FoodNet

National viands à la mode

1895

Page 24

Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Take chickens' and ducks' livers, gizzards, and hearts, and cut them into dice ; some fresh pork, celery, asparagus tops, bamboo shoots, dried mush- rooms, and greens, and cut them up into convenient- sized pieces ; pour over it some good gravy, then put it in a spider and fry it. Dates. (Arabian) Peel a few dozen fresh dates, remove their stones, pound them to a pulp, and pass through a sieve ; give sugar to this puree, add a few drops of extract of roses or lemons, spread it in a layer on a pie-dish, and mask this puree immediately with a *bouillie' of good arrowroot or rice flour prepared with milk and flavoured with orange or lemon. Dhal Curry. (Indian) Boil half a pint of lentils in one quart of water till soft and pulpy ; set them aside. Cut up an onion into thin rings, fry in two ounces of butter, and add to it curry powder and all the flavourings as for other curries. Then put in the lentils and boil for an hour, and serve with a dish of plain boiled rice. Eel Mouillie. (Indian) (Mrs. Grace Johnson) Soak for twelve hours four ounces of desiccated cocoanut in one pint of water and simmer for one hour ; strain the liquor and put it by. Cut up an onion into thin rings and chop up two heads of n-arlic ; 54 NATIONAL VIANDS fry these with twenty-four cloves to a delicate gold colour in two ounces of butter ; add three bay leaves, a sprig of tarragon, one teaspoonful of chilli vinegar, and the cocoanut liquor. Let all boil for an hour, strain, and add one gill of thick cream and a penny- w^orth of saffron dissolved in half a wineglass of hot water and strained ; stir well, add salt to taste, and pour over the fish. Garnish with sliced green ginger and pickled red chillies. Indian Burdwan Take the joints of a parboiled fowl ; peel and chop very finely four shallots and an onion. Put them in a small stewpan with a small cup of good stock, a tablespoonful of the essence of anchovies, a little cayenne, and an ounce of butter rolled in flour. Stir over the fire till the same is ready to boil, then put it aside to simmer, adding a small cupful of mixed Indian pickles cut into less than half-inch pieces, a tablespoonful of chilli vinegar, and a glass or two of sherry. Simmer the same, to make the pickles tender, and pour in the wine when the fowl is ready to be stewed. Skin and lay the fowl, cut in neat pieces, in the stewpan with the same, and if the fowl has been only parboiled, stew it gently for fifteen or twenty minutes, but for a thoroughly cooked fowl serve as soon as it is ready to boil with the juice of a fresh lemon. Rice is sometimes served with it. An Indian Drink Add sugar and maraschino to taste to the juice of fresh limes. Put a little of this into a glass of water and add slices of pineapple or peaches, ORIENTAL 55 Indian Pooloot