FoodNet

Culinary jottings

1885

Page 185 · 2 recipe records on this page

Presented as published in 1885. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
A stuffing made with a tin of oysters, well drained and cut up, mixed with a half pint of bread-crumbs soaked in milk or stock, some spiced pepper, a little chopped very finely pared lime peel, and a couple of minced anchov^ies, all stirred together, and bound with a couple of eggsBaked Murrel Fish, is highly acceptable with a murrel. If you have no oysters, pound a good quantity of fresh-water shrimps, and mix them with the stuffing. Eels ought to be slightly boiled first, whatever you do with them, you then get rid of their oiliness. After being thus treated, you can cut them into fillets for frying, for stewing, or for a pie. Eel fillets dipped in batter, and fried in oil or fat (lots of it) with a plain sharp sauce are delicious. The matelote will be found in the menus. Tinned Australian, and other preserved lumps of meat, are valuable additions to the store box of the jungle- wallah, but they require very delicate handling, because they are almost always overdone. The really nutritious CAMP COOKERY. S2l part of a tin of Australian meat is the gravy that sui'- rounds it. Uamasamy knows this, so beware of un- righteous dealing, see the tin opened, and have every atom of the gravy strained off into a bowl. In cold weather, during such nights as you have in the Deccan during December and January for instance, the gravy in these tins becomes a jelly, so before you open one, set it on the fire in a sauce-pan surrounded by hot water for ten minutes or so ; then open it, and strain the gravy from the tin into a bowl ; turn the meat out carefully upon your sieve, and pour some hot water gently over it ; catch the water in a bowl below the sieve, and add it to the gravy. Now, the gravy of a two -pound tin of beef will, as a rule, give you an excellent stock for two basins of soap : — skim the fat that may rise to its surface, and put it into a sauce- pan with a bag of dried sweet herbs, an onion cut into quarters, any vegetables you can spare, some pepper-corns, a pinch of spice, and salt according to the quantity : simmer this gently to extract the flavour of the things you have added, and in about a couple of hours you will have an excellent consomme, quite fit to be served as soup, with maccaroni, vermicelli, a couple of poached eggs, or Julienne, grated cheese accompanying ; a table-spoonful of Marsala will be a grateful finishing stroke. Or it may be thickened like mock-turtle, and served with forcemeat balls. I . The meat should be treated in this way : — choose the nicest looking pieces, trim them neatly, and if of a fair size, brush them over with egg, bread-crumb them, and brown them in the oven, serving a good sauce, — tomato, souhise, or piquante for instance, with them. Or you can cut the meat into collops, and hash them very gently in a carefully made gravy. Lastly, you can mince it and serve it in many nice ways, (vide page 173). An excellent method may be thus described : — Having 32 326 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS.