Culinary jottings

Ignorant cooks are apt to confound " potato chips," with " fried potatoes :" this should be explained away. " Fried potatoes," Pommes de terre sautées, are slices of boiled potato tossed about in butter in the sauce-pan till lightly coloured. The " chips," Pommes de terre frites, are thin slices of raiv potato absolutely boiled in fat in the friture-pan. " Mock new potatoes" make a nice dish for a change, and can be contrived out of a waxy tuber that refuses to be boiled flourily. Boil the potatoes as usual, and when nearly done, cut them into pieces the shape and size of a pigeon's egg : make a flour and butter sauce blanche slightly flavoured with mace, and put the pieces of potato into it. Simmer the potatoes in the sauce, and when thoroughly done, serve. Chopped parsley, a coffee-cupful of milk in which the yolk of an egg has been stirred, and a lump of butter, may be added at the last moment. Peas (petits pais) may be boiled, cooked in the jar, or stewed. It is a sine qua non that boiled peas be young and fresh. You never get a dish of peas equal to those gathered in your own garden : those bought in the Indian market are, as a rule, far too old, having been allowed to attain the largest size possible. I have eaten peas from my own garden at Bangalore, and Secunderabad, as delicious as could be desired. They were small, because the pods were cut with their contents scarcely more than three parts developed, but for flavour and tenderness, they could not have been better. During our winter season at Madras we can grow our own peas, and surely the trouble is slight when we consider the result. For boiled peas : — Put one quart of water with a teaspoonful of salt, one of sugar, and half an ounce of green mint on the fire : when it boils, pour in a pint measure of shelled peas ; boil quickly ; when done, drain, and turn them out upon a frying-pan with an ounce of butter, sprinkle a little salt and finely-pounded sugar over them, work the pan till the butter melts, and is blended with peas, then empty them upon a hot dish and serve. (Gouffe.) " Peas in the jar." — This is to my thinking the best way of cooking peas. You get the whole flavour of them, they are rarely overdone ' to a mash,' as boiled peas in clumsy .hands often are, and even old peas become tender and eatable by such treatment. Having shelled half a pint of peas, put them into a two-pound jam jar, with a screw lid, — or a block tin can with a closely fitting top, — (the vessel must be completely closed) and put in with them a table-spoonful of tinned butter, a salt-spoonful of salt, and a tea-spoonful of powdered sugar, a dozen mint leaves, and a very little black pepper. Cover the vessel down tightly, and immerse it in a stew-pan, or hain-marie half full of boiling water. Set the latter on the fire and boil briskly : the peas should be examined in half an hour by which time, if very young, they should be done. The French tinned peas are excellent when thus heated up. A quarter of an hour is ample : they should be di-ained from the ' tin' liquor, and washed in ' two or three waters,' as cooks say ; that is, fresh water should be poured over them two or three times. The fresh butter, mint, &c., resuscitate the peas wonderfully.