Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

Neapolitan Leg of Mutton. — It is a great thing if the same dish can be made not only to taste, but to look different, for in food, I think, we all like variety. Here is the recipe for the “ Neapolitan leg of mutton ” (my own recipe). It weighed 6^ lbs. Bone the leg of mutton and stuff it with a well-mixed stuffing made of bread-crumbs, suet, sweet herbs flavoured with nutmeg, pepper, salt, and a suspicion of onion. Fill with the stuffing the cavity out of which the bone has been taken and sew it up. Stew the leg with a quart of water with two large onions put in whole with just a slit at one end, and a few blades of mace and some allspice. About an hour before dinner soak some macaroni, pouring boiling water on it, and add to the liquid in the pot in which the leg of mutton is stewing. Add the juice of a lemon or a glass of light wine, with the yolk of an egg beaten up well, to the gravy when boiling, just before serving; but it must not boil after adding these ingredients, but be at once removed from the fire. Serve the mutton on a very hot dish, with the onions and macaroni arranged round. This dish takes 2\ hours to cook. October 20. — Stewed Chops. — To-day we had part of a 213 Oct. CHOPS. QUAIL PIE. POLONIES neck of mutton to use up, and we tried stewed chops from my own recipe. These are prepared first by beating them with the blunt edge of a knife, and then laying them in a little milk for a few minutes. Next lay them in a flat stewing-pot, not deep saucepan, sprinkle over them a few thin slices of onion, fried a nice light-brown, some salt, pepper, a dash of nut- meg, a layer of fine bread-crumbs ; repeat layers, same order. Cover close and let it stew gently for half-an-hour, shake the saucepan, add half a cup of stock or water, and let it stew gently for half-an-hour more. Serve as entree. A Luxurious Q,uail Pie. — As quails are very plentiful in October and November at the Cape, this recipe is worth remembering (I see in Hilda! s Where is it I have only mentioned about cooking them in a baking-pot, or having them as a curry); it is called “A Luxurious Quail Pie.” You should have 12 quails, and 2 lbs. steak. ‘'Put a spoonful of pate de foie gras inside each bird,” says the recipe, but if that is not at hand, we use other rich but not strong-flavoured stuffing. Wrap each bird in a thin slice of bacon. Add a smalhtin of truffles, half a bottle of black Worces- tershire mushrooms, 6 hard-boiled eggs, each cut in half, and some Worcester sauce — fill in with rich stock. Cover with a good crust and bake sloivly. Polonies. — For breakfast, or for sandwiches, picnics, etc., polonies are very useful. They are made as follows: — 12 lbs. beef, 2 lbs. fat (beef fat can be used ; at the Cape we use the fat of the Cape sheep cut into very small dice— it will keep for months if smoked or dried), pepper, nutmeg, salt, coriander seeds, and 2 ozs. little saltpetre. Mince and flavour to taste, and put into sausage-bags 214 FILLET DE ROMANO. SARDINE SAVOURY Oct. procured from the butcher (or, if on a farm, use the ox-guts well cleaned). Tie up in quarter-yard lengths, and hang in the smoke for a day — boil them the next day for about lo minutes, and then hang in a dry place. They will keep for months.