Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

Stewed Trotters. — Prepare and boil some trotters as for brawn, and in the same way; when quite tender remove the bones and fat. Then stew the trotters with a few slices of onion. The onion may be slightly browned in fat, or it may be put in just as it is, with pepper, a small piece of mace, a dash of grated nutmeg, and thickened with some finely-grated bread-crumbs. (Any pieces of stale white bread, dried in a cool oven and pounded, are most useful for thickening soups, or rolling cutlets or fish in for frying — far nicer than fresh crumbs. They should be kept ready, tightly corked in glass bottles.) To the stewed trotters add, just before serving, the juice of a lemon, whisked up with the yolk of an egg. This dish makes a nice entree, and is inexpensive — half-a-dozen trotters costing 6d. Trotters in Batter. — When you are stewing trotters for brawn, reserve some of the pieces of meat, without the jelly. Dust a little pepper, salt, and nutmeg over each piece. Have ready, meantime, a nice batter (as described p. 72). Fry the pieces of meat in this. It is a nice dish 145 L June CURRIED TROTTERS. LAPLAND COFFEE for breakfast, or as an entree, and very delicate invalids may eat it and will enjoy it. Curried Trotters. — Curried trotters may be done by adding the following after you have, as before, prepared and boiled the trotters and removed the bones (which can be done the day before)— i tablespoonful of Cartwright’s or other curry-powder, a large onion cut in slices and fried brown, a tablespoonful of vinegar, and a dessertspoonful of very brown sugar. This dish should be served with rice and apple chutney (see Hilda's Where is it, p. 34, for Mrs. Jackson’s recipe). June 5- Coffee, Lapland method.^ — Which is the greatest traveller, coffee or tea.? Coffee, I imagine, is found in more out-of-the-way corners of the earth than tea. Anyway it has travelled to Arctic Lapland, where Mr. Hyne tells us he met it under the following circumstances : — “Out of a skin knapsack she (an old herder Lapp woman) had taken a small skin bag. From this she extracted some twelve green coffee-beans, which she proceeded to roast one by one in a small iron spoon, to the accompaniment of vast care and solicitude. When all were cooked to her taste, she bruised them in coarse fragments — and be it well understood she did not grind them — between two stones j and put the result with water into a kettle of copper, which had one lid in the usual place, and another on the end of the spout, to keep out smoke and feathery wood ash. “In the kettle the whole mixture was boiled up together into a bubbling broth of coffee fragments and coffee extract. She cleared it by an old trick which is known to ^ Mr. Hyne’s book, Arctic Lapland, from which the extract of Lapp method of making coffee is given by kind permission, is published by A. and C. Black, Soho Square, London. CARAMEL CUSTARD Ju7ie campers all the world over. She put into the kettle a small splash of cold water, and the coffee grounds were promptly precipitated to the bottom. “Then she poured the clear, brown, steaming liquor into a blackened bowl of birch root, and handed it to the good man her husband.” Mr. Hyne adds— “We drank in our turn, and I do not know that I have ever tasted more perfect coffee.”