Common Sense in the Household 8

Common Sense in the Household 8

CODFISH BALLS. ✠

 

Prepare the fish precisely as for boiling whole. Cut in pieces when it

has been duly washed and soaked, and boil twenty minutes. Turn off the

water, and cover with fresh from the boiling tea-kettle. Boil twenty

minutes more, drain the fish very dry, and spread upon a dish to cool.

When perfectly cold, pick to pieces with a fork, removing every vestige

of skin and bone, and shredding very fine. When this is done, add an

equal bulk of mashed potato; work into a stiff batter by adding a lump

of butter and sweet milk, and if you want to have them very nice, a

beaten egg. Flour your hands and make the mixture into balls or cakes.

Drop them into boiling lard or good dripping, and fry to a light brown.

Plainer fish-cakes may be made of the cod and potatoes alone, moulded

round like biscuit. In any shape the dish is popular.

 

 

SALT CODFISH STEWED WITH EGGS.

 

Prepare the fish as for balls. Heat almost to boiling a pint of rich,

sweet milk, and stir into it, gradually and carefully, three eggs, well

beaten, a tablespoonful of butter, a little chopped parsley and butter,

with pepper, lastly the fish. Boil up once and turn into a deep covered

dish, or chafing dish lined with buttered toast. Eat hot for breakfast

or supper.

 

 

CODFISH AND POTATO STEW. ✠

 

Soak, boil, and pick the fish, if salt, as for fish-balls. If fresh,

boil and pick into bits. Add an equal quantity of mashed potatoes, a

large tablespoonful of butter and milk, enough to make it very soft.

Put into a skillet, and add a little boiling water to keep it from

burning. Turn and toss constantly until it is smoking hot but not dry;

add pepper and parsley, and dish.

 

 

BOILED MACKEREL. (_Fresh._) ✠

 

Clean the mackerel and wipe carefully with a dry, clean cloth; wash

them lightly with another cloth dipped in vinegar; wrap each in a

coarse linen cloth (floured) basted closely to the shape of the fish.

Put them into a pot with enough salted water to cover them, and boil

them gently for three quarters of an hour. Drain them well. Take a

teacupful of the water in which they were boiled, and put into a

saucepan with a tablespoonful of walnut catsup, some anchovy paste or

sauce, and the juice of half a lemon. Let this boil up well and add a

lump of butter the size of an egg, with a tablespoonful browned flour

wet in cold water. Boil up again and serve in the sauce-boat. This

makes a brown sauce. You can substitute egg-sauce if you like. Garnish

with parsley and nasturtium blossoms.

 

 

BROILED MACKEREL. (_Fresh._)

 

Clean the mackerel, wash, and wipe dry. Split it open, so that when

laid flat the backbone will be in the middle. Sprinkle lightly with

salt, and lay on a buttered gridiron over a clear fire, with the inside

downward, until it begins to brown; then turn the other. When quite

done, lay on a hot dish and butter it plentifully. Turn another hot

dish over the lower one, and let it stand two or three minutes before

sending to table.

 

 

BROILED MACKEREL. (_Salt._)

 

Soak over night in lukewarm water. Change this early in the morning

for very cold, and let the fish lie in this until time to cook. Then

proceed as with the fresh mackerel.

 

 

BOILED HALIBUT. ✠

 

Lay in cold salt and water for an hour. Wipe dry and score the skin in

squares. Put into the kettle with cold salted water enough to cover

it. It is so firm in texture that you can boil without a cloth if you

choose. Let it heat gradually, and boil from half to three-quarters of

an hour, in proportion to the size of the piece. Four or five pounds

will be enough for most private families. Drain and accompany by

egg-sauce—either poured over the fish, or in a sauce-boat.

 

Save the cold remnants of the fish and what sauce is left until next

morning. Pick out as you would cod, mix with an equal quantity of

mashed potato, moisten with the sauce, or with milk and butter if you

have no sauce, put it into a skillet, and stir until it is very hot. Do

not burn. Season with pepper and salt.

 

 

BAKED HALIBUT. ✠

 

Take a piece of halibut weighing five or six pounds, and lay in salt

and water for two hours. Wipe dry and score the outer skin. Set in the

baking-pan in a tolerably hot oven, and bake an hour, basting often

with butter and water heated together in a saucepan or tin cup. When

a fork will penetrate it easily it is done. It should be of a fine

brown. Take the gravy in the dripping-pan—add a little boiling water

should there not be enough—stir in a tablespoonful of walnut catsup, a

teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, the juice of a lemon, and thicken

with browned flour, previously wet with cold water. Boil up once and

put into sauce-boat.

 

There is no finer preparation of halibut than this, which is, however,

comparatively little known. Those who have eaten it usually prefer it

to boiled and broiled. You can use what is left for the same purpose

as the fragments of boiled halibut.

