The "Queen" cookery books: Vegetables

Mushrooms sur le plat. — For this dish you need two soup plates that will stand the fire. Butter one of these well, and lay some small mushrooms in this, putting a pat of maitre d’hotel butter (the size of a good hazel nut) on each, with a very few drops of water. Lay a strip of any common paste round the edge of this plate, reverse the other plate over it, pressing it well down into the paste to keep in all the steam, and bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes. When ready remove the top plate and the paste, wipe the rim of the under plate, and serve the mushrooms at once and very hot. If preferred they can, when ready, be lifted on to rounds of hot buttered toast on which you have poured the sauce in the dish. Nasturtiums (also called Indian cress). — It is generally used raw in salads and sandwiches, the leaves alone being used in the latter case, but both flowers and leaves going into the salad ; or pickled, the young shoots being particular good as pickles, and the young seeds if carefully treated being equal (and to many tastes superior) to capers. seeds, pickled. — Gather the seeds before they are fully ripe, and whilst quite green. Wash them well in plenty of cold water, drying them gently in a clean, soft cloth, and put them when dry into glass bottles ; for every pint of seeds take a teaspoonful of salt, two cloves, half a teaspooiiful of finely scraped horseradish, and a leaf of green tarragon (or failing this a little tarragon vinegar), add to this sufficient good vinegar to cover the seeds thoroughly, and pour this mixture into the bottles, corking and sealing them. This is a very easy recipe, but the following, though entailing a little more trouble, is to my mind nicer : For each pint of good vinegar allow a teaspoonful of salt, a small teaspoonful of peppercorns, and two chillies, and boil these all up together, then let it get perfectly cold, when you pour it on the seeds bottled as befoi-e. Cork and seal well, and keep from six weeks to two months before using. Nasturtium salad. — -Gather the requisite amount of flowers, taking with these a few of the young shoots and small leaves, mix and place these in a salad bowl, and strew them with about a tablespoonful of finely minced chervil and some salt ; mix together the juice of two lemons and three tablespoonfuls of best salad oil till perfectly blended, pour this over the nasturtiums, stir them all up well together to distribute the dressing evenly, and serve at once. vinegar. — Pick sufficient flowers to loosely fill a quart bottle, and pour in sufficient good malt vinegar to fill it, adding a minced shalot or two, a clove, and three or four peppercorns to this quantity. Cork down tightly and let it stand for two months, then rub it all through a very fine sieve, add salt and a little cayenne to taste, and bottle off in small bottles, corking and sealing it down tightly. Nettles. — These make a most wholesome and extremely palatable vegetable, and in many parts of S(!