Home cookery

Scale and clean the fish. Stuff it with the following forcemeat : — Mix together the bread crumbs, butter (melted), yolk of egg, oysters, and the oyster liquor to moisten it. Season it with a little cayenne. Place this mixture inside the fish, and sew it up. Brush over the fish with the white of an egg or a little milk, and cover it with brown crumbs. Put on it some small pieces of butter, place it in a greased tin, with buttered paper over it. Bake from twenty to thirty minutes in a moderate oven. Remove it on to a hot dish with a slice. Pour round it either oyster, Hollandaise, or parsley cream sauce. Poisson a la Sauce Flamande. Take the remains of any cold fish, break it into large flakes, and make it hot between two plates in the oven, or over boiling water. Place it in the centre of a dish, mask it with the Flemish sauce. Garnish with parsnip or potato puree put through a large rose forcer, croutons of fried bread, and parsley. Flemish Sauce. Melt one ounce of butter in a saucepan, stir in one and a half ounces of fine flour, add half a pint of fish stock well flavoured with vegetables (such as a few slices of carrot, turnip, onion, herbs, peppercorns) ; boil the sauce well, add one or two tablespoonfuls of cream and the yolks of three eggs, taking care it does not boil after adding the eggs. Add a little chili vinegar, and a tablespoonful of either French vinegar or vinegar from pickled gherkins. Lastly, stir in two tablespoonfuls of chopped pickled gherkins or capers. Season and serve. m Simple Entrees, None of the entrees given here are extravagant, nor will they be found difficult to prepare. Many of these can be used as luncheon dishes, or they may sometimes form the main part of a dinner, when, as is often the case, a joint is not required. Petites Soufflees de Merlan. ( By kind permission of lA-RS. A. B. Marshall.) Put one and a half ounces of butter in a stewpan with one and a half ounces of fine flour, half a teaspoonful of essence of anchovy, a pinch of salt, a dust of cayenne, and two raw yolks of eggs ; mix with one and a half gills of cold milk, and stir altogether over the fire until the mixture boils ; remove from the fire, mix into it a dessertspoonful of cream or milk, and four and a half ounces of pounded or very finely chopped whiting (raw) : then mix in carefully three whites of eggs whipped stiffly. Have some little paper cases oiled on the outside and dried in the screen, and partly fill these with the soufflee mixture. Sprinkle on top of each a few browned bread crumbs, put a tiny piece of butter on top of this to keep the soufflees from getting dry, and bake them in a moderate oven about fifteen minutes. This mixture can also be baked in a large case or pie-dish, and is excellent when steamed. The entire quantity baked in one case will require about half an hour to cook. Serve as an entrde or in the fish course, or for a second course dish in place of game or poultry. Vol-au-Vents de Poisson. Some puff pastry. About 6 ozs. cooked fish (mixed), as 3 or 4 oysters, little lobster, few shrimps, little whiting or sole, i or 2 anchovies. Flour J oz. Butter J oz. Milk 1 gill. Little cream. Cayenne. Seasoning. Lemon juice.