The snow-white cauliflower with fowl and ham!”
This is wise advice, because the green broccoli is far better than the white.
There are many American vegetables which may be cooked without a twang. They are all in tins or bottles, bearing plain directions. Among others I can speak from personal experience of Sugar Corn, Green Corn, Oyster Corn, Boston Beans, Lima Beans, and Succotash. This last is a meal in itself, and of most excellent flavour and convenience. Green corn, too, reminds those who know the South African mealie in all its toothsomeness, of many a hearty supper of Kaffir mealies roasted in the embers of a camp fire, or even in that most primitive of ovens, an ant-heap, which, believe it or not as you will, turns out better cooked meats than some of your very patent, very modern, very “gadgetty” kitchen ranges, although not better, I ween, than my chaste Chaffinda.
From vegetables to salads is but one step. I do not see any valid reason for apologising for the inclusion of salads in a Chafing-Dish book. They are not cooked in a Chafing Dish, it is true, but it is part of my religion that no meal is complete without a salad, green for choice, but anyhow a salad. I do not insist on salad for breakfast, although on a blazing hot July day, after a swim or a tramp, or both, I can imagine worse things than an omelette, some kidneys and bacon, and a slice of real ham, and a green salad to top up with. But no dinner is really a dinner without a salad, and by that I do not mean three scraggy lettuce leaves, soused in vinegar, which as Salade de saison is the usual accompaniment to that disastrous hen, Poulet au cresson, which is a centipede as to legs and has no breast or liver wing.
As this screed is, after all, a plain record of personal likes and dislikes, I see no reason for concealing the fact that I have no use whatever, no manner of use in the wide wide world, for mayonnaise with salad. The Americans swear by it; I swear at it. My salad mixture, which goes with everything—absolutely everything—is simplicity itself. Eccolo!
Salad Mixture.
Into a large bowl put half a teaspoon of salt, same of Paprika, a dash of black pepper, freshly ground by a hand-mill, and a teaspoon of made English mustard. Mix them up well. Now add very gradually the very best quality of olive oil, almost drop by drop, to the quantity of three tablespoons, mixing all the time until the ingredients assume the consistency of cream; now thin this with one tablespoon of good wine vinegar, and amalgamate thoroughly. That is all I use.
Now and again, by way of extra titillation of the jaded palate, you may add half a tablespoon of Tarragon vinegar, herbs to taste, Spring onions, chives, French mustard, olives (French only), hard-boiled eggs, dandelion leaves, nasturtium leaves, and celery salt.
But there are half a dozen rules which I would seriously enjoin the salad mixer to bear in mind.
Only use a wooden spoon and fork for mixing.