MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 December 1934, Page 8

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

ENGLISH COOKING.

APPETISING DISHES. I wish there were a law compcllins English cooks to oend at least a quota, of English dishes' to every table. ' , • ■ The snobbery of the trench cuism= is no longer, alas! confined to restaurants and their menus; it has taken such a hold on our imaginations that native English cooking (which used to be noble, and still is when we aic not ashamed of it) is rapidly disappearing. ~ , I observe with gloom that even that once irreproachably British mail on, the great Mrs Beeton, now finds it necessary in .her latest post-humous editions to have "ponding de Noel” in black type over her time-honoured recipe for Christmas pudding, writes Margaret Lane in the "Daily Mail.” This is a thousand pities for we have English appetites, not French ones; and tnough most of us can grow, lyrical over the rich perfections of a dinner cooked in this or that French restaurant in the grand manner, our really sentimental gastronomic memories —the ones that move us almost to greedy tears—are nearly alt of homely dishes first, enjoyed, perhaps, twenty years ago, prepur.j.l by cooks who would have thought you were being- either eccentric or imlelicale if you li-ul asked for iinything in French. In how many homes nowadays do you dine from a fine roast of beef, carved smoking hot at the head of the table, with the gravy flowing red in the channels of the dish? Yet in no countiy in the world is the art of roasting meat in great joints (not cut into little snippets and cloaked with seasonings and sauce) so well understood a£ in ours. . MODEST JOINTS. Mrs Glasse’s old cookery book (the one that advises Spartan cures for the bite of a' mad dog and makes you whimper with excitement over the delights, of a roast swan) is among my favourite reading; such a wholesome odour of roasting and basting, such a scorching of fires and sizzling of gravy rises like incense out of its yellowed pages! Roast beef to her meant a great, fire and a spit and a 201 b joint, and a dish “garnisht with nothing but horse radish.” Nowadays we subsist on more modest joints and hake our meats .instead of roasting them, but 1 still contend that a plain roast of English beet with Yorkshire pudding (high and brown round the sides, flat and yellow in the middle —“the gravy of

the meat eats well with it,” says good, greedy Mrs Glasse) is one oi the noblest dishes known to man.

Now I come to think of it, nearly all the dishes that have stirred my ■appetite and imagination have been native English ones. Hare soup on a cold November day, rich and dark with tlm blood of the hare and the glass of port added. Game pie packed solid with' partridge and quail and jelly and little bits of baccn, and standing as golden-brown and perfect as the raised pies on the glossy coloured pages of my mother’s Mrs. Becton, which never tailed to charm inc as a child.

“Spotted Dick,” that, king of nursery puddings, ,its tender suet countenance beautified with currants, and veiled with a pouring of golden syrup or honey. And that most eloquent ot old English dishes (when properly made, in a deep dish with rare, short pastry, snowy apples, and served with its spiritual affinity, a jar of Cornish cream), a good apple pie! Once, being asked lo fill in a page of one of those “confession hooks,” people used to offer ,their friends, I was compelled after deep thought and for the sitke of candour to write under the heading “My Favourite Dish” the unpretentious answer, “Cold apple pie.”

“ NO APPLE PIE.” I have found since that 1 am by no means alone in this passion for the oldest and least pretentious of English dishes. The other day. in an excellent modern collection of English recipes, J found a passage from that good book of SO years ago, “The Art of Dining,” which I cannot forbear from quoting: “The late Lord Dudley could not dine comfortably without an apple pie, as he insisted on calling it, contending that the term tart only applied to open pastry.” Sensible man! How often he would be corrected nowadays by “retained” cooks and housewives!) “Dining, when Foreign Secretary, at a grand dinner at Prince Esterhazy's ho was terribly put out on finding that his favourite delicacy was wanting, and kept on murmuring pretty audibly, in his absent way: 'God bless my soul! No apple pie.’” Few meals have even been known to equal—say what you like—the traditional English breakfast when seen in its full splendour. Though most of us nowadays have the French habit of rolls and coffee, or the American one of orange juice, coffee, and buttered toaiX there are mot many Eiglish mouths that do not water responsively at the smell of hot crisp bacon in the morning; or the rich brownness of grilled kidneys. Americans laugh at our tea habit; that is because they only know the nimsy pretence called “afternoon tea" served as a sacrifice to refinement in the big towns. Some of my warmest memories concern leisurely Yorkshire teas, eaten at the table in a

room with a big fire —teas ■with scones and oat-cakes and jam and a tantalising choice oT home-made cake; of high tea eaten in a Lancashire mill town, with fish and chips and pepper and vinegar and salt; of farmhouse teas in the south-west counties, made beautiful with gingerbreads and honeyc-akes, and the yellow, crusted folds of Cornish cream. I would not exchange a really fine English cook, possessed of a good knowledge of the resources of English cooking and a true feeling for the English palate and tradition, for the most, diplomaed chef you could offer me, be. he never so smothered with o medals and blue ribbons.

PEASANT EVENING MODES

(By a Paris Fashion Expert). The peasant influence in mid-sea-son clothes attacks both Directoire and “streamlines.” Ono new modelcast on the former plan, however, is most alluring in black satin crepe, it has a split down one side of a slim, slightly trained skirt, and a swathed belt of light dahlia purple, outlined with silver. Two other gowns showing this swathed theme to great advantage are in amethyst crepe with the new vaguely gathered deep flounced hemline, and crinkled crepe belt shading from deep cerise to pale pink, and a. champagne coloured satin model with a lime green swathe. A •slack mink coat with peits worked up cn diagonal instead of straight lines was shown over this gown.

A peasant model in velvet is a very becoming wrap that swaggers differently from the “coolie” shape. That is to • say, the style has been brought nearer West and takes us into the Balkans, where national peasant styles have gathered necklines to thigh-length coats, which sometimes sway to hang into the merest galliots from a yoke at the back. 'l'lie model may be with or without sleeves. 'l’lie latter tendency brings .a new caped vogue. This new simplicity •is not so easy to acquire as one imagines. Proportions must be calculated on a mathematical scale so that these garments look not more or less but exactly right. This, likewise, applies to the new bloused corsage with gathered peasant decollete for a gown of rust red crepe faintly lame with gold. It is for wear under a light autumn yellow caped-coat of heavy mat silken crepe, with neckline to tally. Bloused backs, too, break, up the streamline notion, one being executed into an otherwise plajin gown which is in a. lovely tone of cerulean blue. Two large rust brown and yellow chrysanthemums are set at the waist-line. Corsages seem easier even when not bloused, but with the flat fichu crossover pointing front and back. In one instance white crepe satin shows the movement with selvedge border under a wide-sleeved bolero coatee of tortoiseshell brown paillettes. The skirt, hangs on a perfectly straight simple line, with a short sun-ray godet inserted at the back for ease of movement.

The flounced hemline brings a new charm to otherwise plain eveningskirts. It commences to flow from beneath knee depth, but is carefully gauged so as not to break continuity

of line, and may be merely set at the back. The Cossack style is considerably improved for day wear in a model with peasant details. It is in dark brown woollen—the coat with gathered back hanging from a yoke, and the skirt gathered in similar fashion in front to hang ■ from a yoke. A “binder” belt of rust red, and choker collar faced with the contrast, help to form a. most attractive ensemble.