Menus.
Let us take for soup: A purée of chestnuts, or cream of celery.
For our fish course: Skate à la crème, or baked tench.
For an entrée: Baked ham with wine sauce, or curried rabbit.
For a roast: Wild duck and orange sauce, or roast pheasant and fried potatoes.
As an entremet: Scalloped salsify, or Jerusalem artichokes.
As a sweet: Apple mirotons and quince jelly.
The recipe for chestnut soup has been given in these columns before. To recapitulate it as briefly as possible is to remind our readers that the chestnuts must be first boiled until the husk and peel can be easily removed, and then to boil them again with minced onion, a few herbs, a carrot, and an ounce or more of butter, and sufficient water to just cover them. This should afterwards be rubbed through a sieve until a purée is obtained, a pint of boiling milk added, and a teaspoonful of cornflour (previously wetted) stirred in to thicken it. Boil up once more, then serve at once. It should be of the consistency of cream.
Cream of celery soup is made by stewing a couple of heads of celery, cut fine, with one or two onions and any garden herbs in a little water until thoroughly soft, then rubbing all through a sieve, adding sufficient milk to make up the requisite quantity, a spoonful of cornflour to thicken, seasoning, butter, and after this has boiled add a little cream and a few croutons of fried bread.
Skate is a cheap fish and one that is somewhat despised in our country, abroad it is better understood. Young skate are called ray or maids, and their flesh is very delicate. Skate is improved by being kept for a day or two in cold weather. Cut it into neat pieces and simmer in white sauce until done, then lay the pieces on a hot dish, sprinkle crumbs and a little grated cheese over with a touch of cayenne pepper, and let them slightly brown in the oven, then pour the sauce around the fish. Serve very hot.
Tench, being a pond-fish, and apt to have a slightly muddy flavour, should lie in salt water for a few hours. Rub it all over with lemon-juice, put it into a tin with one or two minced shalots, some parsley, crumbs, and a little dab of butter, and bake for half an hour or more if the fish is large. Serve in the same dish.
A rabbit jointed and cooked slowly in good gravy made from stock thickened and flavoured with a spoonful of curry-paste or powder, onions and any other vegetable liked, seasoning and a soupçon of vinegar, makes a delicious variation from the more ordinary stew of rabbit. Serve boiled rice in a separate dish.
Orange sauce, or an orange salad, is the correct accompaniment to roast wild duck. For the sauce: Squeeze the juice of three or four oranges and stir in a teaspoonful of arrowroot to thicken; add a little sugar if liked. Wild duck requires a quick hot oven, but should not remain in it more than three-quarters of an hour, as the gravy should run from it as from a rump steak. Serve fried potatoes and browned crumbs with this as with the roast pheasant; the garnish for the duck would be a lemon cut in quarters, for the pheasant the crumbs are sufficient.
Those who possess a few scallop-shells or the little fire-proof chinaware ramequin pans will find no difficulty in making use of salsify, and this, one of our daintiest, is one of our least-known vegetables. The roots require scraping, then boiling in salt water until they are tender enough to mash, adding then pepper, butter, and a beaten egg. Fill the pans and sprinkle crumbs on the top, then bake in a quick oven till slightly browned.
For a miroton of apples: Pare and core without dividing six or eight good-sized apples; cut them in slices to form rings. Place in a saucepan a piece of butter the size of an egg, a quarter of a pound of sugar, some grated lemon-rind and the juice. Simmer the apples in this, and when tender arrange them in the centre of a dish, and when cool garnish with spoonfuls of quince jelly. A little cream might be poured around the base. Or the apples might be left whole and steamed, then coated with the jelly, the place of the core being filled up with whipped cream, and the dish garnished according to fancy.
As in summer-time we arrange our dishes for cool effects, so in winter months we may try to make as much contrast of bright colour as possible. All these things are worth studying, for it is in such details that the hand of the true culinary artist is shown.