Remove the breast from a plump and tender chicken and separate from the bone and skin. Detach the small fillets, then cut each side into two or three lengthwise slices the size of the small fillets. Keep covered closely until ready to cook. Heat the blazer very hot, butter slightly, and in it lay the fillets and sprinkle with the juice of half a lemon, salt and white pepper; add, also, one-third a cup of chicken stock and a tablespoonful of sherry. Cover and let cook about ten minutes. In the meantime prepare a sauce in a second chafing-dish, using two tablespoonfuls, each, of butter and flour, a dash of salt and pepper, and one cup of stock, in making which a small piece of ham or bacon was used. Add also a tablespoonful of mushroom or tomato catsup and a tablespoonful of sherry wine.
Mutton Réchauffé.
(Creole Style.)
Melt three tablespoonfuls of butter in the blazer and sauté in this a tablespoonful, each, of green pepper and onion, chopped fine; add three tablespoonfuls of flour and half a teaspoonful of salt, and stir and cook until frothy; then add, gradually, one cup of brown stock and half a cup of tomato purée (cooked tomato strained). Let boil two or three minutes, then set over hot water and stir in one cup of cold roast mutton cut in strips or cubes, and half a cup of cooked macaroni, blanched and drained. Two or three mushrooms or a tablespoonful of mushroom catsup improves this dish.
Baba or Wine Cake.
This cake may be made some days in advance, and when wished reheated in a sauce made in the chafing-dish. Baba is baked in a large mould and cut in slices, or in individual cylindrical or baba moulds.
Baba.
Ingredients.
- 1 lb. of flour.
- 1 cake of compressed yeast.
- ½ a cup of water.
- 10 oz. of butter (1¼ cups).
- ¼ a teaspoonful of salt.
- ½ a cup of sugar.
- 8 eggs.
- ½ a cup of currants, sultanas or sliced citron.
Method.—Make a sponge of the yeast, softened in the water, and flour to knead. Knead the little ball of dough until elastic, and put into a small saucepan of lukewarm water. Meanwhile add the butter, sugar, salt and three of the eggs to the rest of the flour, and beat with the hand until all are evenly blended; then add the rest of the eggs, one after another. When the ball of dough rises to the top of the water and is light, remove from the water with a skimmer and beat it into the egg paste; beat for some minutes, then beat in the fruit. Turn the mixture into the mould or moulds, leaving room for the cake to double in bulk. Let rise in a temperature of 68° F. When nearly doubled in bulk, bake from twenty to fifty minutes.