HOME INTERESTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2010, 1 September 1892, Page 43

HOME INTERESTS.

Floating Island. — This delicious West India dish is made as follows :— Beat up the white of five eggs for about three-quarters of an hour with • about three or four tablespoonf uls of guava jelly, make a custard of about four of the yolks of the eggs and a pint of milk, not boiled too thick, which put first in the dish and then the beaten jelly on top to float (hence the name floating island). ' Fig Pudding.— Chop £lb figs finely. Mix well in a basin the following ingredients : — A breakfast cupful of breadcrumbs, a teacupful of flour, £lb finely minced suet, 3oz sugar, a little ginger or nutmeg. Add the figs and also two well-beaten eggs. Whisk all well together with a fork. Ppur into a well-buttered basin, and steam two hours.

Meat Roll Pudding. — Make a crust of 41b flour, a large teaspoonf ul of baking powder, suet, and half a teaspoonful of salt. Add water sufficient to make rather a soft paste ; roll out as for a roly-poly pudding, and spread over it a mince of meat, seasoned with pepper, salt, -Jib minced bacon, and two shallots., finely chopped. Spread this lin thick, roll it up, pinch the ends firmly, and boil for two hours.. Serv« with thick brown gravy, Banana Puddjijg, — Beat until white and creamy the yolks of two eggs, a half-pint of sugar, and butter as big as a large walnut; add three gills of milk and six stale lady fingers, or their equivalent in spongecake, crumbled very fine. Peel six bananas and slice them very thinly in a pudding dish ; pour the mixture over, and bake for 20 minutes in a brisk oven; take out and spread with a meringue made from the whites of the eggs. Serve warm. Cheese Cakes , (By Request).— Line some patti pans with goqd paste, and when half cooked take them out of the oven and half fill with the following mixture ;— 2oz butter, and one teacupf ul of sugar beaten to a cream ; add two well beaten eggs ; then one cupful of flour aud one cupful of maizena ; half a teaspoonfaj of soda and one of cream of tartar • a JreVdrops. of essence of Jemon if liked. Placp two small strips of the paste crossways on the top, and return to the oven until the mixture is cooked, Canterbury Cakes.— One pound butter, Ulb flour, fib pounded loaf sugar, the grated rind of ooe lemon, 2o* candled peel, nine eggs. Mode : Beat the butter to a cream, dredge in the flour and sugar, then the lemon rind, whisk the eggs and ad 4; beat well and put into a buttered tin, garnishing the top with the peel gut in thin slices, and bake in a hot oven from one hour and a-half to two hours. Veal Cake.— Cut equal quantities of cooked veal aud ham into dioe, flavour with pepper, salt, and the juice and rind of a lemon j add two hard boiled eggs cut small, and mix with veal stock anyone raw egg. Form into a roll, and surround with strips of fat ham,. Boil in a cloth for two hours! and gla^e. Rabbit Cake. — Another nioe oold breakrase dish is rabbit pake. Boil two. young rabbits and remove the bones. Mince the mea,fc and flavour with pepper, salt, lemon, and chopped parsley. Garnish the sides of a mouja w#h

hard-boiled eggs in slices, and the top with capsicums and mixed pickles ; place the meat lightly in the centre ; clarify, and add a little gelatine to the stock in which the rabbits have been cooked, and when boiling pour it into the mould. Next day turn out, and surround with a wreath of green salad.

Cutlets. — Breaded chops, cutlets, &c, are often thought to be unattainable luxuries in families where inexperienced cooks are the rule. The result is too often, it is true, a greasy piebald failure. Yet with finely-grated breadcrumbs, and with due attention to the surprise — that is, to having the fat very hot and an abundance of it — nothing is easier to do well. The breadcrumbs and egg come off for one of three reasons — the fat is not hot enough, or there is not enough of it in the pan, or else the breadcrumbs are too coarse and uneven. If you have no bread stale enough to crumb finely, dry out some slices in a cool oven. Let the article to be fried be perfectly clean and wiped dry, dip it in a mixture of two beaten eggs, a dessert spoonful of oil and one of water. When the pan is ready and the fat hot enough, cover with breadcrumbs and plunge at once into the pan. There should be fat enough jn. the pan to cover the fish or chops. When cooked sufficiently — which can be determined, in the case of fish, by seeing if the fish readily leaves the bone when a knife is inserted — take them up. If the fat has been hot enough and the article large, it will be bf a fine- brown colour before it is thoroughly done, in which case withdraw the pan from the fire to finish the cooking. Sift salt evenly over the fried meat or fish, and lay them for a minute on a sheet of paper before putting them on the napkin on which they are to be served.