The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

Tlie great secret of roasting is to put your meat clown to a sharp fire, and then reduce the heat when tlie outside is set. Flour should always be dredged over it to absorb the gravy and j5revent more oozing out ; and it is simply impossible to baste too much. As a rule, cjuarter of an hour for every 16 oz. of meat is sufficient time for cooking with a roaster, but with the old spit Indian cooks will put down a saddle of mutton at three o’clock for an eight o’clock dinner, and then wonder why the mistress complains of the meat being sodden. In a family where economy is necessary, it is a good plan to bone meat before roasting, as the bones will make far better soup when uncooked, and the meat will also cut less to waste. Game recjuires very light yet quick roasting, and cannot be properly done in a degchi or oven. It takes even more fat for basting than butchers’ meat, and if wanted very good may be basted with equal parts of claret and cream. Stf.wing Is by far the most economical method of cooking meat, but it requires time and patience. A stew made in an hour will be meat badly boiled, and if cooked too fast will be a mass of Strangs. The Indian cook, however, has no excuse for not stewing well, as he has the best fire in the world for it, viz., a charcoal one. It is also the easiest method of cooking, because it can be done at leisure, and the stew will not spoil in the least if the time of serving is delayed. It also has the advantage of enabling the cook to give otherwise tasteless meat an appe- tising flavour, by the addition of various vegetables and S2rices. In sjrite of all this, many an Indian cook’s stews are simply appalling. Lumps of hard meat floating in a greasy, dark gravy, with a few underdone onions and potatoes swimming round ! This is called brim-estew, and is served up with com- placency by men who have a poclcetful of chits as high-class khansdnmhs. A reallj^ good stew is jrerhajrs the most savoury of all dishes, but it must be made to recipe, and have both time and care in the preparation. If the meat used in stews be at all fiit, it is absolutely necessary that, when three parts done, tlie stew should be allowed to cool, when the fat can be easily removed from the Housekeeper and Cook 237 surfoce. The cooking can then proceed. Nothing is more disgusting than grease to the European, and the cook should remember this peculiarity of his mastei-’s. He should also remember that hashes, salmis, and rechauffh are not stews, and that they are ruined if treated as such. They are simply meat warmed up in a previously prepared rich gravy. Baking. Almost every kind of cake and pudding requires a par- ticular kind of baking, and cooks in India invariably foi'get this. But if the only oven be a tezcil, that fact should be held to cover a multitude of sins. True, one of the authors once had a cook who produced triumphs in the baking art out of a mere hole in the ground, but he was a baker by trade, and had a curious, intuitive knowledge of when it was time to unearth that hole and dig up the cake.