RECIPES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XXII, 30 May 1896, Page 643

RECIPES.

Oyster Salad. —Two dozen fresh oysters, two heads of celery with part of their green tops, and half as much tender white cabbage. Put the cabbage aud celery into boiling, salted water, boil five minutes, pour off the water, drain aud chop fine. Drain the liquor from the oysters, boil and skim it. Add an equal quantity of good vinegar, some broken pepper-corns, pepper sauce and salt. Put in the oysters, shake the pau while they are scalding that they may set in a round and plump shape. Do not let them boil. Drain and set them away to become cold. When ready to serve, season the chopped celery slightly with oil and vinegar. Spread part of it on a dish, lay the oysters in it side by side, and the rest of the celery on top of them. Smooth the top and cover with tartare sauce, omitting the minced onion and gherkin The sauce must be thin enough to spread itself easily over the oysters.

Baked Mullet.—Put a mullet steak, weighing about two pounds, in the middle of a pan ; sprinkle it with salt and a little finely-chopped onion ; then spread with enough tomato to cover the fish ; next, cover with breadcrumbs. Add a little more salt, and some generous bits of butter; bake about forty minutes or less; lift out carefully on a hot dish, pour hot tomatoes around it, and serve.

Pastry.—A culinary authority says that the only really wholesome pastry is that made from beef fat, anil gives the following practical instructions for preparing this ingredient, ready for use when pastries are to be the sweet course for meals. ‘The small pieces of fat trimmed from off the piece of beef that forms the more substantial part of the daily dinner are placed in an iron pan, and allowed to simmer four or five hours ; the fluid fat is then strained into a small crock or tin, and set within the refrigerator when sufficiently cooled ; here it will keep indefinitely.’ For those who do not possess a ‘refrigerator’ the coolest place available must suffice, the only difference being the fact of it not keeping so long, of course. When beef is not part of the menii for dinner it is easy to procure a few pounds of beef fat from your butcher.

Iced Curry.—Mix about a dessertspoonful of curry powder with half a pint of mayonnaise, and stir thoroughly into this about lib of flaked cold chicken, ham, sweetbreads, etc., aud set it on ice till thoroughly cold. Have some carefully boiled rice, cold ; fill some paper cases with the curry mixture, and pile the rice on the top in a pyramid ; garnish with shreds of red chillies and hard-boiled yolk of egg rubbed through a sieve.

La Bella Cake.—lngredients : ioozs of flour, Sozs butter, Sozs castor sugar, zozs candied peel, ' 4 lb of sultanas, 4 eggs, rind of a lemon. Grate the lemon, mix it with the sugar and run through a sieve, beat the butter to a cream, mix in a spoonful of flour, one of sugar, then one of the eggs well beaten up. continue this till flour, sugar, and eggs are well incorporated, add the other ingredients, and bake in a well buttered tin lined with buttered paper. The quantity of sultanas may be increased, or half currants used if preferred.