GAZPACHO.—In Spanish countries this is a common luncheon or supper for working people. Take onions, cucumbers, and a small chili or red pepper. Peel them, chop them fine, and mix them with plenty of bread crumbs, and a little salt. Mix equal quantities of vinegar and water, and add an ample portion of sweet oil. Put the whole into a pipkin, and stir it well. Set it on hot coals, and simmer it till well cooked. Eat slices of bread with it.
In summer it is usual to serve up this mixture in a large bowl without any cooking.
SPANISH SALAD.—A Spanish proverb says that for compounding a good salad, four persons are required—a spendthrift for oil; a miser for vinegar; a counsellor for salt, (or a man of judgment;) and a madman for stirring up the whole, hard and furiously. Get a very large salad-bowl, that there may be ample room for stirring well. Prepare in separate vessels the lettuce and the seasoning. They should not be put together till a few minutes before the salad is to be eaten; otherwise it will be tough and sodden instead of crisp and fresh. Do not cut it with a knife, but tear or strip off the leaves of the lettuce, and throw all the stalk away. Then wash the leaves through several cold waters, and dry them in a clean napkin. Put them into the large bowl; and in a smaller bowl mix the seasoning, for which you must have equal quantities of mixed vinegar and water; a small tea-spoonful of mixed cayenne and salt; and four times as much sweet oil as the mixed vinegar and water. Mix all the seasoning thoroughly, stirring it very hard. Have ready on a plate some tarragon finely minced or powdered.
Just before the salad is to be eaten, pour the dressing over the lettuce and strew the surface with tarragon. You may decorate the top with nasturtion flowers; they are very nice to eat.
CAROLINA WAY OF BOILING RICE.—Pick the rice carefully, and wash it through two or three cold waters till it is quite clean. Then (having drained off all the water through a cullender) put the rice into a pot of boiling water, with a very little salt; allowing as much as a quart of water to half a pint of rice. Boil it twenty minutes or more. Then pour off the water, draining the rice as dry as possible. Lastly, set it on hot coals with the lid off, that the steam may not condense upon it and render the rice watery. Keep it drying thus for a quarter of an hour. Put it into a deep dish, and loosen and toss it up from the bottom with two forks one in each hand, so that the grains may appear to stand alone.