Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

December l%th. — One of the every-day English dishes that is often so bad, and can be so excellent, is the old, much-abused hashed mutton. What I am going to say about it applies equally well to every kind of meat that is warmed up. Make the sauce early in the day with stock, gravy, onions, and other vegetables, or, failing this, a few drops of two or three of the bought sauces, and one or two drops of essence of garlic. Garlic, which is excellent as a flavouring to most sauces, is such a dangerous thing to use in a kitchen that the way I manage it is this : — Put five or six cloves of garlic into a wide-necked bottle and cover them with good spirits of wine. When wanted, stick a skewer or fork into the spirit and use a drop or two. The spirit evaporates and the flavour of the garlic remains. But even in this way it must be used carefully for Engli&h palates. To return to the sauce for the hash : avoid flour, or, if it must be a little thickened, let it only be with what is called ' brown roux ' in ' Dainty Dishes.' The really essential point is to make your sauce first and let it get cold, and then warm up the meat and the sauce together. If you throw meat of any kind into hot sauce, you are certain to make it hard ; it contracts the fibre of the meat, and spoils it. One of the very few ways in which wild duck can be warmed up is to mince it fine and then curry it with some well-cooked curry sauce. This is made on the same principle as the curry mentioned before ; that is to say, the onion and apple (if you cannot get apples, goose- 252 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN berries, or rhubarb, or any fruit will do) must be fried together, and the stock and curry powder added, well cooked, and rubbed through a fine sieve, allowed to get cool, and the mince and sauce just warmed up together before serving. For currying fish or vegetables a little milk or cream softens the sauce. Stewed meats are seldom really good in England. The following is a good way of cooking haricot of mutton : — Set a stew-pan on the fire (an earthenware one is the best) with a little butter in it; put in some pieces of raw mutton, neatly jointed and cut up small; fry till a nice brown colour. Take out the meat, place it on a dish, add some carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and a very little sugar, and fry in the butter. When brown, replace the meat, and pour in some cold water or weak stock — enough to cover all the ingredients. Stew gently for three hours. The stewing can be done in the oven or on the hot-plate. If cooked in an earthenware pot, this stew, as well as many others done in the same way, can be sent to table in the pot with a clean napkin pinned round it. When vegetables are scarce in winter, and you have cooked carrots, turnips, onions, celery, &c., strained from the soup the night before, it is a good plan to chop them up and warm them in a little butter with a small lump of sugar, some pepper and salt, and serve them for luncheon. If the quantity is insufficient, you can easily add some cold potatoes and cabbage.