Books and My Food: With Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every ..

fast for twenty minutes in merely enough water to keep them from burning until their own juices are extracted by the heat. When they are cooked drain them thoroughly in a colander, and add a large lump of butter and a little salt and pepper, but do not chop as in the case of spinach. People with an old-fashioned taste for rich and homely flavors like to boil with them a piece of salt pork, serving it in the same dish. JUNE 13TH "O'er our parched tongue the rich metheglin glides, And the red dainty trout the knife divides." — Gay. BRILLAT SAVARIN tells us not to forget that trout should be fried in the finest olive oil, made hot enough to brown a cube of bread in five or six seconds. So cooked he declares it is a dish fit for a cardinal, which in Italy means much more than "fit for a king." JUNE I4TH "You've got the basket with the Veal and Ham-Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer?" — Charles Dickens ("Cricket on the Hearth"). THE modem recipes for veal-andham pie are not so elaborate and costly as the best of the old English pies — neither are they so good. Here is the original rule: Cut thin slices from the breast of veal; season them with salt and pepper. Slice two sweetbreads and Season these also. Lay a puff paste "on the ledge of the dish," and fill the latter with alternate layers of veal sweetbreads, hard-boiled eggs, and oysters, with a layer of thin slices of ham at the top. Truffles and mushrooms are sometimes added. Pour over the mixture a pint of veal stock slightly thickened. Cover with puff paste and bake slowly two hours. Half an hour before serving insert a funnel in the crust and pour in a cup of rich cream. JUNE ISTH "Fill an fruit with ripeness to the core." — Keats. AVERY good use to make of all fruit which needs to have the quality of "ripeness to the core'' is to make Brandy Tutti Frutti. Begin with strawberries ; prepare three pounds as for eating ;put in a large jar with three pounds of granulated sugar and a quart of brandy and cover tightly. Stir often, and when raspberries are ripe add two or three pounds of them with an equal amount of sugar. Add other fruits as they ripen, always with the same weight of sugar. Peaches should be pared and quartered, and sweet plums should be peeled and cut up ; if any very acid fruit be added, cook it first. Stir frequently, keep tightly corked in a cool place, and you will have a delicious and unusual accompaniment for creams and ices. JUNE i6th "Shall it be a delicate lobster-salad? or a dish of elegant tripe and onions?" — Thackeray. FOR those who like lobster, and do not like mayonnaise, a salad may be prepared by cutting the good parts of the lobster into rather small io6 pieces and mixing with them the yolks of half a dozen hard-boiled eggs cut in bits; toss together with a silver fork, add a good French dressing of three tablespoonfuls of oil to one of vinegar. Pepper and salt to taste. Arrange on lettuce-leaves with the whites of the eggs and olives as a garnish. JUNE 17TH "The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts." — Charles Lamb. PUT half a bunch of asparagus from which the tips have been removed into three pints of stock (or water). Fry an onion and add a bay leaf, a little parsley and a stalk of celery, tied together. Put in the soup with twelve peppercorns and a level teaspoonful of salt, and simmer for thirty-five minutes. Strain through a sieve, pressing through all the asparagus possible. Put the strained soup on the fire; add two tablespoonfuls of flour and two of butter, rubbed together; cook ten minutes; add a cup of cream and the asparagus-tips, which should have cooked twenty minutes in stock or milk. Serve at once. xa7 JUNE i8th