The Belgian Cookbook Part 3

ASPARAGUS a L'ANVERS

Clean a bunch of asparagus and cook it in salt water for fifteen minutes. To do this successfully, tie the bunch round with some tape and place it upright in a pan of boiling water. Let the heads be above the water so that they will get cooked by the steam and will not be broken.

Simmer in this way to prevent them moving much. Meanwhile, hard-boil three eggs and chop some parsley. Lay the asparagus on a dish and sprinkle parsley over it, place round the sides the eggs cut in halves long-ways, and serve as well a sauce-boat of melted b.u.t.ter.

[_Mrs. Emelie Jones_.]

COOKED LETTUCE

Very often you will find that you cannot use all your lettuces, that they have begun to bolt and are no good for salad. This is the moment to cook them. Discard any bad leaves and wash the others carefully. Boil them for twelve minutes, take them off the fire, drain them and dry them in a clean cloth so as to get rid of all the water. Mince them finely, then put them into a saucepan with a lump of b.u.t.ter, pepper and salt.

Stir till they begin to turn color, then put in a thimbleful of flour melted in milk. Stir constantly, and if the vegetable becomes dry, moisten with more flour and milk. Let it simmer for quarter of an hour, and turn it out as a vegetable with meat.

STUFFED CAULIFLOWER

Pick over a fine cauliflower, and plunge it for a moment in boiling water. Look over it well again and remove any grit or insects. Put it head downwards in a pan when you have already placed a good slice of fat bacon at the bottom and sides. In the holes between the pan and the vegetable put a stuffing of minced meat, with breadcrumbs, yolks of eggs, mushrooms, seasoning of the usual kinds, in fact, a good forcemeat. Press this well in, and pour over it a thin gravy. Let it cook gently, and when the gravy on the top has disappeared put a dish on the top of the saucepan, turn it upside down and slip the cauliflower out. Serve very hot.

GOURMANDS' MUSHROOMS

There was a man in Ghent who loved mushrooms, but he could only eat them done in this fas.h.i.+on. If you said, "Monsieur, will you have them tossed in b.u.t.ter?" he would roar out, "No--do you take me for a Prussian? Let me have them properly cooked."

Melt in a pan a lump of b.u.t.ter the size of a tangerine orange and squeeze on it the juice of half a lemon. The way to get a great deal of juice from a lemon is to plunge it first of all for a few minutes, say five minutes, in boiling water. When the b.u.t.ter simmers, throw in a pound of picked small mushrooms, stir them constantly, do not let them get black. Then in three or four minutes they are well impregnated with b.u.t.ter, and the chief difficulty of the dish is over. Put the saucepan further on the fire, let it boil for a few minutes. Take out the mushrooms, drain them, sprinkle them with flour, moisten them with gravy, season with salt and pepper, put them back in the b.u.t.ter and stir in the yolk of an egg. Add also a little of the lemon juice that remains. While you are doing this you must get another person to cut and toast some bread and to b.u.t.ter it. Pour on to the bread the mushrooms (which are fit for the greatest saints to eat on Fridays), and serve them very hot.

POMMES CHaTEAU

Take twenty potatoes, turn them with a knife into olive shape, boil them in salted water for five minutes; drain them and put them on a baking-tin with salt and b.u.t.ter or dripping. Cook them in a very hot oven for thirty minutes, moving them about from time to time. Sprinkle on a little chopped parsley before serving.

CHIPPED POTATOES

Take some long-shaped potatoes, peel them and smooth them with the knife. Cut them into very thin rounds.

Heat the grease pretty hot, dry the slices of potato with a cloth, put them into the frying basket and plunge them into the fat. When they are colored, take the basket out, let the fat heat up again to a slightly higher temperature, and re-plunge the basket, so that the slices become quite crisp. Serve with coa.r.s.e salt sprinkled over.

CHICORY a LA FERDINAND

Boil and chop in medium-sized pieces the chicory, mince up a few chives according to your taste and heat both the vegetables in some cream, adding salt and pepper. Pour on a dish and decorate with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

APPLES AND SAUSAGES

This dish comes from the French border of Belgium; it tastes better than you would think. Take a pound of beef sausages, and preferably use the small chipolata sausages. (What a delightful thing if the English would make other kinds of sausages as well as their beef and pork ones!) Fry then your sausages lightly in b.u.t.ter, look upon them as little beings for a few moments in purgatory before they are removed to heaven, among the apples. Keeping your sausages hot after they are fried, take a pound of brown pippin apples, pare them and core them. Cut them into neat rounds quarter of an inch thick, put them to cook in their liquor of the sausages (which you are keeping hot elsewhere), and add b.u.t.ter to moisten them. Let them simmer gently so as to keep their shape. Put the apple-rings in the center of the dish, place the sausages round them.

This dish uses a good deal of b.u.t.ter, but you must not use anything else for frying.

STUFFED CHICORY

Make a mince of any cold white meat, such as veal, pork or chicken, and add to it some minced ham; sprinkle it with a thick white sauce. In the meantime the chicories should be cooking; tie each one round with a thread to keep them firm and boil them for ten minutes. When cooked, drain them well, open them lengthwise very carefully, and slip in a spoonful of the mince. Close them, keeping the leaves very neat, and, if necessary, tie them round again. Put them in a fire-proof dish with a lump of b.u.t.ter on each, and let them heat through. Serve them in their juice or with more of the white sauce, taking care to remove the threads.

[_Madame Limpens_.]

TOMATOES STUFFED WITH BEANS

Halve and empty the tomatoes, and put a few drops of vinegar in each.

Cook your beans, whether French beans or haricots or flageolets, and stir them, when tender, into a good thick bechamel sauce. Let this get cold. Empty out the vinegar from the tomatoes and fill them with the mixture, pouring over the top some mayonnaise sauce and parsley.

[_Madame van Praet_.]

CABBAGE AND POTATOES

Boil the cabbages in salted water till tender. Chop them up. Brown an onion in b.u.t.ter, and add the cabbage, salt, pepper, and a little water.

Slice some potatoes thickly, fry them, and serve the vegetable with cabbage in the center, and the fried potatoes laid round.

[_Mdlle. M. Schmidt, Antwerp_.]

SPINACH a LA BRACONNIeRE

Cook two pounds of well-washed spinach; drain it, and pa.s.s it through a sieve; or, failing a sieve, chop it very finely with b.u.t.ter, pepper and salt. Do not add milk, but let it remain somewhat firm. Make a thick bechamel sauce, sufficient to take up a quarter of a pound of grated Gruyere, and, if you wish, stir in the yolk of a raw egg. Lay in a circular dish half a pound of minced ham, pour round it the thick white sauce, and round that again the hot spinach. This makes a pretty dish, and it is not costly.