Left-over Sweet Potatoes: Peel, slice thick, dip in melted butter, roll in sugar well seasoned with grated lemon peel, and nutmeg, lay in a pan so as not to touch and make very hot in the oven. This last estate is always better than the first.
Potato Balls: Mash boiled or baked sweet potatoes smooth, seasoning them well with salt, pepper, cinnamon, a little nutmeg, and melted butter. Bind with a well-beaten egg, flour the hands, and roll the mashed potato into balls the size of large walnuts. Roll the balls in fine crumbs or sifted cornmeal, drop in deep hot fat, fry crisp, drain, and use as a garnish to roast pork, roast fowl, or broiled ham.
Bananas: Bananas are far too unfamiliar in the kitchen. They can be cooked fifty ways—and in each be found excellent. The very best way I have yet found, is to peel, slice in half, lengthwise, lay in a dish with a cover, shake sugar over, add a little mace, lemon juice, lemon peel, and melted butter, then bake until soft—seven to fifteen minutes in a hot oven, according to the quantity in the dish. Or peel and slice, leave unseasoned, and lay in the pan bacon has been cooked in, first pouring away most of the fat. Cook five minutes in a hot oven, and send to table with hot bread, crisp bacon and coffee for breakfast. A thick slice of banana, along with a thick slice of tart apple, both very lightly seasoned, makes a fine stuffing for squabs. Half a banana delicately baked, and laid on a well-browned chop adds to looks and flavor.
Baking Vegetables: Paper bags taught me the ease and value of cooking vegetables in the oven rather than on top the stove. Less care is required, less water, rather less heat. Peas and lima beans, for example, after shelling, should be well washed, put in a pan with salt, seasoning and a little water, covered close, and baked in a hot oven half an hour to an hour. Green corn is never so well cooked, outside a paper bag, as by laying it on a rack in a covered pan, putting a little water underneath, covering close and setting the pan for nine minutes in a hot oven. It is sweeter and richer than even when put in cold unsalted water, brought to a boil, cooked one minute, then taken up. But however heat is applied, long cooking ruins it. Cook till the milk is set—not a second longer. Green peas should have several tender mint leaves put in with them, also sugar in proportion of a teaspoonful to half a pint of shelled peas. Lima beans are better flavored if the butter is put with them along with the water. Use only enough to make steam—say two tablespoonfuls to a fair-sized pan. Spinach and beet greens also bake well, but require more water. Leave out salt, adding it after draining and chopping them. They take twenty to thirty minutes, according to age.
All manner of fruits, berries in especial, cook finely in the oven. Put in earthen or agate ware, with sugar, spices and a little water, cover close and cook half to three quarters of an hour, according to bulk. Uncover then—if done take up, if not let cook uncovered as long as needed. Set the baking dishes always on rack or a grid-shelf, never on the oven bottom nor solid metal. Thus the danger of burning is minimized, also the need of stirring.
For cauliflower au gratin, cut the head into florets, lay them compactly in the baking dish, add a little water, with salt, pepper and butter. Bake covered until tender, then shake over the grated cheese, and set back in the oven three to five minutes. Tomatoes, peeled and whole except for cutting out the eyes, baked in a dish with a liberal seasoning of salt, pepper, and butter, a strewing of sugar and a little onion juice, look and taste wholly unlike stewed tomatoes, common or garden variety.
Boiling with Bacon: Get a pound of streaky bacon, cut square if possible, scrape and wash clean, put on in plenty of water, with a young onion, a little thyme and parsley, bring to a quick boil, throw in cold water, skim the pot clean, then let stand simmering for two to three hours. Add to it either greens—mustard, turnip, or dandelion or field salad, well washed and picked, let cook till very tender, then skim out, drain in a colander, lay in a hot dish with the square of bacon on top. Here is the foundation of a hearty and wholesome meal. The bacon by long boiling is in a measure emulsified, and calculated to nourish the most delicate stomach rather than to upset it. Serve two thin slices of it with each helping of greens. You should have plenty of Cayenne vinegar, very hot and sharp, hot corn bread, and cider or beer, to go along with it.
String beans, known to the south country as snaps, never come fully to their own, unless thus cooked with bacon. Even pork does not answer, though that is far and away better than boiling and buttering or flooding with milk sauces. It is the same with cabbage. Wash well, halve or quarter, boil until very tender, drain and serve. Better cook as many as the pot will hold and the bacon season, since fried cabbage, which is chopped fine, and tossed in bacon fat with a seasoning of pepper, salt and vinegar, helps out wonderfully for either breakfast, luncheon or supper. Never throw away proper pot-liquor—it is a good and cheap substitute for soup on cold days. Heat, and drop into it crisp bread-crusts—if they are corn bread crusts made very brown, all the better. Pioneer folk throve on pot-liquor to such an extent they had a saying that it was sinful to have too much—pot-liquor and buttermilk at the same meal.
Fruit Desserts: Fruits have affinities the same as human beings. Witness the excellent agreement of grape fruit and rum. Nothing else, not the finest liqueur, so brings out the flavor. But there are other fruits which, conjoined to the grape fruit, make it more than ever delicious. Strawberries for example. They must be fine and ripe. Wash well, pick, wash again, halve if very large, and mix well in a bowl with grape fruit pulp, freed of skin and seed, and broken to berry size. Add sugar in layers, then pour over a tumbler of rum, let stand six hours on ice, and serve with or without cream.
Strawberries mixed with ripe fresh pineapple, cut to berry size, and well sweetened, are worthy of sherry, the best in the cellar, and rather dry than sweet. Mixed with thin sliced oranges and bananas, use sound claret—but do not put it on until just before serving—let the mixed fruits stand only in sugar. Strawberries alone, go very well with claret and sugar—adding cream if you like. Cream, lightly sweetened, flavored with sherry or rum, or a liqueur, and whipped, gives the last touch of perfection to a dessert of mixed fruit, or to wine jelly, or a cup of after-dinner coffee, or afternoon chocolate.