Culinary jottings

With a fresh cauliflower you must boil or steam the head first till all but done, which you must test with a skewer, drain it thoroughly ; then dissolve two ounces of Parmesan, or any mild grated cheese, in a sauce composed as follows : — one ounce of butter, one and a quarter ounce of flour, one and a half pint of water, pepper, and salt. Next arrange the flower to the best of your power in a neat pie-dish ; either whole if large enough, or in pieces with the green leaves introduced between each piece ; pour the sauce well round this, dust a layer of cheese over the surface, bake, and serve as soon as the top takes colour. A red-hot iron passed closely over the surface of the dish will brown it nicely. For those who do not like cheese, the following " au gratin' is to be recommended : — arrange your pieces of cauliflower as before explained, strew over them some fine stale bread-crumbs, with some olives, a few capers, and an anchovy chopped up small ; pour over this a cupful of hot melted butter, bake for ten minutes, and serve. Salad oil is better than melted butter, but I fear that my countrymen will shrink from such a ' foreign' suggestion. Spinach (epinards) is a thing that we can get in the most trying weather, and Tvitli common care no entremets de legumes are more delicate than those which we can achieve with this vegetable. Having selected two pounds of leaves carefully, wash them well, blanch them by plunging them for a couple of minutes in scalding water, drain, and chop them up. Put into a stew-pan one ounce of butter, three quarters of an ounce of flour and a pinch of salt, and one of sugar ; stir this over the fire for three minutes, then add the spinach leaves ; stir round for five minutes, and moisten with a coffee-cupful of milk, gravy, or stock ; stir for two minutes more, and then a breakfastcupful of the milk or stock, stir for five minutes and take the pan from the fire. Now, mingle a little butter, with the spinach, or give it a spoonful of cream, or the yolk of an egg dissolved in a little milk, then turn it out upon a good hot dish, garnish it with sippets of fried bread, fleurons of puff pastry, or short-bread biscuits specially baked for the dish, and serve. I mix a little grated cheese with the short-bread paste which I think goes well with the spinach, and some give the least suspicion of sugar ; I think that the savoury method is the better of the two. Short-bread biscuits for spinach may be made as follows : — Put three ounces of flour into a bowl and mix into it two ounces of butter liquefied, a tea-spoonful of salt, a salt-spoonful of sugar and an ounce of grated cheese, roll out the paste, cut it into heart-shapes one-third of an inch thick, and bake. Fleurons of nice puff-pastry are often given, and nothing can be nicer — as an entremets — than little patties made of puff-pastry, or short-bread crust, filled with carefully-made spinach 'puree, and capped with buttered-egg. It is not at all necessary to pass spinach through a sieve. If they are young, and tender, you should, after draining and blanching the leaves thoroughly, chop them up, and