Stuffed Vegetable Marrow Flowers.—Pick the flowers when full blown, wash them and stuff with half-boiled rice, minced veal, sweet herbs, onions, and an egg; stew in beef stock. This makes a very pretty and excellent entremet, the flowers remaining yellow, with green ribs.
Polish.—The great feature of this cuisine is the very frequent use of flour or oatmeal mixed with the meat. They also employ curdled milk, both sweet and sour, and excessive use of spices, marmalade, and salted provisions, the Polish sour-crout, and the wild horse-radish. A Pole sneers at our homely necessary adjunct of the dinner table, the potato; he clings tenaciously to his salted cucumbers, which a Polish table is never without, and which completely usurp the place of the potato among the poor, forming in some cases their chief provision. Poland is a soup-eating nation; although to our uninitiated eyes, the different materials of which they are concocted seem inharmonious.
Barszcz.—A favourite Polish soup is Barszcz. Put 4 lb. beef, 1 lb. smoked ribs of pork, ¼ lb. ham, and 12 button mushrooms, onions and leeks into a large stewpan. Add 1 pint expressed juice of beetroot. Cook until the meat is tender, then add a hare, a fowl, and a duck, previously roasted to colour and give it a good flavour, and again some beetroot juice. Boil ¼ hour, and add some whites of eggs beaten with a little water to clear the soup. Cut up the boiled meats into convenient portions, and serve them in the bouillon, garnished with button mushrooms, tiny onions, slices of beetroot alternately with some fingers of celery and sprigs of parsley, all thoroughly well cooked beforehand; some fresh fennel, balls of force-meat and some broiled sausages, the small ones usually eaten abroad, about the length and thickness of the forefinger. This recipe is in the above quantities requisite for a large consumption. It can, however, be easily modified to suit any requirement, especially as regards the game and poultry added. Judgment must step in and regulate the due proportion of ingredients in a lesser or greater quantity as desired. The beetroot juice is quite peculiar to Poland. Without it few dishes are concocted or brought to table. Wash your beet carefully, then scrape it and cut in 4 lengthway pieces. Put them in a saucepan, and cover well with lukewarm water; keep it a soft heat for the space of 3-4 hours, by which gentle process the juice acquires an agreeably acid flavour.
Chotodriec.—Put 1 qt. salted cucumber juice, and a small quantity of leaven into a large saucepan, and boil well. Allow it to cool gently, and then mix in 1 qt. curdled milk. Boil one young beetroot, cut up finely in strips, in a separate saucepan. When done add it also to the soup, with some of the water wherein it was boiled, to colour a good red. Have ready 4 hard-boiled eggs, cut either in thin slices or small fillets, the latter being preferable; a good tablespoonful of finely chopped fennel and chives; some slices of fresh cucumber, and the flesh of a whole cray-fish, or crab, whichever most preferred, cut up in fair sized pieces. Add all these ingredients one after another to the soup, which must be served cold without bread, accompanied by small pieces of ice to make it colder still. Some palates have a complete and unconquerable objection to beetroot; when this happens to be the case, substitute sorrel, dressed like a spinach purée, with a little butter, for the obnoxious beetroot. There is a simplified method of making chotodriec by mixing the curdled milk with the juice of crushed fresh cucumber, some chopped fennel and chives; also sorrel; the hard-boiled eggs in rounds and slices of cucumber crushed in at the last moment. Melon is often substituted in this case for the cucumber, and makes a pleasing diversity. The salted cucumber juice for making chotodriec is prepared by the Polish cooks in the following manner. Wipe some moderate sized green cucumbers carefully in a clean linen cloth, and put them to what is termed “sweat” for 24 hours in a warm, dry place. Have a wooden cask staved in at the top well scalded; if it is a possibility, use a cask that has contained either hock or sherry previously. Place the cucumbers at the bottom, one against the other, and cover them with a bed of chopped fennel, some young leaves of the cherry-tree, and some crushed coriander seed. Pour some salted water on them, which has been already boiled, and allowed to get cold. Then cover up the cask carefully, and place in some cool place, resting on pieces of wood, to prevent the cask touching the ground. Cold water previously boiled must be added, should the moisture ooze away. The cask must be watched every day, and any mould which may by chance accumulate on the top be carefully removed. At the expiration of 2 months, the cucumbers are considered to be sufficiently salted and flavoured, and ready to be eaten. The water should not be excessively salt, as it is the usual custom for the poor to steep their bread in it, on the principle that it is sinful to waste, besides giving their bread an unwonted relish.
