Celery.
Wash and scrape the stalks when you have cut off the roots. Cut off the green leaves and reject the greenest, toughest stalks. Retain the blanched leaves that grow nearest the heart. Keep in cold water until you send to table. Serve in a celery glass, and let each guest dip in salt for himself. (See [Celery Salad].)
Stewed Celery. ✠
- 1 bunch of celery—scraped, trimmed, and cut into inch lengths.
- 1 cup milk.
- 1 great spoonful of butter, rolled in flour.
- Pepper and salt.
Stew the celery in clear water until tender. Turn off the water, add the milk, and as soon as this boils, seasoning and butter. Boil up once and serve very hot.
Radishes.
A friend of mine, after many and woful trials with “the greatest plague of life,” engaged a supercilious young lady who “only hired out in the best of families as a professed cook.” She arrived in the afternoon, and was told that tea would be a simple affair—bread-and-butter, cold meat, cake, and a dish of radishes, which were brought in from the garden as the order was given. The lady was summoned to the parlor at that moment, and remarked in leaving—“You can prepare those now, Bridget.” Awhile later she peeped into the kitchen, attracted by the odor of hot fat. The frying-pan hissed on the fire, the contents were a half-pound of butter, and the “professional” stood at the table with a radish topped and tailed in one hand, a knife in the other. “I’m glad to see ye,” thus she greeted the intruder. “Is it paled or onpaled ye’ll have them radishes? Some of the quality likes ’em fried wid the skins on—some widout. I thought I’d wait and ask yerself.”
My readers can exercise their own choice in the matter of peeling, putting the frying out of the question. Wash and lay them in ice-water so soon as they are gathered. Cut off the tops when your breakfast or supper is ready, leaving about an inch of the stalks on; scrape off the skin if you choose, but the red ones are prettier if you do not; arrange in a tall glass or a round glass saucer, the stalks outside, the points meeting in the centre; lay cracked ice among them and send to table. Scrape and quarter the large white ones.
Good radishes are crisp to the teeth, look cool, and taste hot.