The "Queen" cookery books: Vegetables

white pepper, put little morsels of butter over them, and stew gently over a slow fire till cooked, when they may be served with a maitre d'hotel sauce (to half a pint of rich bechamel or good brown sauce — if you wish it brown — add the strained juice of a lemon, a dust of cayenne, a teaspoonful of minced parsley, and, worked in at the last, l^oz. to 2oz. of butter broken up small, working one piece well in before adding the next), or any other sauce to your taste. Artichokes cooked thus are excellent cold en vinaigrette (i.e., three parts best olive oil to one part tarragon vinegar, seasoned to taste with salt and pepper, and beaten up with a fork till perfectly blended. To this some cooks add a little French or English mustard, but this is a matter of taste ; beat up the salt first with the vinegar, or it will not dissolve, and the sauce will be unpleasantly gritty, an objection often made against this sauce) ; artichokes en salade are also delicious and easy to prepare. Trim as before, then quarter them and remove the choke, dropping each piece as finished into cold water, to which you have added the juice of a lemon or a tablespoonful of best white vinegar, as this preserves the colour. Leave them in this water for a little ; when wanted, slice them and serve with a vinaigrette sauce, plain or with prawns, olives, filletted anchovies, plovers’ eggs, &c., as you please. Artichokes treated thus, or indeed plain cooked artichokes left till cold and sliced, make excellent fritters, if seasoned with pepper, salt, oil, and vinegar, and as Artichauts en beignets are a favourite dish abroad. Stuffed artichokes go by many names, according to their stuffing mostly. The method of preparation is this : Trim the artichokes as before, and boil for twenty minutes in salted and acidulated water ; the stamens and small inner leaves should now lift out easily, then with a silver spoon remove the choke, fill the cavity thus left with any farce to taste, introducing a little also between the leaves, and tie each up closely to keep in the stuffing, place them close together on a baking tin, pour sufficient olive oil over them to insure each being properly moistened, and bake for about half an hour, then remove the strings and serve. If you make a d'uxelles (equal quantities of onion and shallots, minced, with double the quantity of raw minced mushrooms, seasoned with pepper and salt and some finely minced parsley, all fried together in butter), add to this a little bacon minced (say a small slice for each artichoke), and use for the farce, the artichokes will be a la barigoule ; if you mince some washed and boned anchovies with a shallot or two (according to quantity), and a very little powdered thyme, pepper, and salt, a few freshly made breadcrumbs, and a few drops of oil to moisten it all, and use this as the stuffing, they become d V I talienne ; if you mince three well cleansed large fresh mushrooms, and mix it with a slice or so of ham also minced, half a small onion fried and minced, |oz. grated cheese, a full teaspoonful of mixed and finely minced herbs, with the crumb of a French roll previously soaked in milk or stock, and a tiny dust of grated nutmeg, and use this for the farce, they become A. a la Parmesane ; in short any dainty forcemeat can be used in this way and served as A. far CIS.