IN THE KITCHEN

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 257, 26 July 1930, Page 22

IN THE KITCHEN

Little Pastry® Almost any pastry may be asssd for tartlets, but short crust and puff or rough puff are perhaps the best They may be equally made with scraps of leftover pastry. Always line the patty tins first, and place them iu readiness for the mixture on a baking sheet. Roll pastry thinly and cut with fluted cutter. If tartlets are to be baked, before filling line them with a piece of white paper and fill them with haricot beans or rice to prevent the pastry losing its shape during baking. These may be used again and again if kept for this purpose alone. ROUGH PUFF PASTRY. Half a pound of flour, jib. butter, pinch salt, lemon juice, water. . , Weigh butter and let it lie in basin of cold water for a little while before using. Sieve flour and salt into a basin and add to it the butter that has been dried on a cloth. Break it up in the flour the size of a hazel nut. Add a squeeze of lemon juice. Mix in some very cold water with the hand or a knife, only adding enough water to bind. Flour a board and turn the paste on to it. Flour rolling pin and roll the paste out into a trip about threequarters of a yard long and 6in. to 7in. wide. Lift occasionally and add more flour to prevent sticking. Roll paste on one side only and use short, quick strokes always from you. When rolled the right length fold in three and press down with the rolling pin. Turn paste half round, bringing the joints to the right-hand side and roll as before. Fold again in three, half turn, and roll again. Repeat this until pastry has had three rolls and three folds. The fourth time roll to the size and shape required and use. This is used for covering meat pies, patties, sausage rolls and various fish or meat. GOOD SHORT CRUST.

Half-pound flour, soz. or 6oz. butter or butter and lard, squeeze lemon juice, cold water pinch salt. —Rub butter into sieved flour very lightly until as fine as bread crumbs, using tips of fingers. Add squeeze of lemon juice and enough cold water just to bind. Too much water must not be used or the pastry will be tough instead of short. Turn on to the floured board and knead lightly until quite free from cracks. Then, with quick, sharp strokes, roll out to thickness required. It only requires rolling once. Roll on one side only, using as little flour on board as possible. An egg yolk may be used in the water if liked.

A pergola is the most expeditious way of shading a pathway and is therefore very necessary to the comfort of a garden that cannot hope to gain this shade so quickly in any other way. It is not merely the ornament it is sometimes lightly thought to be, but is rather a simple and practical object that is sometimes ornamented out of all sense of proportion. A sense of fitness will guide the choice of materials for the construction of a pergola, and if the restraint that is so necessary in the planning of gardens is exercised, a large proportion of these pergolas would be of durable timber; timber that will need neither paint nor oil, remembering that such preservatives, so easily applied when the structure is new, have a limited lifetime and must be applied again when the climbing plants have covered the support erected for them.