The "Queen" cookery books: Entrees

or tomato sauce, and fold tlie raviolis over into a square, pinching the ends well together, after which you drop them into fast boiling salted water, and simmer for thirty minutes. Lift them out with a skimmer, and drain well. Have ready the pastelined timbale and pack it as before with the raviolis, a good dust of black pepper and grated cheese, and enough thick tomato sauce to fill up the interstices, and bake as before. Polenta Timbale. — Prepare the polenta by dropping handfuls of Indian corn meal gradually into a saucepanful of boiling salted water, stirring it steadily till the flour is thoroughly cooked and the polenta becomes like porridge. It must be remembered that the meal takes up a great deal of water, a pint of liquid to a not over-large handful of meal is about the right proportion. Butter and grated cheese may be added in the making, and certainly add to the flavour of the polenta. The butter should be put into the boiling water at the first, but the cheese is sprinkled in as you stir the mixture. When this polenta is very thick and stiff turn it out on to a dish or slab and let it become quite cold, when it will be of about the thickness of a stiff cornflour shape. Cut this polenta out into long fingers the depth of the timbale mould, butter the latter well, lay in the bottom a round of polenta about lin. thick, then arrange the fingers all round, just as you would line a Charlotte russe. Now fill up the centre with grated cheese (Parmesan), pieces of the polenta, slices of Gruyere cheese, balls of forcemeat, or little cakes of sausage meat, shredded ham or any TIMBALES, VOL-AU-VENT, PATTIES, &c. 95 meat, cooked poultry livers, and red pepper, with, pepper and salt to taste, some pieces of butter, and a very little stock from the stock pot; cover with another disc of the polenta, and bake for an hour. This may be made in just the same way with macaroni. (These dishes lend themselves most successfully to a vegetarian style, tomato sauce or vegetable stock replacing the meat sauces, whilst mushrooms, artichoke bottoms, &c., can be used instead of the meat itself.) Timbale de Macaroni à la Romaine. — Line a well buttered mould which has been rather thickly sprinkled with vermicelli, with good lard paste, pressing this well home into the shape of the mould ; have ready stewed a rabbit or an old fowl (or a corresponding amount of cooked veal, or other white meat, as long as it is lean) cut up small, 2oz. of boiled macaroni, and a little cooked vermicelli, all cut into inch lengths, 2oz. grated Parmesan cheese, a little very finely minced shallot or chives, pepper and salt to taste, and either a few blanched almonds or a handful of pignole, or fircone kernels (these are not indispensable adjuncts), mix these all lightly together and place in the mould ; add from one-fourth to one-third of a pint of cream or new milk, cover with a round of the paste and bake for an hour. Turn out and serve with brown, white, or tomato sauce as you please. This, like a good many of the other timbales, is very nice if the ragout is packed into a well buttered pie dish, then covered with puff paste in the ordinary way, and baked like the common pie.