Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners Part 14

CRUSTS

Cut stale sandwich bread lengthwise in one-inch thick slices and remove crusts. Cut slices in bars one inch wide and six inches long. Bake in a hot oven until delicately browned. Turn them so that crusts may brown evenly on all sides. Serve hot and crisp.

BREAST OF VEAL ROASTED

Six pounds of veal cut from the breast. Wipe, and skewer meat into shape, sprinkle with salt, pepper, dredge with flour and cover top with thin slices of fat salt pork. Lay in a dripping pan and strew cubes of pork around meat. Place in a very hot oven for the first half hour, basting every ten minutes with fat in pan, then reduce heat and cook meat slowly until tender, allowing twenty minutes to pound; continue basting. The last half hour of cooking remove salt pork, dredge meat again with flour, and brown richly. Remove meat to hot serving platter, surround with Spanish Rice and prepare a Brown Sauce from some of the fat in pan. (See Page 82 for Brown Sauce.)

SPANISH RICE

Cover one cup of rice with cold water; heat to boiling point and boil two minutes. Drain in a strainer, rinse well with cold water and drain again. Cut four slices of bacon in shreds, crosswise, and cook until crisp. Remove bacon, add to rice. Cut one-half of a green or red pepper in shreds and cook in bacon fat until soft, then add pepper and bacon fat to rice. Cover with three cups of well-seasoned chicken broth, season well with salt, cover and let cook until rice has absorbed broth and is tender, then add one cup of thick tomato puree and two-thirds cup of grated cheese. Mix well with a fork and let heat through over boiling water. Serve with roast veal or breaded veal cutlets.

MASHED PARSNIPS

Wash and cook in boiling water, drain and plunge into cold water, when the skins may be easily rubbed off. Mash and rub through a sieve. Season with salt, pepper, b.u.t.ter and moisten with a little cream or milk.

Reheat over hot water and serve.

PINEAPPLE FRITTERS

Drain sliced pineapple from the liquor in the can. Dry on a crash towel.

Dip in batter and fry a golden brown in deep hot Cottolene. Drain on brown paper, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with some of the liquor from which it was drained. This may be slightly thickened with arrowroot, allowing one teaspoon arrowroot to each cup of liquor.

BATTER FOR FRITTERS

1 cup bread flour.

1 tablespoon sugar.

1/4 teaspoon salt.

2/3 cup milk.

1/2 teaspoon melted Cottolene.

White one egg beaten stiff.

PROCESS: Mix flour, sugar and salt. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly until batter is smooth; add Cottolene and white of egg. Batter must be smooth as cream.

RED CABBAGE, CELERY AND ONION SALAD

Select a small, solid head of red cabbage; remove the wilted leaves. Cut in quarters and cut out the tough stalk and the coa.r.s.e ribs of the leaves. Cover with cold water and let soak until cabbage is crisp; drain, then shave in thin shreds, and mix with the hearts of two or three heads (according to their size) of crisp celery, cut in small pieces crosswise. Add one medium-sized Spanish onion, finely chopped, and dress with Boiled Salad Dressing. Serve in lettuce heart leaves or in nests of cress.

STEAM CURRANT PUDDING

3 tablespoons Cottolene.

1/2 cup sugar.

2-1/2 cups flour.

3-1/2 teaspoons baking powder.

1/2 teaspoon salt.

1 egg well beaten.

1 cup milk.

1/2 cup currants.

PROCESS: Mix and sift the dry ingredients (reserving two tablespoons flour), rub in Cottolene with tips of fingers. Sprinkle two tablespoons flour over cleaned currants, add to first mixture; add milk gradually, beat well and turn into a b.u.t.tered mold; cover and steam two hours.

Serve with Dried Apricot and Hard Sauce.

DRIED APRICOT SAUCE

Wash and pick over dried apricots, soak over night in cold water to cover. Cook until soft and quite dry, in the water in which they were soaked. Rub through a sieve and sweeten to taste. Reheat, and drop a spoonful on each portion of pudding, place a small star of Hard Sauce in center and serve.

[Sidenote: _March_

_Second Sunday_]

Menu

CHICKEN STEW WITH DUMPLINGS

ONIONS IN CREAM STEWED CORN

WATERCRESS AND EGG SALAD

RHUBARB PIE CREAM CHEESE

COFFEE

STEWED CHICKEN

Dress, clean and cut up a chicken (a year old). Put in a stew-pan, cover with boiling water. Add one small onion sliced, two stalks celery cut in pieces, two sprays parsley and one-half teaspoon peppercorns. Cover and cook slowly until tender. Add one tablespoon salt the last hour of cooking. Remove chicken, strain liquor and remove some of the fat if necessary. Thicken the stock with two-thirds cup of flour diluted with sufficient cold water to pour readily. Return chicken to "gravy," heat to boiling point. Drop dumplings on top of chicken, cover stew-pan with a towel, replace the cover and steam dumplings twelve minutes. Arrange chicken on hot serving platter, surround with dumplings, sprinkle lightly with finely chopped parsley.

DUMPLINGS

2 cups flour.

4 teaspoons baking powder.

1/2 teaspoon salt.

1 teaspoon Cottolene.

3/4 cup milk.

PROCESS: Sift together twice, flour, baking powder and salt, rub in Cottolene with tips of fingers. Add milk gradually, mixing it in with a knife. Drop from tip of spoon on top of meat, an inch apart; cover closely and steam twelve minutes.