Common Sense in the Household 36

Common Sense in the Household 36

FRIED POTATOES. ✠

 

Pare, wash, and slice some raw potatoes as thin as wafers. This can

be done with a sharp knife, although there is a little instrument for

the purpose, to be had at the house-furnishing stores, which flutes

prettily as well as slices evenly. Lay in ice-water for half an hour,

wipe dry in two cloths, spreading them upon one, and pressing the other

upon them. Have ready in the frying-pan some boiling lard or nice

dripping, fry the potatoes to a light brown, sprinkle with salt, and

serve in a napkin laid in a deep dish and folded over them. To dry them

of the fat, take from the frying-pan as soon as they are brown, with a

perforated skimmer, put into a cullender and shake for an instant. They

should be crisp and free from grease.

 

 

_Or,_

 

Chop cold boiled potatoes into bits, season with pepper and salt, and

fry lightly in dripping or butter, turning them constantly until nicely

browned.

 

 

POTATO RIBBON.

 

Pare and lay in ice-water for an hour. Choose the largest and soundest

potatoes you can get for this dish. At the end of the hour, pare, with

a small knife, round and round in one continuous curling strip. There

is also an instrument for this purpose, which costs but a trifle, and

will do the work deftly and expeditiously. Handle with care, fry—a few

at a time, for fear of entanglement—in lard or clarified drippings,

drain, and arrange neatly upon a hot flat dish.

 

 

POTATOES À LA CRÈME. ✠

 

Put into a saucepan three tablespoonfuls of butter, a small handful of

parsley chopped small, salt and pepper to taste. Stir up well until

hot, add a small teacupful of cream or rich milk, thicken with two

teaspoonfuls of flour, and stir until it boils. Chop some cold boiled

potatoes, put into the mixture, and boil up once before serving.

 

 

STUFFED POTATOES. ✠

 

Take large, fair potatoes, bake until soft, and cut a round piece

off the top of each. Scrape out the inside carefully, so as not to

break the skin, and set aside the empty cases with the covers. Mash

the inside very smoothly, working into it while hot some butter and

cream—about half a teaspoonful of each for every potato. Season with

salt and pepper, with a good pinch of grated cheese for each; work it

very soft with milk, and put into a saucepan to heat, stirring, to

prevent burning. When scalding hot, stir in one well-beaten egg for

six large potatoes. Boil up once, fill the skins with the mixture,

replacing the caps, return them to the oven for three minutes; arrange

upon a napkin in a deep dish, the caps uppermost; cover with a fold of

the napkin, and eat hot.

 

 

_Or,_

 

You may omit the eggs and put in a double quantity of cheese. They are

very good.

 

 

POTATO SCALLOPS.

 

Boil, and mash the potatoes soft with a little milk. Beat up light with

melted butter—a dessertspoonful for every half-pint of the potato—salt

and pepper to taste. Fill some patty-pans or buttered scallop shells

with the mixture, and brown in an oven, when you have stamped a pattern

on the top of each. Glaze, while hot, with butter, and serve in the

shells.

 

If you like, you can strew some grated cheese over the top.

 

 

BROWNED POTATOES.—(_Whole._)

 

Boil and peel some large, ripe potatoes, and three-quarters of an hour

before a piece of roast beef is removed from the fire, skim the fat

from the gravy; put the potatoes in the dripping-pan, having dredged

them well with flour. Baste them, to prevent scorching, with the gravy,

and when quite brown, drain on a sieve. Lay them about the meat in the

dish.

 

 

BROWNED POTATO.—(_Mashed._)

 

This is also an accompaniment to roast beef or mutton. Mash some boiled

potatoes smoothly with a little milk, pepper, salt, and a boiled onion

(minced); make into small cones or balls; flour well, and put under or

beside the meat, half an hour or so before you take it up. Skim off

all the fat from the gravy before putting them in. Drain them dry when

brown, and lay around the meat when dished.

 

These are nice with roast spare-rib, or any roast pork that is not

_too_ fat.

 

 

BROILED POTATOES.

 

Cut whole boiled potatoes lengthwise, into slices a quarter of an inch

thick, and lay upon a gridiron over a hot, bright fire. Brown on both

sides, sprinkle with pepper and salt, lay a bit of butter upon each,

and eat very hot.

 

 

POTATO CAKES.