Zrazy.—Another famous dish. Take the undercut from a sirloin of beef, cut it through into cutlets a bare inch thick; beat them with a cutlet bat or the blade of a heavy knife till they are about half the original thickness; trim them to a nice round shape. Make a good-sized piece of butter quite hot in a stewpan, lay in the slices with salt, pepper, a pinch of pounded cloves, and an onion or some shallots that have been minced and delicately browned in butter, or (if not objected to) a small clove of garlic pounded or bruised fine. Cover close, and let the zrazy steam in their own gravy till tender. Turn them when one side is coloured, and taste them occasionally. If the gravy dries away, add a little stock or soup. When done quite tender, take up the slices. Skim off any superfluous fat from the sauce; dust a little flour in; darken the sauce with sugar browning; let it cook for a minute; then pour it over the meat, and garnish with sliced potatoes fried in butter.
Russian.—The Russian people, during the great fasts—which last 4-7 weeks, and which recur 4 times during the year—sustain themselves entirely on the soup made with the bitter cabbages, and a handful of dry salted fish called sniedky. It is clean tasted, but you need be a lover of this fish to relish it. It is not unlike whitebait; it is salt and dry, and leaves a somewhat soapy taste.
Borshch.—Take 3 lb. good fat meat, wash it well in warm water, boil it 2-3 minutes, take it out and wash it in cold water; cut it in pieces, and put it in the pot, pouring some stock over it; add some vegetables and a head of cabbage cut in 8 pieces; when the cabbage is well boiled, add according to taste the juice of beetroot or kwass (weak beer made of rye, very similar to treacle beer) or vinegar, and salt; then boil it until all is ready. You may add to this borshch, 1 lb. smoked ham, previously washed in warm water, dried, and boiled twice; lift it immediately and wash it in cold water, cut it in pieces, and put it in the borshch; then boil all together. Before serving, skim off the fat, take out the cabbage and put it in another pot, to which add 1 lb. sliced beetroot and some stock; boil it, add a little of the juice of the beetroot uncooked, to give it colour, and pepper and salt to taste. Prepared in this manner, borshch is excellent. The ingredients are as follows: 2½-3 lb. beef; 1 lb. ham; 1 head celery; parsley and 2 onions; 2 or 3 leaves of laurel; 1 small head of cabbage; 10-20 gr. pepper, salt, juice of beetroot, and some fennel.
Nalym.—Chop an onion, fry it in 2 spoonfuls fresh butter melted, add 1 spoonful flour; mix; pour in a little water, and set it to simmer on the hot plate. When it begins to boil, put in 5-6 potatoes, which you have cut in pieces, with some salt. Clean thoroughly, and salt your fish, cut it in convenient pieces, and let all simmer together, add some barley grits, a little parsley, and black pepper. The fish thus dealt with is called in Russian nalym, which is translated lavaret, a name familiar to travellers as that of a kind of trout which inhabits the lakes of Switzerland. Soup made from sea fish is not so much relished, as Russia is especially rich in fresh-water fish. They sometimes make shchi with sea fish.
Oucha.—Made for great occasions. Cook 2-3 lb. some small fishes, or, if you prefer just a fowl, with carrots, turnips, onions, a few herbs and some spice and salt; add a little nutmeg, clear with white of egg or with caviare, and strain through a fine cloth. When this broth is ready, place in it sterlet cut in good slices; add a glass of cold water and let it stew, removing all scum. When the sterlet is cooked pour the oucha into a tureen containing slices of lemon, without either rind or pips. Add champagne to taste, and give it all a boil up, adding parsley and fennel. When you serve it do not cover the tureen. This fish is very delicate. It is usually served in the pan in which it has been cooked; therefore in large establishments silver saucepans are used.