home cooking info

LOBSTER A LA BUSHMAN.

Cut the meat of four-pound lobster into large pieces; melt one
tablespoonful butter and one teaspoonful minced onion, let cook until
yellow. Add the lobster, salt, cayenne pepper, two tablespoonfuls white
wine; simmer for five minutes, then sprinkle one tablespoonful flour
over this. When well mixed, add six or eight mushrooms cut fine, one
tablespoonful chili sauce, add one cup water or stock. Cook five minutes
longer in shells, put a mushroom on each, sprinkle with buttered cracker
crumbs. Bake till brown.

KENTUCKY CORN BREAD.

One pint thick, sour milk, two teaspoonfuls salt, one egg. Mix with this
enough cornmeal to make a batter not stiff. Use meal of medium
fineness–not the very fine sold in most groceries. Beat well; add last
one level teaspoonful soda dissolved in a little water. Allow a
tablespoonful of lard to become very hot in baking pan; pour into the
batter, stir, and turn into pan. Bake until cooked through.

BAKING POWDER BISCUITS

Two cups flour, two teaspoonfuls baking powder, one-half teaspoonful
salt, two tablespoonfuls lard, a little sugar if desired, one-half cup
milk or water, milk preferred. Mix flour, salt, sugar and baking powder
well with fork; add milk. When well mixed, drop in small quantities onto
buttered pans. Bake eight minutes in moderate oven

COLD WATER BREAD.

1-1/4 lb. fine wholemeal flour to 3/4 pint water.

Put the meal into a basin, add the water gradually, and mix with a clean,
cool hand. (Bread, pastry, etc., mixed with a spoon, especially of metal,
will not be so light as that mixed with a light cool hand.) Knead lightly
for 20 minutes. (A little more flour may be required while kneading, as
some brands of meal do not absorb so much water as others, but do not add
more than is absolutely necessary to prevent the fingers sticking.) Put
the dough on to a floured board and divide into four round loaves. Prick
with a fork on top.

The colder the water used, the lighter the bread, and if the mixing be
done by an open window so much the better, for unfermented bread is
air-raised. Distilled or clean boiled rain-water makes the lightest bread.
But it should be poured backwards and forwards from one jug to another
several times, in order to aerate it.

_Another method_ of mixing is the following:–Put the water into the basin
first and stir the meal quickly into it with a spatula or wooden spoon.
When it gets too stiff to be stirred, add the rest of the meal. Knead for
two minutes, and shape into loaves as above.

BAKING.–Bake on the bare oven shelf, floored. If possible have a few
holes bored in the shelf. This is not absolutely necessary, but any tinker
or ironmonger will perforate your shelf for a few pence. Better still are
wire shelves, like sieves. (This does not apply to gas ovens.)

Start with a hot oven, but not too hot. To test, sprinkle a teaspoonful of
flour in a patty pan, and put in the oven for five minutes. At the end of
that time, if the flour is a light golden-brown colour, the oven is right.
Now put in the bread and keep the heat of the oven well up for half an
hour. At the end of this time turn the loaves. Now bake for another hour,
but do not make up the fire again. Let the oven get slightly cooler. The
same result may perhaps be obtained by moving to a cooler shelf. It all
depends on the oven. But always start with a hot oven, and after the first
half hour let the oven get cooler.

Always remember, that the larger the loaves the slower must be the baking,
otherwise they will be overdone on the outside and underdone in the middle.

Do not open the oven door oftener than absolutely necessary.

If a gas oven is used the bread must be baked on a baking sheet placed on
a sand tin. A sand tin is the ordinary square or oblong baking tin,
generally supplied with gas stoves, filled with silver sand. A baking
sheet is simply a piece of sheet-iron, a size smaller than the oven
shelves, so that the heat may pass up and round it. Any ironmonger will
cut one to size for a few pence. Do not forget to place a vessel of water
(hot) in the bottom of the oven. This is always necessary in a gas oven
when baking bread, cakes or pastry.

It must not be forgotten that ovens are like children they need
understanding. The temperature of the kitchen and the oven’s nearness to a
window or door will often make a difference of five or ten minutes in the
time needed for baking. One gas oven that I knew never baked well in
winter unless a screen was put before it to keep away draughts!

ROLLS.–If you desire to get your bread more quickly it is only a question
of making smaller loaves. Little rolls may be cut out with a large egg-cup
or small pastry cutter, and these take any time from twenty minutes to
half an hour.

VEGETABLE SALAD

The special point of this dish is that peas, beans, carrots in dice, are
all cooked separately and when they are cold they are placed in a large
dish without being mixed. Decorate with the hearts of lettuce round the
edge and with slices of tomato, and pour over it, or hand with it, a good
mayonnaise.

Make a plain white sauce of one tablespoonful butter, one tablespoonful
flour and one cup of milk with seasoning of salt and pepper. When this
is ready add the contents of a can of Veribest Boned Chicken, gently
pulling apart the flakes of meat with a fork. When thoroughly heated
serve in a roll which has been hollowed out for the purpose, with a
garnish of cooked asparagus stalks.

BARLEY SOUP.

8 oz. of pearl barley, 2 onions, 4 potatoes, 1/2 a teaspoonful of
thyme, 1 dessertspoonful of finely chopped parsley, 3-1/2 pints of
water, 1/2 pint of milk, 1 oz. of butter. Pick and wash the barley,
chop up the onions, slice the potatoes. Boil the whole gently for 4
hours with the water, adding the butter, thyme, pepper and salt to
taste. When the barley is quite soft, add the milk and parsley, boil
the soup up, and serve.