The Stag Cook Book: Written for Men by Men

Sauce Bigarade : Peel an orange without touching the white parts, cut the peel up into small, fine julienne. Plunge it into boiling water, and cook until it is tender. Drain and enclose it in a covered saucepan with four gills of espagnole or brown sauce. Just when ready to serve finish the sauce with a dash of cayenne pepper, meat glaze, the orange juice and the juice of a lemon, strain through a tamis, adding two ounces of fine butter. [142] S. S. McClure OMELETTE— AND PIE I can give you a tip on how to prepare, in the very best fashion, two articles of food. The first is omelette: The frying pan should be held at a slant, with the lower part immediately over a moderate heat, and continually the volume of eggs that becomes cooked should be scraped back and the liquid part allowed to flow over the pan thus emptied, and then when the omelette is, I should say, about two-thirds cooked, it should be removed from the fire and dished. It is impossible to make an omelette of the utmost symmetry and firmness and have it good at the same time. If it is stiff enough to maintain a certain symmetry, then it is too stiff to be good. I have made an omelette in this fashion containing as many as eighteen eggs. I learned how to make omelette from Madame Poulard of Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, one of the most famous omelette makers in Europe. I am also particularly successful in making pies. On one occasion I made pies for one hundred and eighty-five officers on the troop-ship Leviathan. To make pies, one must have the best quality of butter and the best quality of flour. Use a pound of butter to every two pounds [143] of flour. The butter must be rather firm and must be mixed with the flour with your hands. Then when you have a sort of a mass of dough on the table, make a little hollow in the middle, pour in a little cold water, mix it to such a consistency that it can be made into a roll perhaps as thick as your wrist. It will require about two inches to be rolled out thin for the crusts. Dust a little flour in the dish that it is to be baked in and put into the oven at such a temperature as would require one half an hour to bake. There's a considerable secret in the choice of fruits. The top crust should have little apertures in it so as to permit the steam to escape. It is easier to make perfect pies than any other dish. [144] Basil King LOBSTER A LA KING Boil medium sized lobsters. Let grow cold and remove meat. Put large piece of butter and one and one-half tablespoons of flour into double boiler. Stir until creamy. Add one pint of milk and cook about five minutes. Add lobster cut in small pieces and cook about fifteen minutes. Just before serving add three tablespoons cream and one-half tumbler sherry or brandy. NOTE: Unless brandy or sherry can be added it is useless to attempt this dish. [145] John A. Moroso SPAGHETTI-FOR-THE-GANG Many a time as a very small boy I watched my distinguished Piedmontese grandfather grandly direct the cook. This is the way our spaghetti sauce was prepared. Buy about three or four pounds of solid meat from the round, cut thick. Ask for the "eye of the beef." It is inexpensive. Cut little pockets in it and insert bits of fat bacon in some. In others stuff sage, thyme, parsley and bay leaf with salt and pepper to taste. Sometimes I spread thinly with mustard, the prepared sort ; covering the top. A clove of garlic tucked in with the seasoning goes well, if you have Wop ancestry. Pale people use onions. But surely one or the other.