 

Make cold mashed potato into flat cakes; flour and fry in lard, or good

sweet dripping, until they are a light-brown.

 

 

ROAST SWEET POTATOES.

 

Select those of uniform size, wash, wipe, and roast until you can tell,

by gently pressing the largest between the finger and thumb, that it is

mellow throughout. Serve in their jackets.

 

Sweet, as well as Irish potatoes, are very good for pic-nic luncheon,

roasted in hot ashes. This, it will be remembered, was the dinner

General Marion set before the British officer as “quite a feast, I

assure you, sir. We don’t often fare so well as to have sweet potatoes

and salt.”

 

The feast was cleansed from ashes by the negro orderly’s shirt-sleeve,

and served upon a natural trencher of pine-bark.

 

 

BOILED SWEET POTATOES.

 

Have them all as nearly the same size as possible; put into cold water,

without any salt, and boil until a fork will easily pierce the largest.

Turn off the water, and lay them in the oven to dry for five minutes.

Peel before sending to table.

 

 

_Or,_ ✠

 

Parboil, and then roast until done. This is a wise plan when they are

old and watery. Boiling is apt to render them tasteless. Another way

still is to boil until they are almost done, when peel and bake brown,

basting them with butter several times, but draining them dry before

they go to the table.

 

 

FRIED SWEET POTATOES ✠

 

Parboil them, skin, and cut lengthwise into slices a quarter of an inch

thick. Fry in sweet dripping or butter.

 

Cold boiled potatoes may be cooked in this way. Or you can chop them

up with an equal quantity of cold Irish potatoes, put them into a

frying-pan with a good lump of butter, and stir until they are hot and

slightly brown.

 

 

CABBAGE.

 

 

BOILED CABBAGE.

 

Pick off the outer green leaves, quarter, examine carefully to be sure

there are no insects in it, and lay for an hour in cold water. Then

put into a pot with plenty of boiling water, and cook fifteen minutes.

Throw away the water, and fill up the pot from the boiling tea-kettle.

Cook until tender all through. Three-quarters of an hour will do

for a good-sized cabbage when young. Late in the season you must be

guided by the tenderness of the stalk. Drain well, chop, and stir in a

tablespoonful of butter, pepper, and salt. Serve very hot. If you boil

corned beef or pork to eat with cabbage, let the second water be taken

from the pot in which this is cooking. It will flavor it nicely.

 

_Always_ boil cabbage in two waters.

 

 

BACON AND CABBAGE.

 

This, I need hardly say, is a favorite country dish at the South.

The old-fashioned way of preparing it was to boil meat and cabbage

together, and serve, reeking with fat, the cabbage in quarters,

soaking yet more of the essence from the ham or middling about which

it lay. In this shape it justly earned a reputation for grossness and

indigestibility that banished it, in time, from many tables.

 

Yet it is a savory and not unwholesome article of food in winter, if

the cabbage be boiled in two waters, the second being the “pot liquor”

from the boiling meat. Drain thoroughly in a cullender, pressing out

every drop of water that will flow, without breaking the tender leaves;

and when the meat is dished, lay the cabbage neatly about it, and upon

each quarter a slice of hard-boiled egg.

 

When you eat, season with pepper, salt, and vinegar.

 

 

STUFFED CABBAGE.

 

Choose for this purpose a large, firm cabbage. Take off the outer

leaves, and lay in boiling water ten minutes, then in very cold. Do

this several hours before you are ready to stuff it. When perfectly

cold, bind a broad tape about it, or a strip of muslin, that it may

not fall apart when the stalk is taken out. Remove this with a thin

sharp knife, leaving a hole about as deep as your middle-finger.

Without widening the mouth of the aperture, excavate the centre until

you have room for four or five tablespoonfuls of the force-meat—more,

if the head be large. Chop the bits you take out very small; mix with

some cold boiled pork or ham, or cooked sausage-meat, a _very_ little

onion, pepper, salt, a pinch of thyme, and some bread-crumbs. Fill the

cavity with this, bind a wide strip of muslin over the hole in the top,

and lay the cabbage in a large saucepan with a pint of “pot-liquor”

from boiled beef or ham. Stew gently until very tender. Take out the

cabbage, unbind carefully, and lay in a dish. Keep hot while you add to

the gravy, when you have strained it, pepper, a piece of butter rolled

in flour, and two or three tablespoonfuls rich milk or cream. Boil up, and pour over the cabbage.