CHEESE SALADS
Cheese and Pimento Salad
Stuff canned pimentos with cream cheese, cut into slices, place on lettuce leaves and serve with mayonnaise dressing.
Cheese and Celery Salad
Select celery stalks with deep grooves in them; wash and dry on clean towel. Mix a small cream cheese with a bit of salt, and ¼ cup finely chopped nuts (pecans are best). Fill grooves in celery stalk with the cheese mixture and chill. When ready to serve cut stalks into small pieces with sharp knife. Serve on lettuce leaves with French dressing.
For a pleasant addition to fruit salad, fill tender celery stalks with roquefort cheese, and lay one or two on each plate of salad.
Pepper and Cheese Salad
Remove top and seeds from a sweet green pepper. Scald it with boiling water, letting it stand in water about ten minutes. Mix soft cream cheese with chopped nuts, or with tiny cubes of cooked beets and fill pepper with this mixture; chill well, cut in thin slices with sharp knife and serve on bed of head lettuce with French dressing.
Apples can also be used (with cheese and nuts) by removing core without breaking the apple.
COTTAGE CHEESE
(See also under the chapter on Cheese)
All that has been said of cheese as a valuable food and as a substitute for meat, applies equally to cottage cheese and it is so easily prepared, inexpensive and generally relished that it should be used much more freely than it is.
The following recipes are only a few of the many that might be given, but the careful cook should evolve other combinations equally attractive.
Cottage Cheese by Government Method
(From Food Administration Bulletin)
Unit, 1 gallon. For lesser amounts, measurements to be divided accordingly.
Take 1 gallon of sweet skim milk; add ¾ cup of clean, sour milk and stir as it is put in. Raise the temperature in hot water to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, using a dairy thermometer. Remove from heat and place where it is to remain until set. Add ⅛ of a junket tablet thoroughly dissolved in a tablespoon of cold water; stir while adding. Cover with cloth and leave for 12 to 16 hours in even temperature, about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. At end of this period there should be a slight whey on the top and when poured out the curd should cleave sharply. Drain through cotton cloth, not cheese-cloth. When whey has been drained out, work in 1 or 2 teaspoons of salt to the cheese, according to taste; 1½ to 2 pounds of cheese should be obtained from a gallon of milk.
For table use it is advisable to work in 1 or 2 tablespoons of cream to the pound. For use in cooking, this is not necessary.
One may also make cottage cheese of freshly soured milk by simply heating it in a double boiler till whey forms, letting it stand an hour and then turning it into a cheese-cloth bag to drain. To the dry curd formed add sweet or sour cream and salt to taste. When made in this way care must be taken that the milk is freshly soured—if it is old it will have a bitter taste and the cheese will not be good.
Cottage Cheese Sandwiches
Thin slices of rye, brown or white bread, buttered, with fillings of cottage cheese in combination with jelly, marmalade, pimentoes, lettuce or mayonnaise are all good.
Cottage Cheese Club Sandwiches
Toast slices of bread, cut diamond shape and spread with butter and cottage cheese or cottage cheese alone and put together with any one of the following combinations:
Tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise dressing.
Thin slices of ham spread with mustard and lettuce.
Sliced, tart apple, chopped nuts and drops of French dressing.
Sliced orange and mayonnaise.
Sliced Spanish onion, a hot fried egg sprinkled with Worcestershire sauce.
Thin slices of tomato, bacon, chicken, lettuce and mayonnaise dressing.
Cottage Cheese Salad Dressing
½ cup cottage cheese
1 tablespoon vinegar
½ teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup heavy cream (either sweet or sour) whipped stiff.
Mix in order given. A chopped hard boiled egg improves it.
A similar salad dressing, although containing no cottage cheese, may be given here also.
Sour Cream Salad Dressing
1 cup sour cream—whipped
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ teaspoon salt
(1 teaspoon sugar, if desired)
2 hard boiled egg yolks finely chopped
Mix in order given.
Either of these is particularly good with green vegetables.
For a fruit salad the eggs should be omitted and double the amount of sugar used.
Cottage Cheese Salad
Lettuce, sliced cucumber or green, sweet peppers, cottage cheese formed in small balls or slices, mayonnaise or French dressing.
Cottage Cheese Pie
1 cup cottage cheese
⅔ cup sugar
⅔ cup milk
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 tablespoon melted butter
Salt
¼ teaspoon vanilla
Mix the ingredients in the order given. Bake the pie in one crust. Cool it slightly and cover it with meringue made by adding 2 tablespoons of sugar and ½ teaspoon of vanilla to the beaten white of 2 eggs and brown it in a slow oven.
Devonshire Dainty
Serve on individual plates ½ cup cottage cheese to which has been added 2 tablespoonfuls whipped cream (sweet or sour). Over this pour ½ cup currant jam.
Pass saltines or other dry, unsweetened crackers.