Now about peas. I spoke about washing string beans but not washing peas. If the shells of the peas are at all dirty, and sometimes they are so that they blacken your fingers in shelling, wash the shells of the peas before you begin to shell them, but do not wash the peas after they are shelled. Of course the inside of the pod is perfectly clean, and if your hands are clean and the shells are clean, you do not need to wash them. In using green peas in summer time it is well to have a quantity of them, perhaps twice as many as you are likely to use for one meal, and shell them, because you know they are of different sizes always. Shell them and separate them into two different sizes, the smallest and the largest, and then cook one size for one day, putting the others in a very cool place, or refrigerator, and cook them the next day, because if you have the large and small ones mixed they do not cook evenly. You will find them very much nicer; if you keep them in a cool place it will not hurt to keep them.
The length of time that it takes to boil lettuce or spinach depends somewhat on the time of the year. The tenderer the spinach is, of course, the quicker it will boil; when it is very young and tender it will boil in two or three minutes; when it is older it may take as long as ten minutes. Ladies very often make the mistake in boiling spinach that they do in boiling cabbage. They boil it sometimes until the leaves are destroyed, in order to soften the stalk. The better way is to tear away the stalk and use only the leaf. Of course, that gives you a smaller quantity of spinach than if you use the stalk, but when you use the tough, woody stalk you waste the leaf in boiling. Lettuce usually boils in a couple of minutes. One of the ladies speaks about cooking spinach without any water. You can do that if you wish. Just put in a sauce pan, after having carefully picked it over and washed it; stir it a little once in a while to be sure that the uncooked top goes down to the bottom. There is no special advantage in it, because if you boil it as I tell you, only until it is tender, the water has no effect upon it except to cook it more quickly. It is the English way to cook it without water. If you use boiling salted water, as I told you, it cannot possibly affect the nutriment of the vegetable. It is when you boil vegetables a long time, and boil them away before you take up the dish, that you waste the nutriment. These rules apply to every vegetable that has color in it except beets. Beets have to be cooked without cutting the skin or trimming them in any way, in order to keep the color.
Now to keep lettuce fresh. I have kept it fresh, even in the summer time, for two or three days in this way: When it first comes in from the market wash it thoroughly in plenty of cold salted water. You do not need to tear it apart. You know I told you the other day about separating the leaves slightly from the head of the lettuce and shaking it in cold salted water. Trim off the outside wilted leaves. Wash it thoroughly in cold salted water, then wet a towel and lay the lettuce in it, fold it loosely up over the roots and if you have ice lay the towel on the cake of ice in the refrigerator or by the side of the cake of ice. If you haven’t any ice and have a cold cellar, after you have washed the lettuce and wrapped it in the wet towel, put it in a box; a tight wooden box is the best, or a thick pasteboard box if it is not broken; and put it in the cellar in the coldest place you can find. If you wrap it in a wet towel and put it on the ice you do not want to look at it. It will keep fresh at least two days, and sometimes longer; but if you put it in the cellar you will have to wet the towel thoroughly twice a day, morning and night; and you will find that you will have to take away some of the leaves that have wilted, but if you have it upon the ice the chances are that you will not lose any leaves. And it is very much nicer than it is to let it wilt and then try to restore it by soaking it in water.
FRIED PICKEREL.
Next take a recipe for fried pickerel. Some of the ladies will remember that a few days ago we were talking about frying fish in this way with salt pork. If any of the ladies have the recipe, of course they do not need to take it again. For fried fish of any kind, enough salt pork to cover the bottom of the frying pan that you are going to use for the fish. You find you have three or four pounds of fish; you will need at least half a pound of salt pork. Cut the pork in very thin slices; fat salt pork is the best. Put it in the frying pan and fry it until it is light brown. While the pork is being fried get ready the fish, having it thoroughly cleaned by washing it in cold water. If the fish is small you do not need to cut it; if it is large, cut it in pieces about three or four inches square. After the fish has been cleaned dry it in a towel; season some Indian meal with salt and pepper, roll the fish in the Indian meal. When the pork is brown take it out of the fat and put the fish into the drippings and fry the fish brown, first on one side and then on the other. When the fish is browned nicely serve it in a dish with the pork—fried pork and fish in one dish. This fish will not get very brown to-day, because it is still frozen. It did not come in long enough ago for us to get it thawed out, so, of course, there will be a little water in the fat, and it will not get quite so brown.
LECTURE TENTH.
CHEAP DISHES AND REWARMED FOODS.
We begin our lesson this afternoon with a dish of rice,—piloff of rice,—any cold meat cut in small squares, an onion peeled and chopped fine, and if you have tomatoes, either canned, fresh, or cold stewed tomatoes, a cupful. Sometimes the dish is made with tomatoes, sometimes without. Put the onion in the sauce pan with a tablespoonful of drippings; set it over the fire and let it get light brown. When it is light brown put with it a cupful of rice, picked over and washed and dried by the fire. After the onion begins to brown put the rice with it and stir until the rice is light brown; then put in a quart of hot water, the meat and tomatoes and a palatable seasoning of salt and pepper. Of course, the quantity of salt and pepper that you use will depend on the seasoning of the meat, and this may be any kind of meat. Then cover the sauce pan in which you have all these things and let the rice, meat, tomatoes and water all cook together gently. Every ten minutes you must look to see whether the rice has absorbed all the water. If it has you must add a little more water, not more than half a cupful at a time, keeping the rice just moist until it is tender. You will find that probably in about half an hour the rice will be tender, and when the dish is done it should not have the gravy about it; it simply needs to be moist, so you will have to add water cautiously after the first quart.
If the meat that you use is very fat,—and sometimes beef like this is very fat,—you may cook the meat, fat and lean together in with the onion in the first place instead of the tablespoonful of butter or drippings. If you have no meat you can make the dish in the same way using tomato, onion and rice; and if you have cold gravy of any kind put that in it.