The housekeeper's guide to preserved meats, fruits, vegetables, &c

A small crayfish at the top of the dish is a very nice ornament. In making curry sauce, where the flavour of garlic is liked a few beads of garlic can be added to the vegetables and onions at starting, and the whole nibbed through | a wire sieve. Boiled rice should be always handed with curry, and the rice should be handed before the curry. (For boiling rice see Curried Meats, Halford’s.) When curried prawns are made from fresh prawns the cook should carefully scrape out all the soft meat from the head and add it to the curry sauce, and send it through a wire sieve, which will improve the flavour. In currying lobster from fresh lobster the whole of the soft part found in the head should also be added to the sauce and sent through the sieve. In currying lobster some cooks add a little anchovy paste or anchovy butter. This is, of course, a matter of taste. For my own part, I do not think it is a good addition. Curry paste is also used for the purpose of making mulligatawny soup. Mulligatawny soup is, in fact, simply curry sauce diluted with some good stock. Boiled rice should be served with mulligatawny soup, but should not be placed in the soup itself, but handed separately. Some persons think grated Parmesan cheese an improvement to mulligatawny. I do not think myself that this is at all a nice addition. Mulligatawny soup is always very much improved by boiling a few bayleaves in the soup. The bay-leaves should not be served in the soup, but removed before serving. They, however, greatly improve the rich aromatic-scented smell. Curried lobster can be made from tinned lobster. It is one of the best forms in which tinned lobster can be served. Of course, all tinned goods differ somewhat from fresh goods of a similar nature. Tinned lobster is certainly very different from fresh lobster. When, however, some good, rich, strong curry sauce is added it is very difficult to distinguish between tinned lobster and fresh, and any flavour peculiar to tinned goods is entirely removed if the curry sauce is made good. CURRY POWDER.— Curry powder is the most common form in which curry is sold. (For making curry see CURRY Paste.) I have already stated that curry powder should be mixed with curry paste. Good curry can, however, be made from curry powder alone. The addition of fried onions and vegetables, as directed under the heading Curry Paste, is essential, as well as the addition of sour apples. When apples can- *5 not be obtained tbe cook must exercise her own ingenuity to supply a substitute. I will give a few instances. Young green gooseberries are quite as good as apples in making curry. Another desirable addition to curry is a spoonful of Captain White’s Oriental pickles. This Oriental pickle, of course, contains vinegar, and when the sour apple is not to be obtained the addition of the pickle is quite sufficient to give the required slight acid flavour. Another nice addi- . tion to curry when made from curry powder direct with curry paste is to add a spoonful of chutney. There are various kinds of chutney sold — namely, Madras chutney, Bengal Club chutney, Colonel Skinner’s chutney, Cooke’s chutney, Indian mango chutney, etc. A spoonful of any of these chutneys can be added to the curry in the frying-pan, and rubbed through a wire sieve with the onions and vegetables.