Shell a score of chestnuts, cover them in the Chafing Dish with boiling water, and in four minutes take them out and remove the skins. Return them to the boiling water, add a cup of milk, pepper and salt, and simmer until quite tender but not soft.
“Behold, the earth hath roots;
The bounteous housewife Nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you.”—Timon of Athens.
It has been made plain, I trust, that it is not necessary to rely solely on the damp-sodden vegetables of the pre-historic cuisine. It is just as easy to cook them nicely as otherwise, and a deal more satisfactory. The bounteous housewife Nature overwhelms us with her treasures of root and sap, and it seems almost an outrage to neglect the opportunities so lavishly offered to us.
I have just described a score or so of the plainer methods of cooking vegetables, simply as an indication of their possibilities, but the enterprising Chafer will find as he progresses in the art (and Chafing grows upon one like any other hobby) that there are dozens of others which lend themselves readily to his, or her, deft manipulation.
The grandfather of Charles Darwin was a poet of parts, and in his “Phytologica” he says:
“Oft in each month, poetic Tighe! be thine
To dish green broccoli with savoury chine;
Oft down thy tuneful throat be thine to cram