Culinary jottings

4. — This is a capital method of cooking a fowl, the process is simply that of steaming, so you can manner. ^ ^^^^' ^^^ want your fish kettle, and a pan, big enough to hold the fowl, with a close fitting lid. Truss the fowl : place a big Bombay onion inside the bird, with a couple of slices of bacon ; sew up the vent, pin a strip of bacon over the breast, and set the bird in the pan (without any water or gravy round it) carefully securing the lid with paste if necessary. Immerse the vessel containing the fowl in the fish kettle or any larger pan full of cold water, and set it to boil. Cook it slowly for upwards of an hour without removing the lid which should be scrupulously kept closed. In about an hour and a quarter (after the water came to the boil), you can take the fowl out, and place it at once on a hot dish well covered up. Now strain off the gravy that you will find has been drawn from the fowl, and save it for the " oyster sauce," which make in this way as fast as you can : — Mix an ounce of butter with an ounce of flour at the bottom of a sauce-pan, add the fowl gravy, the liquor from a tin of oysters, and the beards of the oysters cut off : (save the oysters themselves separately) throw in some pepper corns, the peel of a lime, salt to taste, and, as the mixture boils, a table-spoonful of Harvey sauce : after it has come to the boil, strain the sauce carefully, add the oysters you saved, heat it up again : take it off the fire : pour in a coffee- cupful of boiling cream (or milk in which the yolk of an » egg has been stirred, and heated up to the consistency of thin custard) and serve poured over the fowl. Whilst this sauce is being made, it would be wise perhaps to leave the fowl in the vessel in which it was cooked, carefully covered up and kept in the hot water bath. As soon as the sauce is ready, it can be dished up, upon a cradle of well boiled macaroni. 5. — This is a dish of " Bombay onions stuffed with kidneys," a most excellent savoury entremets if carefully done. Take six large Bombay onions : have ready ten sheep's kidneys, scalded, and skinned, but uncooked. Boil the onions till three parts done ; take them out, drain them ; slice off the top of each one (as you would treat an egg) and carefully remove the inside, leaving a hollow big enough to hold two small kidneys cut into eight pieces ; take two anchovies, pick out their spines and cut the fish into little squares : have some minced parsley handy, a lime, and some of the inside of the onion that you scooped out, minced and peppered ; put a lump of butter into the onion case first, then a little of the minced onion peppered, then your pieces of kidney, with little bits of anchovy here and there, and crown the top again with minced onion, and a pat of butter : a drop or so of lime juice should be given during the packing, and an occasional dust of spiced pepper. Now place the cap on again, and when the six onions are stuffed, lay them in a buttered baking dish, and bake in a slow oven for an hour. "When done, pour a brown sauce (separately made) over them and serve in their own dish. 6. — A recipe for these toothsome little fondues will be found at page 249. Serve the Fondues of cheese , ,, . tit