Cookery for beginners

When the middle is just set, pass a caketurner carefully under one half of the omelette and fold it over the other. Lay a hot platter upside down above the doubled mass and holding frying-pan and dish firmly, turn the latter quickly over, reversing the positions of the two, and depositing the omelette in the dish. Do not be mortified should you break your trial omelette. Join the bits neatly; lay sprays of parsley over the cracks and try another soon. Be sure it is loosened from the pan before you try to turn it out; hold pan and dish fast in place ; do not be nervous or flurried, and you will soon catch the knack of dishing the omelette dexterously and handsomely. I have given you ten receipts for cooking eggs. It would be easy to furnish as many more without exhausting the list of ways of preparing this invaluable article of food for our tables. I have selected the methods that are at once easy and excellent, and adapted to the ability of a class of beginners. BROILED MEATS. IT has been said that the frying-pan has ruined more American digestions than all the other hurtful agencies combined. It is certainly true that while the process of frying properly performed upon certain substances does not of necessity make them unwholesome—the useful utensil does play altogether too important a part in our National cookery. Broiled meats are more wholesome, more palatable, and far more elegant. Certain things should never be fried. That beefsteak should never make the acquaintance of the frying-pan is a rule without an exception. The best gridirons for private families are the BROILED MEATS. 65 light, double "broilers," made of tinned wire and linked together at the back with loops of the same material. They are easily handled, turned and cleansed, and when not in use may be hung on the wall out of the way. It is well to have two sizes, one for large steaks, the smaller for birds, oysters, and when there is occasion to broil a single chop or chicken-leg for an invalid. Beefsteak. Never wash a steak unless it has fallen in the dirt or met with other accident In this case cleanse quickly in cold water and wipe perfectly dry before cooking. Have a clear hot fire and do not uncover that part of the stove above it until you have adjusted the steak on the broiler. If you use the ordinary iron gridiron, lay the meat on it the instant it goes over the fire, but have it already warm and rub the bars with a bit of fresh suet When the meat has lain over the coals two minutes and begins to "sizzle," turn it and let the other side cook as long. Watch it continually and turn whenever it begins to drip. Do this quickly to keep in the juices. If these should fall in the fire in spite of your care, lift it for an instant and hold over a plate or dish until the smoke is gone. Broiled meats flavored with creosote are not uncommon, but always detestable. The knack of boiling a steak well is to turn it so often and dexterously that it will neither be smoked nor scorched. Ten minutes should cook it rare, if the fire is right and the steak not very thick. Cut with a keen blade into the thickest part when the time is up. If the heart is of a rich redbrown — not the livid purple of uncooked flesh, carry broiler and meat to a table where stands a hot dish. Lay the steak on this. In a saucer have a liberal tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, and with these rub both sides BROILED MEATS. 67