The Belgian Cookbook | Page 6

at the same time three pounds of chestnuts, skin them, keep ten whole, and rub the others through the sieve, adding a little milk to make a pur��e. Mix the pur��e with the cabbage, adding salt, pepper, and a lump of butter the size of a chestnut. Press it into a mold and cook it in a double saucepan for quarter of an hour. Take it out and decorate with the whole chestnuts.
RED CABBAGE
Take half a red cabbage of medium size, chop it very finely and put it in a pan; add a little water, salt, and pepper, three or four potatoes cut in fine slices and five lumps of sugar. Let it all simmer for two hours with the lid on. Then take off the cover and let it reduce. Before serving it, add either a bit of fat pork or some gravy, with a dessertspoonful of vinegar. Stir it well before sending it to table.
[Mrs. Emelie Jones.]
ASPARAGUS �� L'ANVERS
Clean a bunch of asparagus and cook it in salt water for fifteen minutes. To do this successfully, tie the bunch round with some tape and place it upright in a pan of boiling water. Let the heads be above the water so that they will get cooked by the steam and will not be broken. Simmer in this way to prevent them moving much. Meanwhile, hard-boil three eggs and chop some parsley. Lay the asparagus on a dish and sprinkle parsley over it, place round the sides the eggs cut in halves long-ways, and serve as well a sauce-boat of melted butter.
[Mrs. Emelie Jones.]
COOKED LETTUCE
Very often you will find that you cannot use all your lettuces, that they have begun to bolt and are no good for salad. This is the moment to cook them. Discard any bad leaves and wash the others carefully. Boil them for twelve minutes, take them off the fire, drain them and dry them in a clean cloth so as to get rid of all the water. Mince them finely, then put them into a saucepan with a lump of butter, pepper and salt. Stir till they begin to turn color, then put in a thimbleful of flour melted in milk. Stir constantly, and if the vegetable becomes dry, moisten with more flour and milk. Let it simmer for quarter of an hour, and turn it out as a vegetable with meat.
STUFFED CAULIFLOWER
Pick over a fine cauliflower, and plunge it for a moment in boiling water. Look over it well again and remove any grit or insects. Put it head downwards in a pan when you have already placed a good slice of fat bacon at the bottom and sides. In the holes between the pan and the vegetable put a stuffing of minced meat, with breadcrumbs, yolks of eggs, mushrooms, seasoning of the usual kinds, in fact, a good forcemeat. Press this well in, and pour over it a thin gravy. Let it cook gently, and when the gravy on the top has disappeared put a dish on the top of the saucepan, turn it upside down and slip the cauliflower out. Serve very hot.
GOURMANDS' MUSHROOMS
There was a man in Ghent who loved mushrooms, but he could only eat them done in this fashion. If you said, "Monsieur, will you have them tossed in butter?" he would roar out, "No--do you take me for a Prussian? Let me have them properly cooked."
Melt in a pan a lump of butter the size of a tangerine orange and squeeze on it the juice of half a lemon. The way to get a great deal of juice from a lemon is to plunge it first of all for a few minutes, say five minutes, in boiling water. When the butter simmers, throw in a pound of picked small mushrooms, stir them constantly, do not let them get black. Then in three or four minutes they are well impregnated with butter, and the chief difficulty of the dish is over. Put the saucepan further on the fire, let it boil for a few minutes. Take out the mushrooms, drain them, sprinkle them with flour, moisten them with gravy, season with salt and pepper, put them back in the butter and stir in the yolk of an egg. Add also a little of the lemon juice that remains. While you are doing this you must get another person to cut and toast some bread and to butter it. Pour on to the bread the mushrooms (which are fit for the greatest saints to eat on Fridays), and serve them very hot.
POMMES CH?TEAU
Take twenty potatoes, turn them with a knife into olive shape, boil them in salted water for five minutes; drain them and put them on a baking-tin with salt and butter or dripping. Cook them in a