RECIPES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XIII, 31 March 1894, Page 310

RECIPES.

Some Fish Hints (‘A Lover of Fish’). —Yes; I know your difficulty well, but it is more apparent than real. Gurnet are very nice if filleted and cooked in a well-buttered baking tin, with white pepper, a very little salt, and some lemon juice ; cover with a well-buttered paper, and cook for ten or twelve minutes in a moderate oven. Serve the fillets on a hot dish, with the liquor in which they were cooked lonnd them, and a morsel of maitre d’hotel butter on each. Haddock, whiting, or any white fish can be cooked in this way. Black butter, anchovy, or shrimp sauce, or even pood tomato sauce, is excellent with fish so cooked. Most so-called coarse fish is delicious stewed. For this put loz of clarified dripping or butter in a pan, and when quite hot fry in it a finely chopped onion. When this is nicely coloured, sprinkle in it a dessertspoonful of flour, and stir it till smooth ; then add a teaspoonful of vinegar, half a pint of water, and pepper and salt to taste. Bring this to the boil, stirring it all the time ; then lay in about l|lb of fish, well washed, cleaned, and cut into 2 inch lengths. Cover the pan tightly, and let it all simmer gently together for ten minutes, then turn it all neatly out on to a hot dish, and serve. A very dainty form of the above can be made by allowing neither butter nor onions to colour, using lemon juice instead of vinegar, adding a little finely chopped parsley, and a tomato or two sliced, and serving it garnished with crofttons of fried bread and quartered slices of lemon. Skate is a fish that stews capitally, but takes about double the time to cook given above, which is for haddock, flounders, etc. Filleted fish can be varied almost indefinitely by means of its sauce Try the fillets with bechamel, blanquette, caper, brown or white (the former, like black butter, is particularly good with skate), anchovy, lobster, shrimp, Hollandaise, or curry sauce. You will find these will make nice changes. Markons au Beuhre —Put a couple of pounds of chestnuts in a saucepan of boiling water with a little salt, and boil till the nuts are tender, drain away the water, remove the shells and inner skins, return them to the pan with loz. of butter, some pepper and salt, stir over the fire till the butter is absorbed, then serve at once.

Custard Puddings. —Make a custard with two ounces of sugar, three eggs, a few drops of vanilla essence, and half a pint of milk ; strain, put the strained juice of a lemon into six or seven small moulds with about two ounces of castor sugar, stand them on the stove till the sugar becomes a deep colour, then turn the moulds round and round till coated, dip the outsides into cold water to set them, fill them up with the custard. Put a fold of paper at the bottom of a saucepan of boiling water, place in the moulds (the water should come up to two-thirds the height of the moulds), let the water boil up, then cover the pan, and let it steam by the side of the stove. Another way :—Put a handful of lump sugar in a saucepan with a gill of water, and let it boil till of a deep colour. Make a custard as above, stir it over the fire in a bain marie, or in a jug placed in a pan of boiling water, till it thickens without boiling ; stir in sufficient of the moist sugar to flavour it nicely, and give it a deep golden colour. Add joz of isinglass dissolved in a little milk, and pour the mixture into a mould, and put in a cold place till set.

Scotch Shortbread.—lt is simple, but so good, and for the eosy tea-table nothing can be more delicious. Take one pound of flour, half a pound of butter, and a quarter of a pound of fine sugar. Add strips of candied peel, and sweet almonds split in half (quantities according to taste), and mix all well together, Rub the butter with the flour—do not melt it. Put the mixture into a shallow tin, sprinkle over some pink and white sugar plums, and bake in a moderately quick oven. Three Good Coffee Receipts.—No. 1: Get a brown china percolator. I roast my coflee at home in a proper roasting machine, and find it very seldom not good, unless the berries have been too much roasted. The water should be allowed to run slowly through the percolator. No. 2 : Take two breakfast cups of quite new milk, two dessertspoonfuls of ground coffee, two dessertspoonfuls of pounded loaf sugar, put all into a saucepan, and stir slowly until boiling ; then pour into a coflee pot, and serve hot. Roasting the coflee beans with a small piece of fresh butter improves the flavour. No. 3 : This can only be obtained by strict attention to simple rules, which servants consider beneath their notice. Having selected good coffee, let the pot in which you make it be kept scrupulously clean, emptied, and dried each time of use. Use one of the new fire proof china coffee pots, which is more easily kept fre-h than the tin French one. They are both on the same simple principle. Allow agood-heaped teaspoonful of coffee for each person, and one over ; put it in the middle part of the pot, and replace the strainer. While the water is actually boiling, pour slowly through the strainer until the part holding the coffee is full, and as it percolates through to the lower part, a little more water may be added. Let this stand near the fire or on the stove while it runs through, and use plenty of hot milk —this coffee is very strong. The great secret of success is the gradual pouring of the boiling water. An old fashioned but delicious mode where modern

coffee pots are not obtainable is to beat up the yolk and white of an egg, mix with it the dry coffee to a paste, put it in a jug, and pour the boiling water upon it. stirring well ; cover closely with a napkin, and leave it five minutes to settle; pour backwards and forwards from a cup three times, and add a cupful more water, and let it stand a short time. Or it may be made in a jug in this method without the egg ; but the new coffee pots are more economical.