The Belgian Cookbook Part 15

HOT-POT

Before putting in your meat, cook in the water a celery, four leeks, two onions, two turnips, two carrots; then add the meat, with pepper and salt, and stew gently for three hours. If you can put in a marrow-bone as well, that will give the soup a delicious flavor.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

HOCHE POT

One pound of fresh pork, one pound rump (flank) of beef, one pound rump of veal, two onions, one celery, four leeks, two or three carrots, two or three turnips, according to the size, a few Brussels sprouts, five or six potatoes, according to the number of persons. Let the water boil before putting in the meat, and cut all the vegetables in cubes of the same size, like cubes of sugar. Let simmer only, for three hours; it is delicious and makes a dinner.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

BOUCHeES a LA REINE

Get some little cases from the pastry-cook of puff paste, which are to be filled with sweetbread cut in dice. It is a good plan to heat the cases before filling them.

The filling mixture. Cook the sweetbreads in water with pepper and salt, till done, skin them and cut in dice. Prepare a good bechamel sauce, seasoned with the juice of a lemon, and add to it a few mushrooms that have been fried in b.u.t.ter. Heat the dice of sweetbread in this sauce and fill the cases with it. Put them back in the oven to get quite hot.

HOCHE POT OF GHENT

Clean two big carrots and cut them into small pieces, the same for two turnips, four leeks, two celeries, and a good green cabbage, only using the pale leaves. Wash all these vegetables well in running water, two or three times, and put them on the fire in three and one-half pints of water. Add salt, and let it cook for an hour. At the end of this time, add a good piece of pork weighing perhaps three pounds--for choice let it be cutlets. You can also add a pig's trotter. Let it cook for another hour, taking care that the meat remains below the water. At the end of that time, and half-an-hour before you wish to eat it, add potatoes enough to be three for each person. Watch the cooking so as to see that the potatoes do not stick, and finish the seasoning with pepper and salt.

[_Georges Kerckaert_.]

CARBONADE OF FLANDERS

Cut your beef into small neat pieces. Mince some onions finely, and for five or six people you would add two bay-leaves, two cloves, pepper, salt; simmer gently for three hours in water, and at the end of that time bind the sauce with cornflour. Some people like the sauce to be thickened instead with mustard.

[_V. Verachtert._]

HEADLESS SPARROWS

Take two pounds of beef, which must be lean and cut in thin slices. Cut your slices of beef in pieces of five inches by three. Put in the middle of each piece a little square of very fat bacon, a sprig of parsley, pepper and salt. Roll up the slices and tie them round with a thread so that the seasoning remains inside. Melt in a pan a lump of b.u.t.ter the size of a very big egg. Let it get brown and then, after rolling the beef in flour, put them in the b.u.t.ter. Let them cook thus for five minutes, add half a pint of water, and let them simmer for two hours.

Fill up with water if it becomes too dry. Before serving, take great care to remove the threads.

[_A Belgian at Droitwich._]

MUTTON STEW

Take two pounds of mutton, the breast or one of the inferior parts will do as well as a prime piece. Put in an earthenware pan a lump of b.u.t.ter as big as an egg, and let it color. Cut the mutton in pieces and let them color in the b.u.t.ter, adding salt and pepper, a few onions or shallots. When all is colored, add at least a pound of turnips, cut in slices, with about a pint of water. Let it boil up till the turnips are tender. Then add two and one-half or three pounds of potatoes; salt and pepper these, but in moderation, if the meat has been already salted and peppered. Add some thyme and bay-leaves, and let them all cook very gently till the potatoes are tender. When these are cooked, take out the pieces of meat, mix the turnips and potatoes, so as to make a uniform mixture; then place the meat on the top of the mixture, and serve it.

_N.B._ It is necessary to watch the cooking of this dish very carefully, so that you can add a little water whenever it becomes necessary, for if one leaves the preparation a little too dry it quickly burns.

[_A Belgian at Droitwich._]

HOCHE POT GANTOIS

(For eight or nine persons)

Take one pound beef, one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; put them in with the meat, and see that they are first covered by the water. Let it boil for three to four hours, and three quarters of an hour before dishing, add some potatoes cut in pieces.

To dish: Place the meat in the center of a flat dish, and the vegetables around; serve the liquid in a soup-tureen. This dish should be eaten out of soup plates, as it is soup and meat course at one time.

CHINESE CORKS

Make a thick white sauce, and when it has grown a little cold, add the yolk of one egg, and a few drops of lemon-juice. Sprinkle in a slice of stale bread, and enough grated cheese to flavor it strongly, and leave it to cool for two hours. Then shape into small pieces like corks, dip them into the beaten whites of your egg, and then into grated breadcrumbs. Have ready some hot fat, or lard, and fry the cheese-b.a.l.l.s in it till they are golden.

[_Mme. Limpens._]

LIMPENS CHEESE

Take a roll and, cutting it in slices, remove the crusts so that a round of crumbs remain. b.u.t.ter each slice, and cover it well with grated cheese, building up the slices one on the top of the other. Boil a cupful of milk, with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg; when boiled, pour it over the bread till it is well soaked. Put them in the oven, for quarter of an hour, according to the heat of the oven and the quant.i.ty you have. You must pour its juice over it every now and then, and when the top is turning into a crust, serve it.

[_Mme. Limpens._]

CHEESE SOUFFLe