Home Cooks Miscellany

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 2 March 1935, Page 9

Home Cooks Miscellany

Seasonable Recipes

Tomatoes a, la Marseillaise

For tomatoes a la Marseillaise have

eight tomatoes, placing the outside up in a shallow baking dish. Sprinkle the tomatoes with salt and pepper and a thin layer of chopped green pepper, onion and celery, all chopped together until fine. Lay a slice of butter over each and bake for 45 minutes, or until the tomatoes are tender.

Risotto. Cut up an onion and fry it a nice brown. Put this into a saucepan with half a pound of rice and some good, well-flavoured stock. Let the rice cook gently till all the stock is soaked up. Season'with a little pepper and salt and stir'in two ounces of grated cheese. Serve very hot. "

Macaroni a I’ltalienne.

Boil three ounces of macaroni in

boiling salted water for from 15 t<j 20 minutes. It is better to eat the macaroni rather hard than sodden. After having drained it- put it back in the pan and stir into it an ounce of butter. Serve separately a pint of tomato puree and some grated parmesan cheese. A very piquant puree of tomato is made as follow: Reduce your tomatoes to a puree, s>nd pass through a sieve. Then add some finely grated onion, a little vinegar, a few drops of nut-oil and a little sugar. Mix well and serve. ~..... The best way of using left-oyer boiled fish is first to remove all skin and bone from about one pound of white fish, and flake it. Heat one ounce of butter in a saucepan, put in the fish flakes, season with pepper and sprinkle with a few drops of anchovy sauce. Toss the fish about over gentle heat until very hot. Spread a layer of mashed potatoes on a dish, pile the fish flakes on this, cover with sauce and garnish with hard-boiled egg (cut the white in rings ana rub the yolk through a sieve). To make the sauce: Heat 2oz of butter to a soft cream, then continue beating while you add the yolks of two eggs. Season well with salt and pepper, add a gill of cream and stir over very hot water until the mixture thickens, cool a little, then stir in, drop by drop, a tablespoonful of lemon juice.

Curried Tomatoes ■Cut some tomatoes in slices, bake them, grate an apple, chop a shallot small and fry these two last in butter until quite tender. Add a heaped up dessertspoonful of curry powder, and stir into the butter until blended, then add four teaspoonfuls of good gravy and simmer all together for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes and a teaspoonful of coconut milk, a squeeze of lemon juice and a tiny bit of sweet ehutney. If fresh coconut is not obtainable, a little desiccated coconut, pounded with milk, may be used. Serve hot.

Mushrooms —Ways of Preparing Them."

There are many different ways of preparing mushrooms. They may be hidden in the folds of an onion or surround a dish of perfectly scrambled eggs. As a fricasse, with a few peas, tJje preserved ones, extra-fins, are delicious, and with two or three hardboiled eggs they are unusual and very tasty. Grilled with kidneys and bacon, or with a “mixed grill," they are also excellent, and keeping themselves severely to themselves in small covered baking dishes they appeal more than in any other way to the true mushroom enthusiast. These, if they are to be- prepared properly, should be dealt with in the following manner: The mushrooms should be well, shaken, wiped with a clean flannel dipped in salt, stalked, peeled, and placed in little buttered dishes or fireproof china, or preferably of fireproof glass. The •number of mushrooms to be placed in each dish- naturally depends upon the size of the mushrooms, but they must in any case be placed with the hollowed side uppermost, and be sprinkled with salt, pepper (more pepper than salt), and a few drops of lemon juice. A few tiny pieces of butter are placed on top of each mushroom, the cover is put on each dish, and only removed for a moment aTTbr a fifteen minutes’ sojourn in a moderately hot oven, in order to add a small piece of maitre l 'hotel butter to each mushroom.