Practical West African cookery

Note. — These croquettes can also be made with minced mutton or beef. If necessary, they can be made without eggs or bread crumbs, adding a dessertspoon stock and a pinch of flour to the paste, and rolling them in flour only before frying. If used to make an entree for a dinner party they can be dished on mashed yam or sweet potatoes or tinned peas, or passed with a little tomato sauce. 1 tablespoon bread crumbs. 1 tablespoon flour. 1 breakfast cup ground nut oil. Kromeskies. (II). The best parts of a roast fowl. 1 small teacup white sauce. 1 egg. 1. Cut in very small and regular pieces all the white of a fowl. Do not mince it but lay the wings and breast on a board and cut with a sharp knife. 2. Have ready a small teacup of white sauce (see index) which has been allowed to simmer a little longer than usual so as to thicken it. Mix it very gently in a pudding basin with the pieces of fowl. When well mixed, spread on a plate which has been slightly greased with butter, and let it stand for nearly an hour till quite cold. 3. Break the egg into a soup plate and beat it well ; spread the flour and the bread crumbs on the cook’s board. 4. Divide the mixed fowl and sauce into portions about the size of a small egg and roll them into balls in the flour : dip them in the egg and then into the bread crumbs. 5. Heat the oil in the flat saucepan, as soon as it is hot enough for frying carefully slide in the balls and fry them till light brown. Take out of the fat and serve at once. Like the croquettes, kromeskies should be perfectly free from grease, if the fat is at the right temperature. Cottage Pie. (I). Remains of a cooked fowl. 1 tablespoon stock or 1 saltspoon Lemco added to a tablespoon hot water. £ onion. 1 saltspoon salt. 1 saltspoon pepper. A good half -teacup mashed cooked yam or sweet potato. 1 teaspoon milk. £ teaspoon butter. 1. Free the fowl from skin and bone, mince it. Mince the onion and mix the two together, adding some salt and pepper and the tablespoon beef tea or stock. 2. With a feather paint the inside of a small pie dish with very little butter. Put the mince at the bottom. Mix the mashed yam with the butter and milk and the remaining salt and pepper, and spread it on top of the mince. Scrape lightly with a fork, put a little dab of butter on top, and place in the oven for about twenty minutes till it is a good brown. Note. This same pie can be made with minced mutton or beef. Dry Mince. (I). 4 tablespoons minced cooked 1 small teaspoon butter or meat. ! lard. £ tablespoon minced onion. (£ teaspoon chopped parsley.) A pinch of salt, pepper and red pepper. 1. Mix the minced meat, salt, pepper, red pepper, (and parsley if available.) 2. Melt the butter in the small frying pan. When it begins to sing, throw in the onion, and when it begins to turn brown add the minced meat and toss quickly on the fire till the fat is all absorbed. Serve with poached eggs, or mashed yam or plain macaroni. Notes. The same mince can be made with one-and-ahalf tablespoons stock, milk or weak Lemco, or mixed with any remains of tomato, brown or white sauce. Mix the sauce with the mince after it has absorbed the fat of the frying pan, and let them heat up together. Cooked mutton or beef can be minced in exactly the same way. Chicken 2 fowls. 1 tablespoon flour.