How to cook vegetables

Bake two beetroots in the oven until tender ; when cold, remove the skin, and cut them into slices. Put them in a stew-pan, pour over a little vinegar and some stock or gravy. Season with pepper and salt, and simmer gently for half an hour. Pour off the gravy and reduce it to a glaze, add a few slices of beetroot, well pounded in a mortar, and 2 tablespoonsful of brown sauce. Boil up for a few minutes ; mix these with the sliced beetroot, heat carefully and dish up, garnish with fleurons or fried bread croutons, and serve. Beetroot Soup. 1 quart of stock, 1 oz. of butter, 1 oz. of flour, 1 large cooked beetroot, \ a stick of celery, \ gill of cream, salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a stew-pan, stir in the flour, and cook it, without browning, over the fire for a few minutes. Add the stock, or use milk and water, if you have no stock. Stir this over the fire till it boils. Peel the beetroot and cut it into shreds. Wash, trim, and shred the celery, and add both to the stock, etc. Boil the soup with the lid on for about half an hour, not more, or the colour will be spoilt. Put the soup through a sieve, rub enough of the beetroot through to give it a nice colour and consistency. Season carefully, add the cream. Heat it thoroughly without letting it boil again. Serve hot. Beetroot Salad. There are three ways of cooking beetroot. They may be boiled in water, baked in the oven, or roasted on the ashes. They are usually better roasted or BROCCOLI. baked than boiled. In cooking them the skin must remain intact, or they will lose their juice, and with it their fine red colour. To use as a salad, peel and cut into thin slices, season with salt and pepper, and leave for at least x hour in vinegar. Before serving, sprinkle over lightly with olive oil. Beetroot thus prepared and shredded finely is used as hors d’ oeuvre. Beetroot also forms an accompaniment for several salads, such as endive and lettuce. It is prepared in advance, pickled in vinegar, and must not be mixed with the salad until the last moment. Beetroot and Potato Salad. i boiled beetroot, vinegar, 6 large new or kidney potatoes, hard-boiled egg, watercress, oil, pepper, salt, chervil, chives. Cut the beetroot into slices, put it into a bowl, season with salt and vinegar, and let it remain for 6 hours. Boil the potatoes in their skins, peel and slice them, and while they are still warm pour the beetroot juice over them. Season them with oil, pepper, salt, and finely-chopped chervil and chives. Neatly arrange the salad in a salad bowl, and garnish with hard-boiled egg and water-cress. Beet Greens or Beetroot Tops. Prepare these the same as spinach greens, leaving the young beetroots and tender stalks, and cooking them with the smallest leaves with a good-sized piece of salt pork. When tender, remove from the liquor, drain, dish up and serve hot. Serve with vinaigrette. BROCCOLI (Brocoli). This is a hardy variety of the cauliflower, of which there are two kinds : one is obtainable for use in the autumn, and the other in the early spring ; both are equally good as a green vegetable. Like the cauliflower, broccoli is only a cultivated form of the D 5°