The Belgian Cookbook | Page 5

twenty minutes. Wash and chop your mushrooms, and fry
them in butter. Add the yolk of an egg and bind it. This is a delicious
soup.
[Mme. van Marcke de Lunessen.]
THE SOLDIER'S VEGETABLE SOUP
(Eight to ten persons)
Peel three pounds of vegetables. Put them in a large pot with all the
vegetables that you can find, according to the season. In the winter you
will take four celeries, four leeks, two turnips, a cabbage, two onions,
pepper and salt, two-penny-worth of bones, and about five and one-half
quarts of water. Let it all boil for three hours, taking care to add water
so as to keep the quantity at five quarts. Rub all the vegetables through
a tammy, crushing them well, and then let them boil up again for at
least another hour. The time allotted for the first and second cooking is
of the greatest importance.
LEEK SOUP
Cut up two onions and fry them till they are brown; you need not use
butter, clarified fat will do very well. Clean your leeks, washing them
well; cut them in pieces and fry them also; add any other vegetables
that you have, two medium-sized potatoes, pepper, salt, and a little
water. Let all simmer for three hours, and pass it through a fine sieve.
Let there be more leeks than other vegetables, so that their flavor

predominates.
[Mme. Jules Segers.]
CELERIS AU LARD
Take one pound of celery, cut off the green tops, cut the stems into
pieces two-thirds of an inch long; put into boiling salted water, and
cook till tender. Take one-half pound potatoes, peel and slice, and add
to the celery, so that both will be cooked at the same moment. Strain
and place on a flat fire-proof dish. Prepare some fat slices of bacon,
toast them till crisp in the oven; pour the melted bacon-fat over the
celery and potato, adding a dash of vinegar, and place the rashers on
top. Serve hot.
Leeks may be prepared in the same way.
CABBAGE WITH SAUSAGES
Cut a large cabbage in two, slice and wash, put it into boiling water
with salt, and when partly cooked, add some potatoes cut into smallish
pieces. Cook all together for about an hour; then drain. Put some fat in
a saucepan, slice an onion, brown it in the fat, add the cabbage and
potato, and stew all together for ten minutes; then dish. Bake some
sausages in the oven and dish them round the cabbage; serve hot.
_Another way (easier)_
Stew the cabbages, potato and sausages all together and dish up neatly.
LEEKS À LIEGOISE Take enough of leeks to make the size of dish
required; if they are very thick, cut in two lengthwise; cut off the green
tops; leaving only the blanched piece of stalk; put them into boiling
salted water and cook thoroughly about one hour: strain and dish neatly
on a fish-drainer. Have ready some hard-boiled eggs; shell them, cut in
two, and place round the leeks; serve hot with melted butter, or cold
with mayonnaise sauce.

N. B. The water in which the leeks have been boiled makes a
wholesome drink when cold, or a nourishing basis for a vegetable soup.
[From Belgians at Dollarfield, N.B.]
A SALAD OF TOMATOES
To make a tomato salad you must not slice the fruit in a dish and then
pour on it a little vinegar and then a little oil; that is not salad --that is
ignorance.
Take some red tomatoes, and, if you can procure them, some golden
ones also. Plunge each for a moment in boiling water, peel off the skin,
but carefully, so as not to cut through the flesh with the juice. Take
some raw onion cut in slices; if you do not like the strong taste, use
shallot; and lay four or five flat slices on the bottom of the salad dish.
Put the tomato slices over them, sprinkle with salt and just a dust of
castor sugar. In four hours lift the tomatoes and remove the onions
altogether. Make in a cup the following sauce: Dissolve a salt-spoonful
of salt in a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar. Stir in a dessert-spoonful of
oil, dropping it slowly in, add a very little mustard, some pepper and a
sprinkle of chopped chervil. Some people like chopped chives. Pour
this over the tomato salad and leave it for an hour at least before
serving it.
POTATOES AND CHEESE
Every one likes this nourishing dish, and it is a cheap one. Peel some
potatoes and cut them in rounds. In a fireproof dish put a layer of these,
sprinkle them with flour, grated cheese, pepper, salt, a few pats of
butter. Then some more potatoes, and so on till the dish is full. Beat the
yolks of two