Third Week. Thursday.
Veal and Rice Broth.
- 4 lbs. knuckle of veal, well broken up.
- 1 onion.
- 2 stalks of celery.
- ½ cup of rice, washed and picked over.
- Chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.
- 1 cup of milk.
- 4 qts. of cold water.
- 1 tablespoonful corn-starch.
Put on the veal and bones, with the onion and celery minced, in four quarts of cold water. Boil gently after it begins to bubble, four hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Soak the rice in lukewarm water, enough to cover it well—adding warmer as it swells—for one hour. Cook in the same water, never touching with a spoon, but shaking up from the bottom, now and then. Strain and press the soup into a bowl; cool to throw up the fat for the skimmer, and return to the pot. Salt and pepper; boil up and skim, and stir in the corn-starch wet up in the milk. Simmer three minutes; put in the rice with the water in which it was boiled, and the parsley. Simmer very gently five minutes, and pour out.
Mutton à la Jardinière.
- 5 lbs. of mutton, breast or neck, all in one piece.
- 2 onions, peeled.
- 1 carrot, peeled.
- 2 turnips, peeled.
- 1 pint canned tomatoes.
- A few sprigs of cauliflower.
- 2 stalks of blanched celery.
- Pepper and salt.
- 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
- 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.
- Dripping for frying.
Fry the mutton (whole) in a large frying-pan, until it is lightly browned on both sides. Put into a deep, broad saucepan with all the vegetables (also whole) except the tomatoes; cover with cold water, and stew, closely covered, for an hour after they begin to boil. Take out the vegetables, and set aside; add boiling water to the meat, if it is not covered, and simmer steadily, never fast, two hours longer. The meat should be tender throughout, even the fibres. Turn off all the gravy, except about half a cupful, fit the pot-lid on very tightly, and leave the meat where it will keep just below the cooking-point. Strain the gravy you have poured off; leave it to cool until the fat rises. Skim, and return to the pot with the tomatoes. Season, and boil fast, skimming two or three times, until it is reduced to one-half the original quantity, or just enough to half cover the meat. Thicken with corn-starch, and put in the meat, with its juices from the bottom of the pot. Simmer, closely covered, half an hour. Cut the now cooled vegetables into neat dice; put the butter into a saucepan, and when it is hot, the vegetables. Shake all together until smoking hot, season, add a little gravy from the meat, and leave them to keep hot in it while you dish the mutton. Put it in the middle of a flat dish, and put the vegetables around it in separate mounds, with sprigs of parsley or celery between. Pour gravy over the mutton.
Try this dish. It is not difficult of preparation, diffuse as I have made the directions. It is, if well managed and discreetly seasoned, a family dinner of itself, and a very cheap one.