Without removing the skin, cut fresh tomatoes into slices three eighths of an inch thick. Sprinkle the slices with pepper and salt and dip them first in melted butter or in oil and then in cracker or bread crumbs, then broil them over hot coals until they are softened. Do not let them cook so much that they fall apart.
SPINACH
Boil carefully washed and carefully picked over spinach until it is tender, drain it, chop it very fine, and press it through a purée sieve. Season it with white sauce made of half milk and half stock (page [102]). Use enough of the sauce to make it quite creamy. If it is to be molded it cannot be quite as soft as when it is to be served in a vegetable-dish.
No. 1. Fill thoroughly buttered individual timbale molds with spinach and press it down quite hard. After a few minutes, turn the spinach out of the molds on to rounds of browned bread. Cover the tops with chopped whites of hard-boiled eggs and place in the center a spot of the crumbed yolks.
Serve alone or use as a garnish on a meat-dish.
This is a good way to utilize a small amount of leftover spinach. Spinach is improved rather than injured by recooking.
No. 2. Make a mound of spinach by pressing it into a buttered bowl. Ornament the top with a hard-boiled egg, the whole yolk standing on slices of the white cut lengthwise.
No. 3. Ornament a thoroughly buttered tin basin or any mold with half rings of hard-boiled eggs as shown in illustration [No. 5]. The egg will stick to the butter and be held in place. Fill the mold with spinach, putting it in carefully with a spoon so as not to displace the ornamentation, and press it down firmly. After a few minutes turn it out of the mold and garnish it with croutons.
Croutons are slices of bread browned (sautéd) in butter.
