MENU FOR A SMART CHRISTMAS DINNER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 50, 16 December 1893, Page 526

MENU FOR A SMART CHRISTMAS DINNER.

DECORATIONS. Maiden hair fern and roses in bowls, a’ternately white and pink masses. Small specimen glasses with one lovely yellow or crimson half opened bud in each, arranged on white ciepon folded in fan shapes with pink silk. I’ink shaded fairy lamps or candles. MENU. Slutted Tomatoes. Puiee of Green Peas. Mullet a la Hollandaise. Chicken Cutlets a la Bivona. Mutton Cutlets a la Franchise. Iced Currey. Roast Beef. Roast Turkey. Vegetables. Ox Tongue a la Princesse. Ham a la Yorke. Celery Salad. Cucumber Salad. Plum Pudding. Frozen Custard. Cream a la Pompadour. Red Currant and Raspberry Fool. Strawberry Champagne Creams. Mace’doine of Fruit. Dessert Iced Coffee. Juleps. Wines. Stuffed Tom atoes. — Halve .some nicely shaped tomatoes remove the seeds and most of the pulp, and chop up the latter with grated breadcrumbs, a little grated cheese, a very little finely minced shallot, some grated or minced ham, chopped mushrooms if at hand, salt and pepper. Fill the half tomatoes with this mixture, sprinkle the top liberally with browned breadcrumbs, and lay a morsel of butter on each. Set them on a buttered baking tin, and bake ten or fifteen minutes. Dish them, and squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over each. Any scraps of meat of any kind will do for this. Puree de I’ois Verts.—Boil a pint of green peas in water with a head of lettuce, an onion, a carrot, a few leaves of mint, and a sprig of parsley, some pepper and salt to taste, and a lump of sugar. When thoroughly done strain off the liquor and pass the peas, etc., through a hair sieve : add as much of the liquor to the result as will bring it to the right consistency, put the soup in a saucepan with a small pat of fresh butter ; let it boil up, and serve with dice of bread fried in butter. Mui.let a la Hollandaise. —Put the mullet, which has previously been well rubbed with a lemon, into a fishkettle with plenty of cold salted water and a bunch of parsley. Directly it has once boiled let it simmer gently from thirty to forty minutes, according to tbe size of the fish. To ascertain when it is done, lift up the strainer and insert a skewer into the fleshy part of the fish, and if the flesh does not stick too closely to the bone it is done. Then let the water drain off and serve garnished with lobster spawn and quarters of lemon, and the following sauce in a boat : — Hollandaise Sauce : Put 2oz. of butter into a saucepan ; when it has melted, mix well into it a dessertspoonful of flour, and add gradually a teacupful of the water the mullet has been cooked in, which must be boiling, and continue to stir until the sauce is quite smooth. Be careful not to let it boil. At tbe last add the yolks of two eggs which have been beaten up with a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and pepper and salt to taste. Chicken Cutlets a la Bivona —lt is better to line the moulds with slices of cooked chicken. Should you only have a raw chicken to use, your cook, with a sharp knife, must remove the fillets from the breast of the bird, taking the skin from them, place them on a buttered tin, squeeze a little lemon juice over them, and cover them with a buttered paper, and cook in the oven for ten or twelve minutes. When cooked, take them from the tin and press until cold, when they will be ready to use. When cutting the fillets to line the moulds with, it is always better to cut the slices slantiugwise, and they should be cut very thinly. The mould should be well buttered and the chicken neatly placed inside to form a lining. The chicken will not become dry and hard by being cooked twice, for the cutlets only take a short time to poach. When cooking the cutlets it is advisable to place a double piece of foolscap paper in the bottom of the saute pan : and when cooking creams of chicken or veal' the same thing should be done, and tbe moulds being placed on the paper the creams are not so liable to become discoloured during tbe time they are being cooked. The breast of an ordinary sized chicken will be sufficient to line eight or nine moulds, if care is used in cutting up the fillets, and the legs, etc., could be used for the farce. If the chicken were not cooked before lining the moulds it is quite sure to be tough and probably a bad colour. Mutton de Cotelettes a la Francaise.—Trim a neck of lamb neatly, tie it into shape, and put it in a pan with loz. of butter or clarified dripping, a bouquet, some sliced carrot, onion, turnip, celery, some peppercorns and cloves ; arrange the meat on the top of the vegetables, lay a buttered paper over it all, cover the pan, and fry its con-

