The Belgian Cookbook Part 16

Take two good soup-spoonfuls of flour, and mix it with half a teacupful of milk; melt a lump of b.u.t.ter, the size of a filbert, and add that, then enough grated cheese to your taste, and the yolks of four eggs.

Add at the last the whites of the four eggs, beaten stiffly; pepper and salt. b.u.t.ter a mold, put in your mixture, and let it cook for one hour in a saucepan, surrounded with boiling water, and the lid on. Then turn out the souffle, and serve with a mushroom sauce. The sauce is a good white sauce, to which you add already cooked mushrooms. Clean them first of all, chop them, and cook them till tender in b.u.t.ter; and their own juice; then throw them into the sauce, and pour it over your souffle.

[_Mme. Vandervalle._]

CHEESE CROQUETTES

Make a thick bechamel sauce, and be sure that you cook it for ten minutes, constantly stirring. Add, till well flavored, some Gruyere and Parmesan cheese, mixed and grated. Let it all get cold. Then roll this mixture into the shape of carrots; roll them in finely-grated breadcrumbs, and fry them in hot lard or refined fat. Lay them on a hot dish, and, at the thicker end of each carrot stick in a sprig of parsley to look like the stalk.

[_Mme. van Marcke de Lunessen._]

CHEESE FONDANTS

For twelve fondants make a white sauce with two soupspoons of flour and milk. Add to it the yolks of three eggs. Stir in four ounces of mixed Gruyere cheese, and Parmesan, grated very finely. Add at the end the juice of half a lemon, and a dust of cayenne. Let it all grow cold. Then make little b.a.l.l.s with this paste and roll them in breadcrumbs. Throw them in a pan of boiling fat, where they must remain till they are a good golden color. Drain them, keeping them hot, and serve quickly.

[_Madame Emelie Jones_]

CHEESE SOUFFLe

Grate half a pound of Gruyere cheese. Mix in a cup of milk a dessert-spoonful of flour; beat four whole eggs, and add first the cheese, and then the flour and milk mixture. Season with pepper and salt, and put all into a mold. Let it cook in a saucepan of boiling water for an hour and a half. Then at the end of this time put it in the oven for half an hour.

[_Madame Emelie Jones_.]

POTATOES AND CHEESE

Wash some raw potatoes, peel them, cut them into very thin round slices.

Take a dish which will stand the oven, and be nice enough to go on the table, and put in it a layer of the slices sprinkled with pepper, salt, a little flour, and plenty of grated Gruyere. Continue in this way, finishing with a layer of cheese, and a little flour. Put the dish in the oven, which must not be a very hot one, and cook gently.

For a medium pie dish you will find that half an hour will be sufficient to cook the potatoes.

[_Madame Emelie Jones_.]

YORK HAM, SWEETBREADS, MADEIRA SAUCE

Heat the ham in a double saucepan (bain marie). Boil the sweetbreads, blanch them and let them fry in some b.u.t.ter.

Take flour and b.u.t.ter and melt them to a thick sauce, adding a tumbler of water and Liebig which will turn your sauce brown. Fry half a pound of mushrooms in b.u.t.ter and when brown, add them and the liquor to your sauce with a good gla.s.s of madeira or sherry. Place your ham in the middle of the dish, surround it with the sweetbreads, and pour over all the Madeira sauce.

[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]

HAM WITH MADEIRA SAUCE

Cook some macaroni or spaghetti, with salt and pepper. Make a brown sauce, using plenty of b.u.t.ter, for this dish requires a great deal of sauce, and add to your "roux" some tomatoes in puree (stewed and run through a sieve), a little meat extract, some fried mushrooms, a few drops of good brandy or madeira to your taste. Let your slices of ham heat in this sauce, and when ready, place them in the middle of a flat dish, put the mushrooms or spaghetti round, and put the sauce, very hot, over the ham.

[_Madame Spinette._]

A DIFFICULT DISH OF EGGS

And yet this is only fried eggs after all! Put some oil on to heat; if you have not oil use b.u.t.ter, but oil is the best. When the bluish steam rises it is hot enough. Break an egg into a little flat dish, tip up the frying pan at the handle side, and slip the egg into it, then with a wooden spoon turn the egg over on itself; that is, roll the white of it over the yolk as it slips into the pan. If you cannot manage this, let the egg heat for a second, and then roll the white over the yolk with a wooden spoon. Do each egg in this way, and as soon as one is done let it drain and keep warm by the fire. When all are done put them in a circle, in a dish, and pour round them a very hot sauce, either made with tomatoes, or flavored with vinegar and mustard.

COUNTRY EGGS

Make a white sauce thickly mixed with onions, such as you would eat in England with a leg of mutton, but do not forget a little seasoning of mace. Make a high mold of mashed potatoes, and then scoop it out from the top, leaving the bottom and high sides of the vegetable. While your sauce is kept by the fire (the potatoes also), boil six eggs for two minutes, sh.e.l.l them, and you will find the whites just set and no more.

Pour the onion sauce into the potato, and drop in the whole eggs and serve very hot.

FRENCH EGGS

Put a lump of b.u.t.ter the size of an egg in a fireproof dish, mixing in when it is melted some breadcrumbs, a chopped leek, the inside of three tomatoes, pepper and salt. Let it cook for three or four minutes in the oven, then stir in the yolks of two eggs, and let it make a custard.

Then break on the top of this custard as many eggs as you wish; sprinkle with pepper and salt. Let it remain in the oven till these last are beginning to set. Take out the dish, and pa.s.s over the top the salamander, or the shovel, red hot, and serve at once. I have seen this dish with the two extra whites of eggs beaten and placed in a pile on the top, and slightly browned by the shovel.

OEUFS CELESTES

(Hommage a Sir Edward Grey)

Gently boil a quant.i.ty of the very best green peas in good gravy; as the gravy becomes reduced, add, instead, b.u.t.ter. Do not forget to have put a lump of sugar in every pint of gravy. When the peas are done break on them the required number of fresh eggs, with pepper and salt. Place all in a double saucepan, till the eggs are just done. It is a pity that in England there are no cooking pots made, which will hold fire on the top, so that a dish, such as this, becomes easily done in a few minutes.