Practical West African cookery

How to Truss a Fowl. — Correct trussing, necessitating various skewers and bits of string, is generally beyond the resources of an African kitchen, but the cook should be taught to neatly cut off the bird’s feet, the pinions, the neck close to its base, and to then bring the joints back close to the body of the fowl. The trimmings and the gizzard must always be kept for making stock. In all the recipes given for making up the remains of cold fowl, the remains of a turkey can be substituted for the fowl. We have given the recipe for a pie at some length as it is a very good one and a nice cold dish comes in so useful. Roast Fowl or Guinea Fowl. (1). i teaspoon salt. | teaspoon pepper. 1 good fowl or guinea fowl. 1 tablespoon butter or lard. J tablespoon water. For the 3 tablespoons bread crumbs, dried in the oven but not browned. The fowl’s liver. 1 teaspoon butter or lard. \ onion. Stuffing. 1 egg. J teaspoon salt. A pinch of pepper. A pinch of nutmeg. (A teaspoon of minced parsley and thyme if available.) It is difficult to make a cook believe that an African fowl requires only twenty minutes roasting instead of the hour or two he usually gives. Persuade him to try and you will see for yourself what an improvement it is. A guinea fowl will take about five minutes longer. 1. Fry the liver for a minute or two in half a teaspoon butter, lard or ground nut oil heated in the small frying pan. Take it out and mince it. 2. Mix in the small pudding basin the minced liver, bread crumbs, chopped onion, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg (and parsley if available) and lastly the beaten egg. Mix to a thick paste and stuff the fowl with it. 3. Dip a feather into the tablespoon of butter or lard and paint the fowl over. Melt the rest of the butter in the baking tin and place in it the fowl, sprinkled with salt and pepper. Put the baking tin in the oven and baste with the melted butter, add the tablespoon water and a little more butter or lard when the fat begins to dry. Baste about four times while the fowl is roasting, thoroughly but quickly, so that the oven does not cool down. 4. If you have no bread sauce, serve the fowl with the little of gravy remaining in the tin ; on no account add flour to it. 5. Bread Sauce.— This sauce can be made while the fowl is roasting. 1 breakfast cup milk or l£ tablespoons Ideal to a breakfast cup water. 2 tablespoons of dry white bread crumbs. sauce can be made while the Half a large onion. A small pinch nutmeg. A pinch of salt and pepper. 1. To make the white bread crumbs take a piece of the crumb of the bread and put it in the oven just to dry it. Do not let it turn yellow and as soon as it is dry, take it out and crush it with a bottle. 2. Slice the onion and put it in the small enamel saucepan with the cold milk, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Let it come slowly to a boil, watching carefully that it does not boil over. Remove it from the fire for a few moments, then put it back and let it boil up thus several times till the onion has become quite pulpy and has given all its flavour to the milk which has reduced to about a small teacupful. 3. When it is time to serve, mix the bread crumbs with the milk, which must not boil again or stand too long, or the crumbs will become pulpy and will not remain granulated as they should.