COOKERY HINTS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 18 April 1922, Page 2

COOKERY HINTS.

TESTED RECIPES. Fish Cakes.—Anchovy or other fish paste, which has hardened through disuse, can be turned into good fish cakes. Take equal parts of boiled rice and nxashed potatoes. Bind them together with a beaten egg, stir in sufficient anchovy paste to imparty the “fishy” flavour, add pepper, but no salt, foxm into small cakes, and fry. Mutton Hot-Pot.—Cut into slices some breast of mutton, lay at the botatom of dish, cover with a layer of sliced onions, pepper and salt, then a layer of sliced raw potatoes. Continue these layers until the dish is full. Place pieces of dripping and cover. Put in oven and cook two hours. Keep shaking the dish. An exceedingly appetising dinner. The potatoes are so tasty that very little meat is required. How to make a delicious dish of reheated fowl, goose or turkey.—The mistake usually made in regard to recooking cold fowl or game is to make a rich sauce, place the pieces of fowl in it for ten or twenty minutes, and then take it up and serve. It is then hot through, but it is hard and has not absorbed the flavour of the sauce. This is the way to make a dish as nice as though freshly cooked: —Brown two chopped up onions in plenty of butter, with eggs, parsley and thyme, and a teaspoon of curry powder, pepper, salt, and a saltspoon of sugar. Add a pint of good stock and when it boils thicken with flour. Now put in the pieces of cold fowl or goose, and simmer gently for an hour and a half, or until it is quite tender. It may want a little extra thickening, but, being done in butter, does not require skimming. If cooked in a casserole dish, it may, of course, be served up as it is. You will taste nothing nicer than this. *.* Pancakes (Raspberry).—Two eggs, a pinch of salt, soz flour and about half a pint of milk. Sift the flour into a basin and mix in the salt. Beat up the eggs, then stir into the flour, and beat to a smooth batter, adding the milk gradually. Stand on one side until the frying-pan is hot, with sufficient fat in it to fry the batter. Beat up the battex again, then pour about one cupful into the pan and fry until nicely coloured, then toss, and fry the other side a golden brown. Turn on a hot dish spread with raspberrv jam, roll up, and serve very hot. Put fresh fat in the pan for each fresh pancake.

Patriotic Pudding.—Two ounces butter, 2oz lard, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, three tablespoonfuls of flour, one tablespoonful each of ground rice and jam, one tablespoonful of baking powder, one egg, and enough milk to make a stiff batter. Cream butter and sugar together, then add the egg, and gradually the dry ingredients, lastly the milk. Grease a basin, put the jam at the bottom, then the mixture. Steam for one hour.

Chocolate Filling and Icing (for a sponge cake). —Warm quarter-pound of fresh butter and cream it with lib of icing sugar; when quite smooth stir in two tablespoonfuls or more of grated Cadbury’s chocolate. This does fox' icing as well as filling, but in case there is not sufficient for both, another icing may be used. Put in a saucepan: loz of Cadbury’s cocoa or grated chocolate, Alb of castor sugar, and half a gill of cold water, stir over a gentle heat till hot, but not boiling; use while still warm, and it quickly dries if left in a cold larder.

TIPS FOR THE CAKE-MAKER. 1. See that all materials are of good quality and dry.

2. Sieve all flour, as this aerates it and so lightens the cakes. 3. Prepare tins and oven before starting to make the mixture. 4. Do all beating before adding the flour, as if done afterwards the cake will probably be close. 5. Mix large cakes moister than small ones.

6. Fruit cakes require rather a hot oven at first to set the mixture quickly ; if the oven is not hot the fruit will sink to the bottom. Small cakes need rather* a sharp oven; those containing much sugar—such as gingerbread, sponge cakes —a slow one, as they burn easily. 7. Do not move any cake until it is set, or it will probably fall in. Open the oven door as little as possible, and always close it gently. 8. To see if a cake is cooked through pass a thin skewer through the centre. If done, it will be quite clean when pulled out.

9. Turn small cakes on to a sieve or wire tray as soon as they are baked; rich mixtures may cool in the tin. Allow them to get cold gradually; on no account place them in a draught or near an open window.