1 large onion, 1 dessertspoon curry powder, 1 oz. butter or nutter, 3 hard-boiled eggs, 1 dessertspoon tomato pulp, 1 teacup water.
Shred the onion, put it in the stew-pan with the butter, sprinkle the curry powder over, and fry gently until quite brown. Shell the eggs and cut them in halves. Add the eggs, the tomato pulp, and the water. Stir well, and simmer until the liquid is reduced to one-half. This will take about 15 minutes. Serve with plain boiled unpolished rice.
3. GERMAN LENTIL CURRY.
Use the ingredients given, and proceed exactly the same as for egg curry. But in place of eggs, take 1 breakfastcup of cold cooked German lentils (see recipe for cooking lentils). Use also 2 teacups water in place of the 1, and only 3/4 oz. butter or nutter.
4. VEGETABLE CURRY.
Use the ingredients given and proceed the same as for German lentil curry, using any cold steamed vegetables in season. The best curry, according to an Indian authority, is one made of potatoes, artichokes, carrots, pumpkin and tomatoes.
Note.—A writer in Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery says:—"A spoonful of cocoanut kernel dried and powdered gives a delicious flavour to a curry, as does also acid apple."
VI.—VEGETABLES.
Never eat boiled vegetables. No one ever hears of a flesh-eater boiling his staple article of diet and throwing away the liquor. On the contrary, when he does indulge in boiled meat, the liquor is regarded as a valuable asset, and is used as a basis for soup. But his meat is generally conservatively cooked—that is, it is baked, roasted, or grilled, so that the juices are retained. If he has to choose between throwing away the meat or the water in which it has been boiled, he keeps the liquor—witness "beef-tea." For some unknown reason he does not often treat his vegetables in the same way, and suffers thereby the loss of much valuable food material.
The vegetarian—being avowedly a thinker and a pioneer—would, it might be imagined, treat what is now one of his staple articles of diet at least as carefully as the out-of-date flesh-eater. But no! For the most part, his vegetables are boiled, and when the best part of the food constituents and all the flavour have been extracted, he dines off a mass of indigestible fibre—mere waste matter—and allows the "broth" to be thrown down the sink, with the consequence that many vegetarians are pale, flabby individuals who succumb to the slightest strain, and suffer from chronic dyspepsia.