Fourth Week. Monday.
Baked Hotch-Potch.
- 2 lbs. of lean beef.
- 1 lb. of good sausage-meat.
- 1 sliced onion.
- 1 sliced cucumber.
- 3 raw tomatoes peeled and sliced.
- Handful of asparagus-tops.
- 1 sliced carrot.
- ¼ of a cabbage-heart, chopped fine.
- ½ cup of raw rice.
- 2 cups of green peas.
- Pepper and salt.
- Cold water.
Cut the meat small and put in alternate layers with the vegetables and rice, into a stout stone jar. Pour in three quarts of water, when you have seasoned the vegetables. Fit a close cover on the jar, sealing around the edges with a paste of flour and water. Set in the oven early in the day and do not open for six hours; then pour into the tureen. This is a good soup for Monday, and almost a dinner in itself.
Minced Lamb.
Cut the meat from the bone of your cold roast. Salt the bone and put by for another day’s soup. Mince the meat fine, season highly; put the gravy left from yesterday (or a cup of your Sunday’s soup would be even better) in a saucepan, when you have taken off the fat, heat it, and stir in the mince. Make it very hot; thicken with a little browned flour if it is too thin, and pile up in a flat dish, with poached eggs and toast about it.
Poached Eggs.
Nearly fill a frying-pan with boiling water. Add a little salt and vinegar. Break your eggs, one at a time, into a wet saucer, and slip from this upon the surface of the water. Cook slowly three minutes; take up with a perforated skimmer, and lay carefully upon rounds of buttered toast laid around the minced lamb.
Potato Cakes.
Work cold mashed potato—or the remains of your “puff,” soft with a little melted butter and milk; knead into it enough prepared flour to enable you to roll it out into a sheet half an inch thick. Cut into rounds like biscuit, and bake in a floured pan rather quickly to a good brown. Glaze with butter just before you take them out. Eat hot.