. Place a brown paper bag or paper towel on a dish and drain the fritters out on to it and cover with the bacon.