WAYS OF WARMING OVER BEEF
Roast Beef with Gravy
Cut cold roast beef in thin slices, place on a warm platter, and pour over some of the gravy reheated to the boiling-point. If meat is allowed to stand in gravy on the range, it becomes hard and tough.
Roast Beef, Mexican Sauce
Reheat cold roast beef cut in thin slices, in
Mexican Sauce. Cook one onion, finely chopped, in two tablespoons butter five minutes. Add one red pepper, one green pepper, and one clove of garlic, each finely chopped, and two tomatoes peeled and cut in pieces. Cook fifteen minutes, add one teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce, one-fourth teaspoon celery salt, and salt to taste.
Cottage Pie
Cover bottom of a small greased baking-dish with hot mashed potato, add a thick layer of roast beef, chopped or cut in small pieces (seasoned with salt, pepper, and a few drops onion juice) and moistened with some of the gravy; cover with a thin layer of mashed potato, and bake in a hot oven long enough to heat through.
Beefsteak Pie
Cut remnants of cold broiled steak or roast beef in one-inch cubes. Cover with boiling water, add one-half onion, and cook slowly one hour. Remove onion, thicken gravy with flour diluted with cold water, and season with salt and pepper. Add potatoes cut in one-fourth inch slices, which have been parboiled eight minutes in boiling salted water. Put in a buttered pudding-dish, cool, cover with baking-powder biscuit mixture or pie-crust. Bake in a hot oven. If covered with pie crust, make several incisions in crust that gases may escape.
Cecils with Tomato Sauce
1 cup cold roast beef or rare steak finely chopped
Salt
Pepper
Onion juice
Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1 tablespoon melted butter
Yolk 1 egg slightly beaten
Season beef with salt, pepper, onion juice, and Worcestershire Sauce; add remaining ingredients, shape after the form of small croquettes, pointed at ends. Roll in flour, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat, drain, and serve with Tomato Sauce.
Corned Beef Hash
Remove skin and gristle from cooked corned beef, then chop the meat. When meat is very fat, discard most of the fat. To chopped meat add an equal quantity of cold boiled chopped potatoes. Season with salt and pepper, put into a hot buttered frying-pan, moisten with milk or cream, stir until well mixed, spread evenly, then place on a part of the range where it may slowly brown underneath. Turn, and fold on a hot platter. Garnish with sprig of parsley in the middle.
Corned Beef Hash with Beets
When preparing Corned Beef hash, add one-half as much finely chopped cooked beets as potatoes. Cold roast beef or one-half roast beef and one-half corned beef may be used.
Dried Beef with Cream
¼ lb. smoked dried beef, thinly sliced
1 cup scalded cream
1½ tablespoons flour
Remove skin and separate meat in pieces, cover with hot water, let stand ten minutes, and drain. Dilute flour with enough cold water to pour easily, making a smooth paste; add to cream, and cook in double boiler ten minutes. Add beef, and reheat. One cup White Sauce I may be used in place of cream, omitting the salt.
CHAPTER XIII
LAMB AND MUTTON
Lamb is the name given to the meat of lambs; mutton, to the meat of sheep. Lamb, coming as it does from the young creature, is immature, and less nutritious than mutton. The flesh of mutton ranks with the flesh of beef in nutritive value and digestibility. The fat of mutton, on account of its larger percentage of stearic acid, is more difficult of digestion than the fat of beef.
Lamb may be eaten soon after the animal is killed and dressed; mutton must hang to ripen. Good mutton comes from a sheep about three years old, and should hang from two to three weeks. The English South Down Mutton is cut from creatures even older than three years. Young lamb, when killed from six weeks to three months old, is called spring lamb, and appears in the market as early as the last of January, but is very scarce until March. Lamb one year old is called a yearling. Many object to the strong flavor of mutton; this is greatly overcome by removing the pink skin and trimming off superfluous fat.
Lamb and mutton are divided into two parts by cutting through entire length of backbone; then subdivided into fore and hind quarter, eight ribs being left on hind quarter,—while in beef but three ribs are left on hind-quarter. These eight ribs are cut into chops and are known as rib chops. The meat which lies between these ribs and the leg, cut into chops, is known as loin or kidney chops.
Lamb and mutton chops cut from loin have a small piece of tenderloin on one side of bone, and correspond to porterhouse steaks in the beef creature. Rib chops which have the bone cut short and scraped clean, nearly to the lean meat, are called French chops.
The leg is sold whole for boiling or roasting. The fore-quarter may be boned, stuffed, rolled, and roasted, but is more often used for broth, stew, or fricassee.
For a saddle of mutton the loin is removed whole before splitting the creature. Some of the bones are removed and the flank ends are rolled, fastened with wooden skewers, and securely tied to keep skewers in place.
Good quality mutton should be fine-grained and of bright pink color; the fat white, hard, and flaky. If the outside skin comes off easily, mutton is sure to be good. Lamb chops may be easily distinguished from mutton chops by the red color of bone. As lamb grows older, blood recedes from bones; therefore in mutton the bone is white. In leg of lamb the bone at joint is serrated, while in leg of mutton the bone at joint is smooth and rounded. Good mutton contains a larger proportion of fat than good beef. Poor mutton is often told by the relatively small proportion of fat and lean as compared to bone.
Lamb is usually preferred well done; mutton is often cooked rare.