Practical West African cookery

1 teaspoon salt. 1 teaspoon pepper. 1 hard-boiled egg. 2 sausages or 1 small tin potted meat. 1 large onion. Pie. (II). pints water. 1 teaspoon butter or lard. Pie crust (see index). 2£ sheets of gelatine. $ teaspoon Lemco. (A. teaspoon chopped parsley, a teaspoon dried thyme, and a mutton kidney.) 1. Skin the fowls and cut them into joints ; put the livers aside. Mix the flour with a little salt and pepper and lightly roll the joints and breast in it. Put them aside on a plate. 2. Make some stock with one-and-a-half pints water, the trimmings and carcases of the fowls, the onion, salt and pepper. Boil it down to a large breakfastcupful and strain it through a clean handkerchief. 3. Rub the inside of the large pie dish with a piece of raw onion and grease it with the butter or lard. Skin and mash the sausages or take the potted meat out of the tin. Take the two poorest legs, cut off the meat, free it from skin and sinew, mince it very fine and mix with the sausages or potted meat. 4. Lay four pieces of the fowl at the bottom of the pie dish and fill the hollows with a little of the minced fowl and sausage and stick in a few sliced pieces of liver (and kidney if obtainable). Press it all well down with a spoon sprinkle with salt, pepper (parsley and dried thyme if possible). Lay more pieces of fowl, sausage, &c., on top, adding slices of hard-boiled egg, till the pie dish is tightly packed. 5. With a feather and a little water wet the edges of the pie dish. Have ready the paste for the pie mist. Cut a strip the width of the edge of the pie dish and lay it all round. Wet it with a feather and then lay the remainder of the paste over the dish, press down the edges lightly all round the dish and cut off evenly what is left hanging down. 6. Make a small hole in the middle and pour through half of the strained stock. Cover the pie with a well greased piece of paper and put into the oven for about one-and-a-half hours. Do not take off the greased paper till half-an-hour before the pie is ready, or the crust will be burnt, taking it off at the end, allows the crust to get' browned. 7. Half-an-hour before the pie is cooked, put the other half of the stock into the small enamel saucepan. Add half-a-teaspoon Lemco. When hot but not boiling, putin the gelatine, and as soon as it is quite dissolved, take it off the fire and immediately strain it again through the handkerchief. 8. Take the pie out of the oven and pour in the strained stock through the little hole, taking great care not to wet the crust round it. Put the pie in a cool place, and as soon as it is cold, stand it in a cooler, taking care that no water gets in, and covering the cooler with a cloth to keep out the flies. This pie made in the evening can be served for lunch next day, and even in hot weather, if kept in a cooler, will be full of firm jelly. Note. — Exactly the same pie can be made with ducks, pigeons or mutton, using their bones for the stock. If you can put any vegetables such as carrots and turnips in the stock, it is a great improvement. This pie can of course be eaten hot, but is nicer cold. Potted 1 roasted fowl. 2 sausages or 1 small tin potted meat or 2 tablespoons minced ham or bacon. 4 cloves. Fowl. 0). 2 berkono. 1 saltspoon nutmeg. ^ teaspoon salt. | teaspoon pepper. 1 teaspoon lard.