The Stag Cook Book: Written for Men by Men

Slice four small onions. Put one-sixth pound of butter into pan, add onions and let cook over fire until soft and a light brown in color. Add two teaspoonsful of paprika and put in die chicken piece by piece, fitting into kettle; add 1½ tablespoonfuls of salt, cover tightly and cook until soft (two hours or more). Remove the chicken, and into the gravy add 1½ tablespoonfuls of canned tomatoes; shake in a tablespoonful of flour and stir well; add ½ pint of sour cream and stir well over the fire. Strain over the chicken; heat again and serve. [170] LXXXI Henry van Dyke FISH CHOWDER I will say that I like to cook (and if I have good luck, to eat) a dish for which the following is the recipe: First catch your fish with hook and line, — salmon, trout or bass, cod, haddock or blue-fish. Then obtain a good sized kettle and put into it, first a layer of sliced potatoes, then a fine sprinkling of fine sliced onion, then a layer of fat pork cut into small cubes, then a layer of fish, skinned and sliced, then a layer of crackers or thin pilot biscuit. Sprinkle salt and pepper on each layer according to taste. Repeat the layers from three to five times according to the size of your kettle. Fill the pot moderately full with water and put it on the fire to cook slowly. If the water gets low replenish it You can tell when the dish is done by testing the potatoes or the fish with a fork. As a rule it should take about an hour to cook. Just before the end put in two or three cupfuls of milk. If your taste is slightly vitiated by contact with the world you may add a double spoonful of some ^icy sauce. But for my part I like a chowder best au naturel. [171] Macklyn A r buckle SOUTHERN GUMBO A LA "COUNTY CHAIRMAN" A year-old fowl. Joint it as you would for frying. Soup kettle ready on the back of the stove with cold liratcr. Then, the frying pan — About one-half dozen thin slices of the best bacon. Reserve this for the kettle later. Bacon fat in the frying pan — fry the chicken very brown. As soon as each piece of chicken is brown place it in the kettle — ^then put the kettle over the fire. Let it boil. Add six small onions or three large ones. Sliced and fried in the bacon grease. Onions fried golden brown. Then to the onions add a can of tomatoes or the equivalent of sliced tomatoes. Keep stirring from the bottom to prevent burning. All must cook until it has thickened. While cooking add chili peppers cut fine, green peppers the same, also okra. Add one or two large bay leaves and seas(Mi to taste with salt and pepper. [172] Onions, tomatoes and peppers should be added to the chicken in the kettle when they have cooked sufficiently. If fresh okra is not available use the best canned kind. About ten minutes before the Gumbo is ready add — One can of Golden Bantam Com. To serve with the Gumbo have a dish of perfectly cooked rice. You may use the same general formula for Crab or Oyster Gumbo. A Combination Salad is about the only thing worth serving with Gumbo. Although you might wash it down with a bottle of PRE-WAR IM- PORTED CLARET— HELP!!!! [173] xa John Taintor Foote MORELS SAUTf There is a dish — a gastronomical ecstasy — ^the faintest conception of which is magnificently beyond the pen. The fork is the one utensil that can convey to the uninitiated the unique, the utterly sublime flavor of Morels saute. A Morel is — in the vernacular of the countryside — a sponge mushroom. It is to be found in ancient, unplowed orchards during the pastel phase of spring when apple trees blossom and bees zoom and bumble and hum in a languid shower of pink and white petals.