tents for fifteen to twenty minutes. Then add two wineglassfuls of sherry ; recover the pan, set it in the oven, and let it braise for an hour, keeping it basted, and adding by degrees a pint of stock. XX ben cooked press the meat till cold, then cut it into neat cutlets, mask each with brown chaufroix sauce, and garnish with a star of hard-boiled egg, setting this with a few drops of aspic. Line a plain Charlotte mould with aspic, decorating the top with white of egg, cbilies, cucumber, cooked tongue, etc., then arrange the prepared cutlets all round tbe mould, with the decorated side outward,and set them with a layer of aspic about | inch thick. Fill up the mould with a puree of mutton. Set this with a thin layer of aspic, and put it aside to set. Serve with a salad of tomatoes and cucumber. For the puree, pound till smooth Jib. of cold roast mutton, mix it with a wineglassful of sherry, two tablespoonfuls of brown sauce, a teaspoonful of Liebig, and half a pint of good brown stock stiffened with joz. of leaf gelatine. Rub it all through a sieve, and use. Iced Curry.—Take one and a-half ounce of butter and place in a stewpan with three onions which have been cut up into small pieces, add a bunch of herbs, and fry the onions for about ten minutes, then add a dessertspoonful of Marshall’s curry powder, three quarters of a pint of white stock ; chicken stock is the best, and it should be well flavoured. The juice of a lemon, two tablespoonfuls of grated cocoanut. two green capsicums, and a dessertspoonful of tamarinds ; mix together, and cook altogether for haifan hour, keeping it skimmed all the time. Reduce threequarters of a pint of aspic jelly to half the quantity by boiling it fast, and then add it to tbe curry mixture and rub through a tammy cloth or fine hair sieve. XV hen the sauce is cold, add two or three tablespoonfuls of whipped cream and some cooked sweetbread or chicken cut in small pieces. Fill some ramakin cases with the mixture, and then place in the ice cave for about ten or twelve minutes previous to serving. Ox Tongue a la Princesse. Slice some cold cooked tongue rather thickly, and coat it with mayonnaise aspic, and when set dish en couronne, and serve with a salad of cold potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and cucumber. Ham a la Yorke.—After it has been soaked for twentyfour hours, tie it up in a cloth which has been greased, and then put it into a braising pan which should have plenty of sliced vegetables, herbs and spices in it, and pour two tumblers full of sherry over the ham ; place the lid on the pan, and let it remain at tbe side of the stove to cook gently until all the sherry has been absorbed, then cover the ham with good stock, and let it cook gently, allowing twenty minutes for each pound in weight. XX’hen cooked let the ham remain in the pan until cold, when the cloth must be removed and tbe skin carefully cut of and the ham trimmed. After this place it in a pan with about half-a-pint of sherry and place in the oven and continually baste the ham while it is being re warmed, then brush the ham over with a little glaze, and serve a good brown sauce flavoured with sherry with it. PLUM Pudding. — Plum pudding is not considered ‘ dressed without brandy butter, which new sauce is made at the table by the fashionable hostess. A silver basin containing a lump of butter and a wooden spoon is set before the host with orders to ‘cream it.’ That done, tbe lady adds a cup of fine sugar, a large glass of brandy, and the same generous quantity of sherry. The butter, which is not butter at all, is passed round in the basin and served from the wooden spoon with which it was mixed. Frozen Custard.—Allow one pint of cream, one pint of milk, one cupful of sugar, the yolks of six eggs, and tablespoonful of lemon juice. Put the milk and cream in double kettle and let it come to a boil ; beat the eggs and sugar together and stir into the milk ; stir all the time until it thickens; take it off and add the lemon juice; when entirely cool, put it into an ice cream freezer and pack ready to freeze. Cream a la Pompadour —Mix together 21b of fresh strawberries with of strawberry jam or jelly, 2lb of white sifted sugar, the juice of two lemons, one pint of milk, and one quart of cream. Put all into the freezing machine, and, when frozen, turn it out from the mould by dipping it first into warm water. This cream may also be served in glasses. Red Currant and Raspberry Fool—Stew 211> of the fruit, mixed with sugar to taste, for about fifteen minutes ; pass them through a hair sieve, when cool mix with a cold custard made with one pint of milk and the yolks of three eggs ; pour into a glass dish, and ornament with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Strawberry Champagne Creams. —Pass some strawberries through a sieve, add them to whipped cream, and beat all together, and then place on ice for an hour. Serve in long glasses, and just before bringing to table stir in a tablespoonful of champagne to each glass. Iced Coffee.—Make about three quarts of good strong coffee, sweeten it with some castor sugar, and add to it about one quart of cream ; stir it well together, pour it into a jug, and put it on ice till it is sufficiently cold. If milk is preferred substitute three pints of it for the quart of cream The Juleps will be described next week. A few of these dishes could be taken and an excellent plainer dinner arranged.