 

 

HALIBUT STEAK. ✠

 

Wash and wipe the steaks dry. Beat up two or three eggs, and roll out

some Boston or other brittle crackers upon the kneading-board until

they are fine as dust. Dip each steak into the beaten egg, then into

the bread crumbs (when you have salted the fish), and fry in hot fat,

lard, or nice dripping.

 

Or, you can broil the steak upon a buttered gridiron, over a clear

fire, first seasoning with salt and pepper. When done, lay in a hot

dish, butter well, and cover closely.

 

 

DEVILLED HALIBUT.

 

Mince a pound of cold boiled or baked halibut, or the fragments of

halibut steak, and make for it the following dressing: The yolks

of three hard-boiled eggs rubbed smooth with the back of a silver

spoon, or in a Wedgewood mortar, and when there remain no lumps in

it, work into a soft paste with a tablespoonful salad oil. Next beat

in two teaspoonfuls white sugar, a teaspoonful made mustard, a pinch

of cayenne, teaspoonful salt, one of Worcestershire sauce, a little

anchovy paste if you have it, and finally, a little at a time to

prevent lumping, a _small_ teacupful of vinegar in which celery-seed

have been steeped. It is easy to keep a bottle of this on hand for

salads and sauces. Stir all thoroughly into the minced fish, garnish

with a chain of the whites of the eggs cut into rings, with a small

round slice of pickled beet laid within each link, and you have a

_piquant_ and pretty salad for the supper-table.

 

 

BOILED SALMON. (_Fresh._) ✠

 

Wrap the fish, when you have washed and wiped it, in a clean

linen cloth—not too thick—baste it up securely, and put into the

fish-kettle. Cover with cold water in which has been melted a handful

of salt. Boil slowly, allowing about a quarter of an hour to each

pound. When the time is up, rip open a corner of the cloth and test

the salmon with a fork. If it penetrate easily, it is done. If not,

hastily pin up the cloth and cook a little longer. Skim off the scum as

it rises to the top. Have ready in another saucepan a pint of cream—or

half milk and half cream will do—which has been heated in a vessel set

in boiling water; stir into this a large spoonful of butter, rolled in

flour, a little salt and chopped parsley, and a half-gill of the water

in which the fish is boiled. Let it boil up once, stirring all the

while. When the fish is done, take it instantly from the kettle, lay it

an instant upon a folded cloth to absorb the drippings; transfer with

great care, for fear of breaking, to a hot dish, and pour the boiled

cream over it, reserving enough to fill a small sauce-boat. Garnish

with curled parsley and circular slices of hard-boiled yolks—leaving

out the whites of the eggs.

 

After serving boiled salmon with cream-sauce, you will never be quite

content with any other. If you cannot get cream, boil a pint of milk

and thicken with arrow-root. It is not so nice, but many will not

detect the difference—_real_ cream being a rare commodity in town.

 

You may pickle what is left, if it is in one piece. Or devil it, as I

have directed you to treat cold halibut. _Or_ mince, mixed with mashed

potato, milk, and butter, and stir into a sort of stew. Or, once again,

mix with mashed potato, milk, butter, and a raw egg well-beaten; make

into cakes or balls, and fry in hot lard or dripping. At any rate, let

none of it be lost, it being at once one of our most expensive and most

delicious fish.

 

 

BAKED SALMON. ✠

 

Wash and wipe dry, and rub with pepper and salt. Some add a soupçon of

cayenne and powdered mace. Lay the fish upon a grating set over your

baking-pan, and roast or bake, basting it freely with butter, and,

toward the last, with its own drippings only. Should it brown too fast,

cover the top with a sheet of white paper until the whole is cooked.

When it is done, transfer to a hot dish and cover closely, and add

to the gravy a little hot water thickened with arrow-root, rice, or

wheat flour,—wet, of course, first with cold water,—a great spoonful

of strained tomato sauce, and the juice of a lemon. Boil up and serve

in a sauce boat, or you can serve with cream sauce, made as for boiled

salmon. Garnish handsomely with alternate sprigs of parsley and the

bleached tops of celery, with ruby bits of firm currant jelly here

and there. This is a fine dish for a dinner-party. A glass of Sherry

improves the first-named sauce.

 

 

SALMON STEAKS. ✠

 

Dry well with a cloth, dredge with flour, and lay them upon a

well-buttered gridiron, over clear hot coals. Turn with a broad-bladed

knife slipped beneath, and a flat wire egg-beater above, lest the steak

should break. When done to a light brown, lay in a hot dish, butter

each steak, seasoning with salt and pepper, cover closely, and serve.

 

 

PICKLED SALMON. (_Fresh._) ✠

 

Having cleaned your fish, cut into pieces of a convenient size to go

into the fish-kettle, and boil in salted water as for the table. Drain

it very dry, wipe it with a clean cloth, and set it aside in a cool place until next morning.